You Say Yemen ...

Whew, it's kind of hot here in Hawaii, and I'm not talking about the picture-perfect, 70-degree-in-the-sun-no-humidity-weather.

I understand that a lot of people are anxious about this terrorist bomber thingee that took place a few days ago, and especially nervous about the fact that Big Guy seems a bit detached. But, hey, the man is working hard on relaxing after a pretty tough year of saving the economy, creating more than a million mythical jobs (which are a lot tougher to keep on the books than real jobs, by the way), building unanimous support for health care reform and winning the war against human-caused disasters in Afghanistan.

But the real delay in getting a strong statement out on the Northwest bombing story is really my fault. You see, we can't find a fancy pronunciation for Yemen appropriate for Big Guy to use. This might seem a minor point, but Big Guy isn't happy unless he can flatten an "A" or add an umlaut to a pronunciation. That's why he really wishes this terrorist attack could have taken place from a Latin American location or Addis Ababa. Yemen is just, well, Yemen.

Big Guy tried playing around with the phonetics on my screen, trying to add an extra "e" so it would sound like "Ya-meen." But that just sounded silly. So as soon as we come up with pronunciation of the country befitting Big O's oratory skills, we'll get back to you. Otherwise, just enjoy the holidays. We sure are.