Bill is a funny word. Normally, it means a statement of what you have to pay someone for a product or service, what you owe him or her. In a restaurant, the waiter brings you the bill (also called the check). Most people complain about all of the bills they have to pay each month – telephone bills, electricity bills, water bills. To bill is also a verb meaning to give or send someone a request for money. If you want to pay for something later but take your product now, you may say to the person selling it, “Bill me!” meaning “Send me a bill for the payment and I will pay you later.”

But there are even more meanings of bill. Bill is also a short form of the name William, as in President Bill Clinton. Bill can also mean a sign or a poster advertising something, usually placed on a public wall or on a telephone pole (a long piece of wood that is used to keep the telephone wires up in the air). You can see here a picture of a telephone pole with hundreds of staples (sharp metal objects that hold paper or other thin material together). Why so many staples? People use these poles to put up notices about a lost dog or a local sale that they’re having at their house. Telephone poles are used as places to put free announcements that can be seen by anyone who walks by them. This pole has had many people use it as a place to post (to put in a place for people to see it) announcements. Another word for announcement or advertising poster is, remember, a bill. So on some walls or poles, you will see a sign that says: Post No Bills, meaning “Don’t put up any of those signs here!”

One more thing: a pole is a long piece of wood, but a Pole (with the “p” capitalized) is a person from the country of Poland. Confusing, right?

~Jeff

P.S. Thanks again to Matteo Mescalchin of Digital Movie for this photograph.

The intials DWI usually mean Driving While Intoxicated. To be intoxicated means to have drunk too much alcohol.  As in most places, it is illegal in the U.S. to drive when you have drunk a large quantity of beer, wine, or other liquor. (This is also now called DUI = Driving Under the Influence. To be under the influence means the same as being intoxicated or having taken too much of another drug.)

Now there’s a new DWI: Driving While Intelligent. A recent study by an insurance company in the U.S. found that 18% of drivers would fail the written exam that you need to take to get your license if they were to take it again.  You only have to take a driver’s examination once in most states – when you get your first license. But many people forget what the correct rules are for driving, and would probably not pass the exam later on.  So I think we need to encourage this new DWI, especially here in Los Angeles, where there are so many crazy drivers!

~Jeff

This is the time of year that newspapers and magazines compile year-end lists. One list that caught my eye (got my attention) was in the New York Times Magazine a couple of weeks ago.

This is a list of patents (registered ideas or inventions with the government) that Americans received in 2007. Some of these are clear from their name, but others are not so clear. Some may be good ideas and some are just…strange.

• Chewable (something you can bite and eat) toothbrush
• Refrigerator with television
• Inflatable (filled with air) umbrella
• Automatic celebrity-face-matching-and-attractiveness-rating machine
• Instant snowman
• Reverse sitting commode (toilet)
• Folding coffee maker
• Cremation urn (a container for the ashes of your body after you die and your body is burned) convertible (changeable) into a birdhouse
• Combined toy rabbit and hat
• Inter-toe (between toes) towel

What do you think? Would you have use for any of these?

~ Lucy