Bloomin' Onion

[Arnold Zwicky]

dInIs sez, about the vowels of Awesome Blossom:
 >Of course, even as a nonconflater, one might appreciate the immense
 >subtlety of the half-rhyme I reckon.

i am very much a nonconflater of /a/ and /O/.  i am, however, also a
student of half rhymes, imperfect puns, malapropisms, and the like,
and appreciate the pleasures of similarities that are not identities.

Bloomin' Onion has, of course, some complex poetry of its own, and how
close *its* parts are depends on whether the final syllables of its
two words have the same neutral vowel or two different ones, which is
known to vary across english dialects.

[latest conflation misunderstanding: during a radio interview of a
band that sometimes works square dances under the name Men Don't Talk,
one of the band members explained what i heard as "we have collars, so
we don't need to talk."  i struggled with the image of a square dance
band in clerical garb for several seconds before i realized that the
intended word was "callers".]

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)