Tiny Wooden Bombs

I went on an adventure today to the lovely Pittsburgh VA Healthcare Medical Center located in Oakland - which happens to be the the city's second most densely populated town. On my travels I began to sing a little song to myself. A song comprised of repeating the phrase "Tiny Wooden Bombs" ad infinitum. Its worth noting that the words came from a previous post in which I described the sound something made as a "tiny wooden bomb going off."

While that's not very interesting in an of itself, it led me down a rabbit hole. While singing the song to myself, I began to notice that the words had lost all meaning. Sure, its a nonsensical phrase to begin with, but the words themselves took on a life of their own. On several passes, I realized the song sounded like a string of German cuss words. So I leaned into that. I began to pronounce the phrase, TY-Nee Whooten Balms.

This pronunciation led to TY-Nee Wu Tang Balms, and to a number a very similar variants. When I eventually got home, I decided to google Tiny Wooden Bombs. My query yielded nothing of interest, save for an egregious error in Google's People Often Ask section.

The question was: What are tiny bombs called?

The answer was as follows: At 3 mm x 2.5 mm, the "stapes" in the middle ear is the smallest named bone in the human body. The shape of a stirrup, this bone is one of three in the middle ear, collectively known as the ossicles.

My guess is that this is a simple error and the question was supposed to be: What are tiny bones called? Or What is the tiniest bone in the human body? But, just as my little song took on a phonetic evolution of its own, so did Google. Tiny Bones became Tiny Bombs and nobody has bothered to correct the error.

If you are ever bored, I suggest repeating the word "Bowl" over and over. You'll soon learn how weird words are and how this post came to be. BOOM!