Another Case for the Oxford Comma

Recently, there has been some controversy over the necessity of the so-called "Oxford comma".  In particular, citations have been made as to how its absence can be misleading.  However, I recently encountered a case where its absence clarifies things, though only due to the expectation of its presence where necessary. 
This isn't a great example, since it's an ingredients label and not a sentence, but I think that this might provide some insight.  I had a honey lemon chamomile infusion, and its ingredients list bore something interesting.  I reproduce it here in full: 
Chamomile flowers, lemon and honey flavors. 
The absence of a comma between "lemon" and "and" tells me that the flavors are both of lemon and of honey, and that that there is no direct lemon in the infusion.  If the Oxford comma were not expected, however, then I would not know whether "lemon" described merely a flavor or actual lemon. 
Significantly, this non-sentence cannot be - as opponents of the Oxford comma oft suggest - rearranged, since ingredients must be listed in order, from most to least. 
While I don't expect this to be a game-changer, due to its non-sentence nature, I at least hope that this helps to further convey the importance of this grammatical convention. 

Was He Dead?

I've noticed a peculiar trend regarding the English language. Specifically, this has to do with tense and dead people. In English, when referring to someone who's dead, and describing that person with "to be" or "to have" or similar, one uses the past tense (except, of course, when using the word "dead"). So, for example, "he was tall" or "she had blue eyes" would be used, rather than "he is tall" or "she has blue eyes".
So, if someone's dead, then use the past tense, and, by the contrapositive, if the speaker is using the present tense, then the subject is not dead.
The problem is that a lot of people seem to assume that the converse and inverse are also true. That is, they assume that, if the speaker is using the past tense, then the subject is dead, and if the subject is alive, then the tense will always be present.
I happen to find it a bit annoying when this happens. I use the past tense when I'm referring to something in the past, but sometimes I'll be talking about something in the past and it happens to involve a human and a listener will assume that I'm talking about someone who's dead. Why? I don't know.
Does this ever happen to you?

Remember, Remember, the Date of the Month

I'm sort of hurrying this post along. I remembered a thought that I had before, and realized that, since I have a blog, I should probably put it up while it's still on the day.
I'd just like to point out that the remembering scheme for Guy Fawkes Day is a bit odd. For those who don't know, it goes:
"Remember, remember, the fifth of November."
The problem with this is that the last part - which is what this is used to recall anyway - could be any of several dates in September, November, or December. The "fifth" is not even required to rhyme with anything, so any monosyllabic ordinal will do.