Beat The Clock
Hello World,
I don't know where the time has flown, but suddenly we look up and Veterans Day has come and gone already, and all of the war movies on television right along with it, by jingo, and no turning back. You can't tell by the local weather, where it's been sunny and close to 70 for a week, but it's nearly the middle of the month and pretty soon it will be time for ol' Tom Turkey, ready or not. And speaking of things we weren't ready for, we recently had a new and vigorous landscaping service come to our property, who did such a bang-up job of cleaning up the yard, that they threw out all of my old firewood along with everything else, and thanks so very much not, I'm sure. Some of that wood I had for years, and I won't say that I had gotten to the point of naming it, but I honestly believed that eventually I would get around to actually cutting up good old Woody, Corky and of course, tough old Bark. But all of that is behind me now, and nothing but a neat and empty space where the woodpile used to be. Not resting on their laurels, they also cleared out a huge accumulation of brush and overgrowth that had taken over an entire corner of our backyard, which was an enormous improvement in the outdoor ambiance around here, I can tell you that. Unfortunately, they turned up no sign of either Jimmy Hoffa or Judge Crater, which I know was a bitter disappointment to the Justice Department.
Alert readers may recall that the boring pastor at my church has been on a study sabbatical abroad, and we've been having an interim pastor in his absence, who actually works in the fire department and has gone into the clergy as a second career. He's an industrious fellow, and sort of a hard-charging Type A kind of personality, with no grass growing on him, and no long and boring sermons for him, thank heaven. I noticed that worship has been starting early on Sunday, and not late like we're used to, so even getting to church on time isn't good enough anymore. I figure he would be the type to set his watch five minutes ahead, so he would always have a jump on things, and there's no snoozing while he's on the job, that's for sure. Now you'd better get to church at least five minutes early, or miss the opening hymn and half of the readings before you ever get to your seat. When I mentioned this to him recently, he was surprised, and assured me that he was starting worship right on the dot, using the clock in the church office for this purpose. Well, no wonder we're off the mark here! After all, I'm the person who set that clock in the first place with the switch-over to Daylight Saving Time in March, and I just took a wild guess at the time back then, which I'm sure was wrong then and it's probably been wrong ever since. We had a good laugh about that. In fact, it reminded me a lot of the old joke about the frontier radio station that announced the time at noon when they heard the siren at the fire house, and the firemen said theirs was based on the noon whistle of the freight train passing through town, while the railroad claimed that they set theirs by the noon signal of the radio station. With that kind of circular logic, anyone can see where it would be very easy for this sort of thing to get completely out of hand, and I ought to know.
Of course, everyone knows that I don't like to complain about the odd errant language mishap along the way, but when they happen in bunches, well, it just gets to be too much for me to bear in silence, and I simply have to cry out in protest. These two appeared one right after the other on the AOL Welcome screen last week, and I would love to blame it on the full moon, but a quick glance out the window indicates otherwise, so we don't have that to fall back on.
============================
Tara Lipinski says she remembers a lot about
winning gold medal during the 1998 Winter Olympics
but one tiny thing still alludes her
============================
I suppose that could be true, but only if this one tiny thing was able (according to our friends at Random House Webster) "to refer casually or indirectly; to make an allusion (usually followed by to); to make a passing or casual reference to something, either directly or implied; the act of alluding." I admit that I did not follow the story to find out what the one tiny thing was, but I still doubt that it was in fact "alluding" her in any way. I may not know anything about figure skating, but I know homophone trouble when I see it, by golly. The next one hopped in its time machine, and somehow took a wrong turn from the present to the past - tense, that is.
================
Katie Couric shined
in colorful print top
================
Now I realize that "shined" is not technically wrong in many instances, but I have to say that it really set my teeth on edge when I saw it in that context. For example, you could say that someone shined their shoes, or even shined a light in a dark place, and I would have no problem with that. But in the sense of something that is illuminated from within, I think "shone" is the better choice, and I have to say that dear old Katie in her colorful top did nothing to change my mind about that in any way whatsoever, full moon or no.
Meanwhile, these two flubs appeared in the Best Bets segment of the newspaper TV listings, the first one for the A&E program "Dog the Bounty Hunter" -
===============================
Dog calls on his old friends Tim Chapman
and Sonny Westbrook to help the team track
down a disprectful fugitive with violent tendencies
===============================
Well, "disprectful" is a new one on me, and no bonus to the English language as far as I can tell. And unlike the usual typo in this section of the paper, you can't even add a letter to this and make it right, which might be understandable in a cramped spot where space is at a premium. In fact, if you want to turn this into "disrespectful," you not only have to add a bunch of missing letters, but change the order around besides, which takes the typo to a whole new level, and not in a good way, I can tell you that. The other one from the USA show "Burn Notice" sounds like the crew from the Tara Lipinski story has once again lost their thesaurus and just grasping at similar sounding straws, as it were -
=============================
A rancorous lawyer hires a bomb-maker
to reap vengeance on the members of a
local gang
=============================
And yes, they came up with "reap" vengeance, of all things. No, I'm sorry, please step out of the booth. Now it's true that "reap" is a word, and they actually spelled it right, and there are many sentences where the word would be perfectly acceptable, or even more precisely apt, but this isn't one of them, and not by a long shot. Alas, there is no Grammar Police to take these offenders to task, but as it says in the Bible, "As ye sow, so shall ye wreak," or something like that anyway.
On the retail scene, we have our friends at Hammacher Schlemmer to thank for their Last Minute Gift 2010 catalogue - that is, for all of you people who needed gifts in time for Take A Hike Day on November 17th, or Absurdity Day on the 20th, or perhaps Game and Puzzle Week, which is starting on the 14th - because it's certainly not my idea of last minute for Christmas, which is still 6 weeks away, believe it or not, in spite of copious store displays and non-stop advertising all around us already. Of course, if you do need a last minute gift for the middle of November, please feel free to go right ahead and visit their web site at http://www.hammacher.com/ and see for yourself. In any case, one of their signature items that caught my eye was a miniature version of what they described as [[ THE WORKING MACK CEMENT TRUCK ]] and here I'm thinking: gee, I sure hope not, what kind of a mess would that make on your desk, by golly. And I can tell you from experience that unlike soda, or even ink, cement is one of those substances that is almost impossible to clean off of anything once it spills, which is probably one of the reasons that it is beloved by Mafia hitmen the world over. It's no wonder it comes with this disclaimer: [[ WARNING: CHOKING HAZARD - Small parts. Not for children under 3 yrs. ]] Well, at $90 a pop, I would certainly hope it wasn't for children under three, not that I would want toddlers mixing cement at any price, to be honest.
Fortunately, it turned out that cooler heads prevailed at the Bruder toy factory in Germany, and according to the description, what we actually have here is a 26" model truck that you can "fill the drum with sand, rotate it with the easy-to-turn crank, and use the moveable chutes to channel 'cement' to a specific location." I do understand what they mean by the term "working" in the sense of having moving parts that you can use to perform various functions, as opposed to a collectible item that just sits still and is decorative. But to describe something as a "working cement truck" that doesn't mix cement, I think is about the loosest interpretation of "working" that you could possibly get away with, and I personally object to it as an affront to the actual meaning of the word. On the other hand, I don't see any reason why a person couldn't actually fill the drum with sand, water, clay and limestone, rotate it with the easy-to-turn crank, and make their own concrete after all. But here again, I can't condone the idea of toddlers doing this, where the biggest choking hazard would likely be from their own parents, after having successfully used the moveable chutes to channel cement to a specific location, such as a laptop, cellphone or MP3 player, for instance. Take THAT, T-Mobile! I was going to close by saying something about reaping vengeance on high-tech gadgets in a whole new low-tech direction, but I'm afraid it alludes me now.
Elle
I don't know where the time has flown, but suddenly we look up and Veterans Day has come and gone already, and all of the war movies on television right along with it, by jingo, and no turning back. You can't tell by the local weather, where it's been sunny and close to 70 for a week, but it's nearly the middle of the month and pretty soon it will be time for ol' Tom Turkey, ready or not. And speaking of things we weren't ready for, we recently had a new and vigorous landscaping service come to our property, who did such a bang-up job of cleaning up the yard, that they threw out all of my old firewood along with everything else, and thanks so very much not, I'm sure. Some of that wood I had for years, and I won't say that I had gotten to the point of naming it, but I honestly believed that eventually I would get around to actually cutting up good old Woody, Corky and of course, tough old Bark. But all of that is behind me now, and nothing but a neat and empty space where the woodpile used to be. Not resting on their laurels, they also cleared out a huge accumulation of brush and overgrowth that had taken over an entire corner of our backyard, which was an enormous improvement in the outdoor ambiance around here, I can tell you that. Unfortunately, they turned up no sign of either Jimmy Hoffa or Judge Crater, which I know was a bitter disappointment to the Justice Department.
Alert readers may recall that the boring pastor at my church has been on a study sabbatical abroad, and we've been having an interim pastor in his absence, who actually works in the fire department and has gone into the clergy as a second career. He's an industrious fellow, and sort of a hard-charging Type A kind of personality, with no grass growing on him, and no long and boring sermons for him, thank heaven. I noticed that worship has been starting early on Sunday, and not late like we're used to, so even getting to church on time isn't good enough anymore. I figure he would be the type to set his watch five minutes ahead, so he would always have a jump on things, and there's no snoozing while he's on the job, that's for sure. Now you'd better get to church at least five minutes early, or miss the opening hymn and half of the readings before you ever get to your seat. When I mentioned this to him recently, he was surprised, and assured me that he was starting worship right on the dot, using the clock in the church office for this purpose. Well, no wonder we're off the mark here! After all, I'm the person who set that clock in the first place with the switch-over to Daylight Saving Time in March, and I just took a wild guess at the time back then, which I'm sure was wrong then and it's probably been wrong ever since. We had a good laugh about that. In fact, it reminded me a lot of the old joke about the frontier radio station that announced the time at noon when they heard the siren at the fire house, and the firemen said theirs was based on the noon whistle of the freight train passing through town, while the railroad claimed that they set theirs by the noon signal of the radio station. With that kind of circular logic, anyone can see where it would be very easy for this sort of thing to get completely out of hand, and I ought to know.
Of course, everyone knows that I don't like to complain about the odd errant language mishap along the way, but when they happen in bunches, well, it just gets to be too much for me to bear in silence, and I simply have to cry out in protest. These two appeared one right after the other on the AOL Welcome screen last week, and I would love to blame it on the full moon, but a quick glance out the window indicates otherwise, so we don't have that to fall back on.
============================
Tara Lipinski says she remembers a lot about
winning gold medal during the 1998 Winter Olympics
but one tiny thing still alludes her
============================
I suppose that could be true, but only if this one tiny thing was able (according to our friends at Random House Webster) "to refer casually or indirectly; to make an allusion (usually followed by to); to make a passing or casual reference to something, either directly or implied; the act of alluding." I admit that I did not follow the story to find out what the one tiny thing was, but I still doubt that it was in fact "alluding" her in any way. I may not know anything about figure skating, but I know homophone trouble when I see it, by golly. The next one hopped in its time machine, and somehow took a wrong turn from the present to the past - tense, that is.
================
Katie Couric shined
in colorful print top
================
Now I realize that "shined" is not technically wrong in many instances, but I have to say that it really set my teeth on edge when I saw it in that context. For example, you could say that someone shined their shoes, or even shined a light in a dark place, and I would have no problem with that. But in the sense of something that is illuminated from within, I think "shone" is the better choice, and I have to say that dear old Katie in her colorful top did nothing to change my mind about that in any way whatsoever, full moon or no.
Meanwhile, these two flubs appeared in the Best Bets segment of the newspaper TV listings, the first one for the A&E program "Dog the Bounty Hunter" -
===============================
Dog calls on his old friends Tim Chapman
and Sonny Westbrook to help the team track
down a disprectful fugitive with violent tendencies
===============================
Well, "disprectful" is a new one on me, and no bonus to the English language as far as I can tell. And unlike the usual typo in this section of the paper, you can't even add a letter to this and make it right, which might be understandable in a cramped spot where space is at a premium. In fact, if you want to turn this into "disrespectful," you not only have to add a bunch of missing letters, but change the order around besides, which takes the typo to a whole new level, and not in a good way, I can tell you that. The other one from the USA show "Burn Notice" sounds like the crew from the Tara Lipinski story has once again lost their thesaurus and just grasping at similar sounding straws, as it were -
=============================
A rancorous lawyer hires a bomb-maker
to reap vengeance on the members of a
local gang
=============================
And yes, they came up with "reap" vengeance, of all things. No, I'm sorry, please step out of the booth. Now it's true that "reap" is a word, and they actually spelled it right, and there are many sentences where the word would be perfectly acceptable, or even more precisely apt, but this isn't one of them, and not by a long shot. Alas, there is no Grammar Police to take these offenders to task, but as it says in the Bible, "As ye sow, so shall ye wreak," or something like that anyway.
On the retail scene, we have our friends at Hammacher Schlemmer to thank for their Last Minute Gift 2010 catalogue - that is, for all of you people who needed gifts in time for Take A Hike Day on November 17th, or Absurdity Day on the 20th, or perhaps Game and Puzzle Week, which is starting on the 14th - because it's certainly not my idea of last minute for Christmas, which is still 6 weeks away, believe it or not, in spite of copious store displays and non-stop advertising all around us already. Of course, if you do need a last minute gift for the middle of November, please feel free to go right ahead and visit their web site at http://www.hammacher.com/ and see for yourself. In any case, one of their signature items that caught my eye was a miniature version of what they described as [[ THE WORKING MACK CEMENT TRUCK ]] and here I'm thinking: gee, I sure hope not, what kind of a mess would that make on your desk, by golly. And I can tell you from experience that unlike soda, or even ink, cement is one of those substances that is almost impossible to clean off of anything once it spills, which is probably one of the reasons that it is beloved by Mafia hitmen the world over. It's no wonder it comes with this disclaimer: [[ WARNING: CHOKING HAZARD - Small parts. Not for children under 3 yrs. ]] Well, at $90 a pop, I would certainly hope it wasn't for children under three, not that I would want toddlers mixing cement at any price, to be honest.
Fortunately, it turned out that cooler heads prevailed at the Bruder toy factory in Germany, and according to the description, what we actually have here is a 26" model truck that you can "fill the drum with sand, rotate it with the easy-to-turn crank, and use the moveable chutes to channel 'cement' to a specific location." I do understand what they mean by the term "working" in the sense of having moving parts that you can use to perform various functions, as opposed to a collectible item that just sits still and is decorative. But to describe something as a "working cement truck" that doesn't mix cement, I think is about the loosest interpretation of "working" that you could possibly get away with, and I personally object to it as an affront to the actual meaning of the word. On the other hand, I don't see any reason why a person couldn't actually fill the drum with sand, water, clay and limestone, rotate it with the easy-to-turn crank, and make their own concrete after all. But here again, I can't condone the idea of toddlers doing this, where the biggest choking hazard would likely be from their own parents, after having successfully used the moveable chutes to channel cement to a specific location, such as a laptop, cellphone or MP3 player, for instance. Take THAT, T-Mobile! I was going to close by saying something about reaping vengeance on high-tech gadgets in a whole new low-tech direction, but I'm afraid it alludes me now.
Elle
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 7:52 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home