Non sequitur

After making a fairly weak argument as to why it should be Carolyn, not me, to do the final Christmas decorations, I realised just how weak my argument was. Dripping with sarcasm (and water from the shower), I heard myself saying:

"Now that is a water-clad argument, isn't it?"

Imagine. Next it will be iron-tight...

language weirdy

a language funny or just a language weirdy, or bad editing...on an ISP newsletter
"we sincerely take this opportunity to thank..."

Surely it's not legal!

This was a 'send to all' email sent out by our IT dept. Some subtle punctuation errors thrown in to test your deciphering skills, but the cherry on the icing comes at the end.

Hi, All:

We have a mix of 17/19 inch CRT monitors to give away, mostly working (you can test your pick at IT)

First come first served, IT will dispose the remainder on Monday.

Marry Xmas :)

Cooking up a word nasi gor-what?

Over dinner the other night, a certain shall-remain-nameless mother-in-law hoped something would happen:

"...before we all go stir-fry crazy..."

And in case you're wondering, dinner was roast chicken.

To the manners born

Not your classic LF, but still F all the same. Pinched from the back of the Metro where the eavesdropping tidbits are printed:

Woman to her child on the train from Wentworth Falls: "You've got manners, use the bastards."

I've been smiling to myself about it all afternoon...

Sae it lyke u meen it

Debating the minutae of a proposal in the back of the car on the way to a meeting, one of my colleagues surmised:

"I think we're talking phonetics here"

Yep, it's all in the way you say it, not spell it.

Seeking sorters

In the window of a real estate office:

"Great house in the most sorted street in the neighbourhood"

Everyone wants an organised neighbour.

A short time?

My colleague on the phone this morning said to someone:

"I hear you'll be looking after this in the mean term?"

Well I guess we're in the fourth term now - the one full of exams - so technically he was correct.

holy guano batman!

Inspired to record more of the comedic apprehension of our subtle language culture following the bi-inaugural LF awards , I actually wrote down one of the many that pass me by at work.

I tend to think of most of these as Cumberland Newspapers aspiring to Daily Telegraph aspirations of The Economist. Sometimes enlightening, mostly, well.........

So anyway,

"I left it on the shelf for you! You're as blind as batshit! And batshit's pretty blind!"

Splitting words

No sooner had the LF bloggers inaugrial awards night concluded, than another beauty was dropped in the first meeting of the new working week:

"... you can do it whichever way you want to, but at this stage you're just mincing hairs over it."

Mmm, mmm. Minced hair. I always wondered how they made that pasta from angels.

Dirty little brats

Hi all, I'm back again after many months of computer illiteracy.

I overheard this gem while passing a colleague on the way to lunch the other day:

"We used to run a bit of a muck as kids..."

His poor mother.

Going through the pain - again

Nothing more than a simple typo, but today in a meeting (the corporate breeding ground for LFs) a visitor described our medications that fix headaches etc as:

Analgesics (pain relivers)

No wonder sales are so good... Those nasty headaches that keep on coming back.

Say what (again)?

A colleague reports on an old Headmaster who used to frequently proclaim the following during assemblies:

"I will NOT repeat myself, I will NOT repeat myself"

No, I guess not, I guess not.

aah those school girl days...

So it seems that it's NOT little girls that are nasty to each other...

For sale is one "Divisive Lunch Box - Plastic container"

Those babelfish translations create a gringlish all of their own.
Yes yes, I know what they MEANT...

If you don't write "it", I won't hear "it"

"It" is only a small mistake, but when these two letters are left out of a word, it may completely change the intended meaning as was the case in this draft SOP:

"It is the responsibility of individual companies to develop methodologies
for data reporting that are consistent over time, accurate and audable"

A symptom of making cuts to your IT department?

A Powerful Thought

I was talking to a colleague and asked him if I should bother to turn off a certain machine over the weekend. He replied

"I think you should, incase we have a power outrage"

I politely turned away and chuckled to myself.

A job that is very exciting...

This was written in a comment on one of the blogs I read...

"[why does Oprah]...get to interfere with other people's lively-hoods. "

Does it conjure up funny images of urban black americans wearing hoodies in bright colours and telling Oprah where to go - or is that just me? after 2 glasses vino..

We interrupt this amputation to bring you...

I overheard a colleague at work talking to a customer on the phone the other day. After a period of listening to him carry on she interrupted with:

" - sorry to cut you in half there, but..."

Well I guess you could mistake "sorry to cut you off" as being hung up on.

Rock-solid advice

A colleague recently visited someone who had broken their ankle, who said their doctor had advised they:

"Would need to be sedimentary until it healed"

No more taking their health for granite.

trousers for genes day

Apologies to a certain family member for this, but I couldn't resist. I even tried for a day. In this certain family member's defence, it was a cut-and-paste job, so apparently the blame/praise lies with someone I apparently wouldn't be able to keep a straight face near.

In an invitation to a soiree at an uber (yet underground) cool bar included the following dress code:

Denim Trousers are acceptable with collard shirt and dress shoes

Apart from the obvious opener (what a gem!), I still have a mental picture of a gorgeous blouse made of kale and cabbage run up by my tailor just for the night.

Cornish aperitif

From The Manly Daily - every edition thrust into my letterbox whether I like it or not.
"When actor Victor Kline headed overseas to research a play he had an ulterior motive. [as if the opening line isn't atrocious enough... couldn't spare a comma?] After spending time in Dubai and Casablanca, Victor headed to Paris for more research and to propose to his girlfriend, x, on the Eiffel Tower. [some truly awful details edited out - in short, she said yes] ...

They celebrated with a couple of pastis near the Pont Alma Marceau."

I'm sparing you the rest. A lazy-arse journo/sub couldn't be bothered to find out what pastis is, let alone how to hook it up to the requisite grammar. For those of you who have worked out how hard it is to develop a taste for an aniseed liqueur mass noun that needs watering down to a cloudy colour - you KNOW you never have a couple of it.

Celebration - second attempt

Honestly, what does it take to get a bunch of bloggers to get of their blog-chairs and get to a blog-party?! You can lead a horse to rolling water, but it just won't gather moss.

So, I've set up an email RSVP link in the right-hand column. if you'd like to indicate your interest in celebrating our 2.5 year anniversary, then click that link and send me an email. The proof is in the pudding.

Neil D.

Change your position

Nothing more than a simple typo, but upon perusing one of our wholesalers' staff contact details one staff member had their their position described as the:

"Invertory Controller"

I'm guessing his job is to run around turning everything upside down?

drama school

The health department has just conducted a surprise inspection, made it half way through the building and, as we have been advised via internal email, will be returning in the unspecified near future to continue their good and necessary work.

response from general manager of hospitality is,

Is there anything we need to action proactively before they return?

I have been stumped trying to apply any amount of wit to highlight this - it all seems so pale in comparison.

perhaps they will return retrospectively?

NEWTOWN CELEBRATION BUMP

as my life is continually collapsing like a lung (unlike the administrator's life collapse which was more serious) so I only just read the celebration re. language funnies 2nd birthday.
And no-one else replied, so either you all suck (except polly who did reply and the administrator) OR you all snuck out and celebrated without me. SO I propose that we get serious re. celebrating (WITH me) and it should involve newtown and a cake of some description, or just really good vietnamese food I suppose...

opening a can of worms...

fans of johnnie darko will appreciate this...(SIC)
during convo with lovely, patient husband (or dh for those who participate on parenting sites etc. means dear husband which isn't important right now)
".. you know and then they would have a ... a mine field... no, what's the opposite to a minefield?"
"A mineless field?" said patient smartalec.
"No no, you know ripe with potential.."
"Well technically, a minefield is ripe with potential Nic." replies smartalec who is getting smarter with every witty repartee.
"NO, a .. a FIELD DAY!" yeah, they would have a field day in Melbourne."

Both dumbnic and smartalec fall about laughing, aah the fun we have in our kitchen before Nic has taken her medication and her coffee.

sorry - what??

"Mummy, how do you say tree in danguage?" (rhymes with language)
"in what?"
"in danguage"
"I don't know what you are talking about"
"HOW DO YOU SAY TREE IN DANGUAGE" (yes, that loud)
"I heard you, I just don't know what you are talking about"

Turns out that "danguage" is Giorgian for "Danish", I love the fact that my child thinks I can speak 7 or 9 languages...

Not the brightest spark

I was running a workshop for our sales team the other day, and in the middle of it one of them proclaimed:

"It's just a filament of your imagination"

I'm not sure if he then had a "the lightbulb switched on" moment and realised what he'd said, because he pretty much shut up on the spot.

Try to crawl out of this one

Open plan offices have much to offer, none the least of which are LFs. Here's another I just overheard:

"...and to do so would open a can of worms in a minefield"

Then silence, as this poor little digger was left realising his sentence was stranded in no mans' land.

Pay some irrespect

I overheard this as I walked past a workstation this morning:

"Irregardless, we should still..."

With all due irrespect, I think you've just committed a language funny.

Point of order

Last night while wandering along King St, Newtown, we came across a new eatery under construction. They had an advertisement in the window looking for various staff including:

Head Chef

Chef

Waitstaff

Barrister/Bar

So we've had the internet cafe, the bookshop cafe, the carwash cafe and now it looks like in the latest joint venture you can sip on a latte while waiting for your case to be heard.

Dark, sinister, or just an innocent mistake?

Is there any truth to the rumour that a LF blogger lists:

"johnnie darko"

as one of his or her favourite movies on his or her blogger profile? Is this the spin-off film following Donnie's brother, or the Director's cut featuring lots of whisky product placement?

ADHDvertising

It's the blogger formally known as g-dav here, reincarnated as the Doctor of Rocket Surgery thanks to losing my cookies when I got a new laptop, & Blogger changing the way their accounts work. Anyway thats not important right now. What is is the comment I overheard this morning in relation to a new advertising campaign that was described as being:

"A real attention stopper"

Maybe we've found the cause of ADHD - eye-stopping, attention-grabbing advertising?

Lonely Leaker

The Dazzler and I were thrilled to hear what David Hicks had had for breakfast on the day of his extradition and turned on the news that night in the hopes of finding out his lunch menu. We were not disappointed. (meat and salad roll)

We were, however, scandalised that someone had leaked some top-secret information regarding the inflight entertainment our orange person had chosen. We covered our ears so as not to hear that he had indeed watched The Departed. The Dazzler wondered

"How can the person who leaked that sleep with
himself?"

My guess is he was indiscreet about his last girlfriend and now has no choice.

Spare the rod

At lunch recently, a non-blood relative of The Dazzler effortlessly conveyed the idea that something her daughter had done to make life easier for her had, in fact, turned out to be more work that it was worth:

"She's just made a crutch for her own back, you know?"

Sometimes language funnies are just plain efficient.

Boring Administration post...not quite

Hi everyone...

I know I haven't posted for a while... that would be due to the collapse of my entire life around me...

But now that things are on the up, I've had time to check in and notice that our blog has just passed its scond anniversary. The first post was made on Arpil 21st 2005.

Do you think we should celebrate, with, say, dinner in Newtown?

Neil D.

This one's sweet!

I was talking to a person who shall remain nameless yesterday about looking for jobs and they said

"I think you should look for a job with the CSIRO - they're involved in loads of different and varied fields. They even make sugar! ... (long pause) ... Actually that's CSR"

The thing is, without the correction I probably wouldn't have noticed!

Resumé the job hunt

Okay, so I didn't hear these, but I read them and thought them worthy. The following are (allegedly) quotes from resumés of real job seekers:

The paramedic who said he:

Made life-threatening decisions on a daily basis

The childcare worker who boldly proclaimed she could:

Overlook up to 35 children at the one time

And another who was:

Flexible enough to perform in all manner of positions
if the situation gets desperate

Can't cure this typo

I was checking out an online bike shop based in NZ today. The item I was looking at was rather large, so had a bulk shipping charge listed as:

Bulk shipping will incure: NZ$50/AU$40

Sounds like that kind of shipping fee is terminal.

A curly one

From a just-held teleconference during which the higher-than-anticpated sign-up rate to a new programme was discussed, one participant declared:

"We're ahead of the curveball here"

Googly speak that overstepped the mark, hit the deck hard, reared up, and was left to go through to the keeper.

Stripped over

A recent email from my boss detailed how her staff would be spending field time with our representatives. One misfortunate sentence explained that:

"Gareth has a strip planned with Angela for tomorrow."

Not the usual kind of field work one conducts. Fortunately the planned "trip" didn't end up going ahead anyway as Angela was sick. I don't blame her.

No cancer here...

Friends have been in HongKong and bought their daughter a small pink mobile phone. It had an all most Barbie picture on it, with the following slogan in Barbie like font :

"Benign Girl"

Crediting the makers of the phone with some intelligence, we wondered what they could really mean. We checked the thesaurus, perhaps Friendly or Amiable Girl was more their aim than an advertisement for a girl with no skin cancer...

A big house for big brother

A comment on the BBC News website from a disgruntled 'Big Brother' fan bemoaning the contestants' behaviour:

"WELL THERES NOTHING TO SAY BUT WHERE HAVE MANORS AND MORALS GONE AND TREATING EVERYONE WITH RESPECT"

They must think the show should be staged in a bigger house!

Can you imagine - "Big Brother would like to speak to Jade in the drawing room please" or "You failed in this week's challenge, so you lose 50% of the clay pigeons allocated to you on Monday"

the lesser of two formers

a quote from my brother justifying his decision not to make quitting smoking one of his top new years priorities: "well, if you compare using cocaine or something to cigarette smoking, cigarettes are really the latter of two evils." which is true i guess...