f13.net

The story is actually serious but the caption cracks me up:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23162202/ (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23162202/)


I didn't know that murder resulted in something besides death!

They changed it.  Now it just says murdered.  Not murdered to death.

From today's Seattle P-I-


How do you slay a body? Is this some kind of Ash technique?

Slay

1: to kill violently, wantonly, or in great numbers; broadly : to strike down : kill
2: to delight or amuse immensely <slayed the audience>

Ash is quite poplar in Kent.

As a paid grammar snake/spelling nazi, my current favourite was pointed out on The Wire (current series, featuring the staff of a fictional Baltimore Sun).

The entire media now says "48 people were evacuated", when they mean a building was evacuated. To evacuate a person means to give them an enema.

Editor must have finally woken up at the P-I...headline now reads "Slain man found in Kent".

A regional airport I fly through regularly has big signs up everywhere with the following, not very reassuring, proclamation:

'Explosive detection devices in operation.'

They mean explosives detection devices. An explosive detection device is a detection device that explodes.

Not an image caption but how about a bizarre ad.

(http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/6391/bsbtvox7.jpg)

But what happened with the dude?  Did he totally flip out?

I love finding stuff like this. I work for a company where most of the people in management are lifers without much of an education (although they do a damn good job) and the letters/memos/notes they write are hil-fucking-arious.

I caught a good one when I donated money to the library at xmas time. Seems someone didn't take into account the truncation when they put in X Library Assoc (X is not the actual name of my library, though that would be eXtreme). It truncated on my credit card bill as X Library Ass.

Got a laugh out of that and got it changed before some easily-offended prick went ballistic.

My name is pretty long and they insisted on putting my middle name into the mix every time they made my name tags at EB Games. I ended up with "My crazy long ass first, middle and last name - Ass. Manager."

I never had it changed, but they took it from me when I quit :(

I was at a small fundraiser honoring a friend last week and a lady was making name tags.  She asked if she pronounced my last name correctly (phonetically easy but rare so people are never sure).  I quipped at least she wasn't trying to say my middle name so of course she asked what it was.  It turned out a woman chatting with us at the time has the same one!  A few thousand US women share it and I chanced into one of them.

My last name is pretty simple and phonetic but 95% of people get it wrong, and not even in a mispronounced way, they just make shit up wholesale.

I'm starting to think people only read the first 3 letters. Because that's usually the only part that comes out right. And it's not fucking hard.

Your name's not Steaskclasdfh, is it?

Nope.  :awesome_for_real:

It's not a common last name by any stretch but it's also not at all complicated. All the vowels are in the right place with standard sounds. I suppose it looks vaguely ethnic. (Is Greek considered ethnic?)

The worst was my baseball coach, who used the first three letter then added a 'q' for some reason and just made up the rest. For an entire season. Fucker.

People do that with last my name, too.  The first 'word' is fine, then they usually append a random word for the second half.  It's bizzare.

Damn kids. You "lose" it if you want to keep it!

One of my buddies at walmart had lost his badge so I decided to make him a new one rather than wait for the "HR" person to do it. She had a whole drawer of these little transparent strips with black text of the department or position on them. So I grabbed the scissors and labels from 'Tire and Lube Express' 'Meat Department' and 'Overnight Receiver' and lo, the 'Lubed Meat Receiver' was born.

I hated wearing name tags (and never wore the stupid vest), so I made up a tag for myself with the name of an old guy who quit. Fun when management bigwigs would come in and call me Walter.

My theory on that is that most people stop reading words (any words) after the first syllable.  In most cases this works because you can infer what the word is from context, but it completely falls down with names.

I have a perfectly ordinary (even somewhat common) British-American surname.  But it has two syllables, so a lot of people will get the first syllable right and then make something up for the second.  People are dumb.

I have a 3 letter first name, yet people still manage to botch it up all the time.  Same with the last name.  One of the most common English names out there, yet everyone spells it and pronounces it as if I was from Spain or Mexico.  And then of course at work my middle name is assigned to EVERYTHING I do when no one else's is, which annoys me since I hate my middle name.  I suspect the IT people who entered my info in when I started were lazy since they have had me in the wrong building, on the wrong floor, wrong mailbox, wrong phone extension, middle name featured prominently, etc for almost 4 years and refuse to change it.

I'm sorry. I've clearly upset you, Walter.

Dhesi? (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_most_common_surnames#England.2C_Wales_and_Isle_of_Man)

Both my first and last name have several common spellings.  And it doesn't help that they added an R randomly to my last name on my college ID.  My middle name is Adam, hard to mess up.

My last name is Astillero. People almost universally butcher it. It's not that hard, really.

Also....I work with lots of idiots. One lady sent a request for some car titles or something....but wrote it in the email as "please the titles."

Yeah, that got a chuckle from us, especially when I got my boss to respond to her that we have pleased the titles for her. Extra funny is that now, on the back of new NJ car titles (which are now purple for some reason), there's a spot you can rub in a circular motion to change the color of some heat-activated ink (it's an anti-fraud mechanism, hard to counterfeit). So, it's actually pretty easy to please certain titles.

(ok, that was too long) :oh_i_see:

That actually is how people read. The first few letters plus the last letter is typically all you need to figure out the word and move on. There have been some pretty interesting studies done on the subject. Anthr intrstng fnd is tht you dn't nd in btwn vwls to undrstnd wrds.

Does that trick work on morons?

I lck lns.

Fuck vowels! Every sentence can be a choose your own adventure.

My nce lvs pns.

Pls intrdce me to yr nce.

Ball point or ?

You can extend this trick to sentences and that's how I kick ass at Jeopardy. Usually gives me a second or three advantage over my finacee. I listen to Alex speak the beginning of the clue as I read the end. It's almost like cheating when they put one of their cutesy clues right on the last line, at least I get accused of cheating because I answer before Alex has even finished the first line sometimes.

I used to watch Jeopardy but it makes me feel dumb so now I watch Wheel of Fortune. I'm a genius again!

I burned my name tags when I quit EB. Did it in the store on my last night. Of course, that was before they got infected with The GS Cooties.

Is it hard work being an Ass Manager?