Things that should not be

Written By: admin - Aug• 29•13

Today in things that shouldn’t exist: this signage on the door of a library. A library, people.

Thanks for sending (and waiting an age!), Reporter #1!

Okay, okay, okay.

Written By: admin - Aug• 27•13

Okay.

Kacia!

The dirty little secret

Written By: admin - Apr• 05•13

MAJOR NATIONAL CHAIN Victoria’s Secret, via Shannon, would like you to contemplate this.

Shannon was upset, as one should be, about the apostrophe, but also about the “scare quotes.” And I’m not sure I entirely agree with him. In fact, I can kind of see how the minds behind this ad got here. The name of the line is “Body.” The tagline they were going with requires a plural, but I assume the branding people didn’t want them using “bodies” when that’s not the name of the line. So… they did this.

I’m saying I can see how they got here. I’m not saying I’m okay with it. Because I’m not.

I’d split the difference with Shannon. I’d take “You’ve never seen ‘Body’ like these.” I would even accept — for the sake of branding and whatnot, although I would have cringed mightily — “Body”s, as long as it was very clear they were using quotation marks and not apostrophes. In that case, in fact, the quotation marks would have been exactly right, indicating that they knew they were doing something a grammatically iffy and that it was deliberate.

If I’d been the ad designer, I would have gone with only one model and “You’ve never seen a ‘Body’ like this.” But then, of course, we would have only had half the nudeariffic nudity, so. And we wouldn’t want that.

How did this slip past the media?

Written By: admin - Apr• 01•13

There’s been so much excitement about the size of beverages in New York recently that apparently the national media completely missed it when the New England Legislature passed HR24601-42. It’s now illegal to serve clam chowder on Fridays, except at Pano’s restaurant.

…or should we say that all media except Reporter #1 missed it?

I personally am outraged at this discrimination against all non-Pano restaurants. Let’s start a petition.

How not to get my money.

Written By: admin - Mar• 27•13

Part of my decline into Oooooold has involved an increase in the number of pills I take a day. I gave up last year and bought one of those pill cases that has not just a compartment for every day, but two compartments for every day, so you can fit in the breakfast pills and the bedtime ones in different compartments. So I saw these from a distance and thought that they might be right up my alley until OH NO THEY DIDN’T.

 

First of all, can we talk about the fact that “pod” is a real word, not an acronym, so it actually doesn’t need to be in all capital letters? I mean, aside from the blisteringly obvious THAT IS NOT HOW YOU USE AN APOSTROPHE.

And fear not, RPBers. I did the dirty, dirty job of checking the prominently advertised website to see if the error is reproduced online and wasn’t just an extremely unfortunate typo on product packaging (which you really, really should double-check, if you make a product).

Alas.

But this is where it gets interesting. Let’s break this down for a minute.

At the RED ARROW, we have improper capitalization and an improperly used apostrophe.

At the BLUE ARROW, we have the improper capitalization, but the apostrophe has been spared.

And then we have the part I’ve underlined in pink, which features a properly capitalized acronym with  acceptable use of an apostrophe!

I can only conclude that the copywriters at fit-fresh.com have decided to cover every single punctuation base they could imagine. Well done!

You can lead a horse to water

Written By: admin - Mar• 13•13

Reporter #1 was playing my game of trying to explain away the horror on some signage. Surely there must be an excuse. Right? RIGHT?

I was ready to make the case for this being right because it COULD be saying that “panini is italian for sandwich”… except for the pesky quotes… and the fact that they apostrophized it in the rest of the text as well.

You can’t make them drink, Reporter #1. You just have to let them figure it out.

Also, the capitalization annoys me!

New words still have rules, y’all.

Written By: admin - Mar• 01•13

Reporter #1 did the circling here, and she’s absolutely right. I don’t care if you can find the word “crockpotting” in your dictionary or not, it still is obviously going to need two of the letter t. It’s not even completely out of left field! One pots a plant, and that’s plant potting.

So there’s that. But Reporter #1 says the bad spelling “litters the site.” She’s highlighted some more for us.

I don’t know if Reporter #1 missed it or was just too tired to continue weilding her, ahem, blue pen, but there’s a little abused apostrophe in “photo’s” up there too!

Holidays all look the same to me.

Written By: admin - Feb• 14•13

Kacia sent this in January, I would like to note. You could make the argument that January would have been a more appropriate time to post this, but given that we’d both missed Christmas entirely I thought I’d wait around for the next Big Event.

Also, Kacia worried in her email

Can’t remember whether I sent you this last winter. The sign is posted outside our local bakery.

To which I say: one can never, never have too much elve’s.

So, uh, happy Valetine’s Day! And Kacia: go ahead and send it again next year!

Friendship is

Written By: admin - Feb• 11•13

No, this isn’t a cheesy Peanuts-inspired greeting card. It’s just my musings on the relationships I have with a couple neat people out there in the world who will periodically stumble upon something, think of me, and send it to me with no explanation or context whatsoever. Because sometimes you just know, you know?

Take this, for example. When this email from Star exRoomie Meg arrived in my inbox, I didn’t need her to say another word.

 

 

Kind of afraid to open this door

Written By: admin - Feb• 08•13

I’ve said this before: if we go Facebook, we may never go back.

Nonetheless, because it is Reporter #1 and she knows these people… nay, loves them, she says:

I love our local bike shop, I really do. Everybody who works there is really nice. Also, apparently, illiterate.

(I would also like to highlight the fact that Reporter #1 saved this jpg file with the name CRY. For some reason, that actually made me LOL.)

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