RPB gets COMPETITIVE

Written By: admin - Aug• 15•12

Y’all, RPB is contagious. It’s a fever. And the only prescription… is more cowbell.

Er, I mean, having your submission posted, so that you’re not the only one of your siblings who has yet to be anointed by the RPB.

This is why I am ignoring my personal rule of thumb and posting an email. Because I have to, y’all. You see, Heather is the only one of three sisters who has not yet been published here! We have to fiiiiix iiiiiit.

I wonder if Gigatent asks its prospective employees for resume’s?

Thanks for the submission, Heather, and welcome to the club. 🙂

Uh… Candygram.

Reporter #1 Goes On Vacation

Written By: admin - Aug• 10•12

As always, I can mostly leave this post up to Reporter #1 herself. First, a picture from Johnston Ridge Observatory at Mt. St. Helens.

The ants go marching one by one, hoorah, hoorah. The ants go marching one by one, hoorah, hoorah! The ants go marching one by one until the side of their mountain fell down and then it erupted in a way that geologists and vulcanologists had totally not anticipated, leading to the loss of 57 lives and the biggest landslide ever recorded. So that’s why there’s a monumant.

Actually, Reporter #1, you might be having too much fun with this.

I got nothing. I’m just sad.

That’s more like it.

I got things! Sorry, thing’s. My favorite is the list of good and bad attributes at the bottom, which lead me to believe that this workplace would be approximately my personal nightmare. Also, Manager who likes to Give Direction, Randomly Capitalize, and Never Let Your Employees Take Breaks? “Unlike” is not the word you wanted. Ahem.

I don’t need no stinking comments.

Written By: admin - Aug• 08•12

My husband and I have a funny story, in that way couples have stories that have become funny through time and retelling. It’s not about us, of course, but a completely hypothetical couple who isn’t us.

At the time our story takes place, one half of the couple — let’s call that half Apple — was in school and writing a lot of papers, including frequent use of fairly specialized terminology. Making a perfectly reasonable decision, Apple decided to turn off the spell-check feature on the word processing program, lest the squiggly red lines take over the screen entirely.

Unbeknownst to Apple, her partner — we’ll call the partner Bacon — was planning a special gift. Not being an intuitive Red Pen Brigade sort of person, Bacon used the word processor to check the spelling of some words to be engraved on Apple’s shiny new item. Not seeing any squiggly red lines, Bacon happily went off and had a typo engraved on the gift (that’s right… the engraver also didn’t catch the mistake).

Obviously, this not-us story is hilarious, which is why when we find ourselves recounting it, for one reason or another, we totally don’t end up having a disagreement about whether unilaterally turning off the spell-check is a good idea. ANYWAY.

I have a point here, and it has to do with this lovely submission from Ernie.

My point is: this sign was typed. On some sort of digital device connected to a printer. In this day and age.

I choose to believe that the sign author’s spouse/partner/office-mate is a scholar majoring in something with a lot of jargon, like neurobiochemistry. (Squiggly red line!) It doesn’t exactly excuse the author’s spelling decisions, but at least it is a perfectly reasonable explanation for why they weren’t fixed.

(Thanks, Ernie!)

Overthinking this, I’m pretty sure

Written By: admin - Feb• 13•12

Meg found this, although she didn’t say whether it’s from her own employee software, so I do not know.

Meg wants to know what exactly a “vaction” is.  But I’m kind of more interested in the SICK days.  None of the other designations are capitalized.  Does that mean SICK is an acronym? For what? And if not, does it just mean you have to be really, really REALLY sick to take those days?

I feel unclean and I cannot quite express why

Written By: admin - Jan• 30•12

I love you all.  I appreciate every submission (and want more! MORE!).  But sometimes I get submissions I choose not to use, because I don’t like them.  It’s my blog.

Sometimes I feel like the mistake was so obviously made by someone struggling with English that I don’t find it amusing… I’ve made hideous errors myself in foreign languages.  More than once!

Sometimes I don’t think the “mistake” was a mistake.  Sometimes I’m just in a bad mood and I don’t want to, jeez.

And then sometimes I find myself genuinely puzzled about the error.  I stare at it.  I try to think about what the submitter could have seen that I’m not seeing.  I try to be ONE with the error.

This picture wasn’t quite one of those.  Veronica wrote only “Gag” in her email, so I wasn’t sure what I was looking for.

It’s clearly a tagline, and I know copywriters have a bit of creative latitude in things like capitalization and punctuation.  So I looked at this one, and contemplated whether it was really a mistake.

Then I realized something.  I was HUGELY UNCOMFORTABLE.  What is it about this picture, y’all?  It’s totally unnerving!  There’s a figure in the corner that might be a baby-doll in a carseat, or it might be a crash test dummy, or it might be a dead body, it’s just sitting there floppily… there’s a poster with hivemind buzzwords… and then there’s

and I just can’t handle it any more.  What is this, Volvo?  What are you trying to do to us?  I’m so confused.

RPBers SMASH.

Written By: admin - Jan• 25•12

SmashBURGER, that is.  Because apparently you guys like to make sure that when I do an RPB post, I get hungry.  Or is it something about food that makes sign-writers less careful?  I mean, in this case, the name of the restaurant is written incorrectly.

Anyway, my father is once again proud to have a use for his smartphone.

I’m given to understand that after photographing this my parents went about the business of eating delicious hamburgers, and didn’t in fact turn green and rip their shirts and pummel things.  But I prefer to imagine it the other way.

Not even worth it.

Written By: admin - Dec• 21•11

Q found this, and my reaction is mostly “What?”

I’m so busy trying to parse when I could use a Groupon that I barely even notice the totally random capitalization, spacing, punctuation, etc.

 

Another one for the “probable lost cause” list

Written By: admin - Nov• 30•11

I’m with you, Reporter #1.  I really am.  You said:

For the love of Pete, just shrink the font a couple of points to get the space btw every & day!

image

I just think this is One Of Those Things that is so far gone we’re tilting at windmills.  Only moreso, if you know what I mean.

It’s worth noting that Reporter #1 is married to a person whose name is not Pete.  Also, I really want to capitalize the “f” in “follow.”

*dies* Grammar rant *dies again*

Written By: admin - Nov• 23•11

First! Here is a picture of a bunny chillaxing — or not! — on a CozyWinters small animal heating pad!

That’s the first thing you’ll see on this page,which is apparently where Lisa S. buys nice things for her residents.  And I say “residents” and not “pets” deliberately, because Lisa runs the Atlanta Metro Guinea Pig Rescue, which is always in need of spare cozy things (and spare money) if you have any of the above lying around.  [Please note too that Lisa did NOT ask for this shameless plug, but I’m doing it anyway, because I have a soapbox and I can.]

Anyway, disapproving rabbits aside, Lisa thinks the real hilarity occurs a little further down in the text:

I will admit that I was so amused by “mammal animals” (now added to my mental list of awesome band names!) that I totally missed the “attended” and “reptiltes,” not to mention some peculiar capitalization and debatable punctuation.  PLUS cute bunny.  This is an RPB Good Day.

Seriously niche product

Written By: admin - Sep• 27•11

Apparently, Tumbleweed Pottery has done some seriously intense market research.  They’ve discovered that there are enough mug-loving cat owners whose cats are named Honey to merit a product line just for those people!

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I would have bought this for my husband — or rather, I would have bought it for my husband to give back to me, because it’s his cat and she is clearly his #1.  But unfortunately her name is Ashley, so it just wasn’t going to work out.  Sad face.

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