honorary RPB member! «

A contemplation of cheese

Written By: admin - Feb• 23•12

Sometimes when I’m bored I go shopping. I don’t always buy things, but I like to look. And now I also like to take pictures.

For your consideration, the wrapper of the cheese I found at Kroger.

Ahem.

…If it had anymore than it’s 75% butterfat, it would technically be better.

Now I’m not at all going to argue that more butterfat will most probably make anything better. That seems obvious.

But check this out! Mere inches away, I found this sign.

I can only surmise that the wrapper was written first, and the sign is the product of a revision by an Honorary RPB Member. Look at the masterful use of dashes and semicolons! As well as, you know, a basic understanding of the difference between contractions and possessives.

Posted in apostrophes, honorary RPB member!, misspellings & new words, other punctuation mistakes, punctuation, words & syntax | No Comments »

Your timing is impeccable!

Written By: admin - Feb• 16•12

Today is my birthday! (Or it will be when this is published… I’m writing it a couple of weeks ago!)

In honor of my birthday I am publishing the most cockle-warming submission I’ve received in a while. It is from Reporter #1.

Reporter #1 admits that she staged this, which is awesome. But SOMEDAY, people, I tell you — there will be a section of cards for those of us who care about grammar. (Also, they will be funny and not offensive, but that’s another rant.)

Posted in honorary RPB member! | No Comments »

Heartwarming holiday special post

Written By: admin - Dec• 25•11

Here’s my thing about the holidays: sometimes they suck. And if you’re having sucky holidays, then having people wish you happy holidays or ask what your plans are etc. can actually make it worse.

So here’s the RPB position on The Holiday Time Of Year: whatevs! If you’re having a bad week, you keep on with your bad-week self. If you’re having a fabulous time with your picture-perfect holiday family celebrations, props to you too. Stuff happens and you’re not a failure if your turkey scorches or you’re eating leftover mac and cheese and watching the Firefly marathon on TV.

That said, I shall also provide this post in honor of the day, whether it serves to cheer the cheerless or merely amuse the Rockwellians among us. Because it’s always nice when something goes right.

For starters, an example of one of my pettiest of pet peeves:

I know this is a lost cause. I know it’s an evolving language. I also don’t care. Bah humbug. So I almost kissed the waiter at this restaurant:

All right, Mr. DeMille, this menu is actually ready for its close-up!

LOOK at this. As always, I’m okay with artsy anti-capitalization and sparse punctuation, because they appear to be deliberate and they’re consistent. But would you look at that use of “jus” as a noun? and the lack of “au” in front of that noun?

Happy sigh. Also, restaurant link, because links are the least I can do for this kind of excellence.

Posted in honorary RPB member! | No Comments »

It’s Tuesday, let’s do a flashback. Also: Hi, Dad!

Written By: admin - Nov• 15•11

So Dragon*Con happened a couple of months ago, but I haven’t cleaned off my phone’s photo directory in a while, and I just remembered I had these.

Let’s set the scene. Dragon*Con, for the uninitiated, is more like eleventeen different science-fiction and fantasy conventions at once. There’s something for everyone, and for people with very short attention spans (like me!) there can be eleventeen somethings going on at once! So I kept pretty busy.

I tracked down Jen (of EPBOT and CakeWrecks) in her now-annual Find Jen! contest and won a super-rare Carrot Jockey necklace:

Oh look who I also tracked down totally by accident, is James Marsters. You’ll just have to trust me that the person he’s hugging (because we are BFFs!) is me. Also, I’m wearing a Dingoes Ate My Baby t-shirt, for those of you who care about that sort of thing.

Then I went to the most fabulous sing-along of Once More With Feeling and Dr. Horrible, back to back… pretty sure I was the most sober person in the entire ginormous room.

Where DO they go from here?

And yes, they had the signs of awfulness up all over again this year. But this year, there was also this sign, which helped balance things out, because AWESOME:

And just feet away, I found this evidence of an honorary RPB-er, out there in the masses!

But then… alas. There was this. I know some of y’all will probably not gnash your teeth quite as hard as I will at this. But can we at least agree that this is a debatable point of spelling and that it does not merit the defacement of a kick-ass poster?

HONORARY RPB FAIL.

—————-

Confidential to my father: THERE YOU GO DAD, ARE YOU HAPPY? 😛

Posted in honorary RPB member!, just for fun, misspellings & new words, words & syntax | 2 Comments »

The company you keep

Written By: admin - May• 27•11

Last weekend was Atlanta’s Annual Pigstock, a fabulous picnic for guinea pigs and their people to raise money for the Atlanta Metro Guinea Pig Rescue. (Yes, a guinea pig rescue. And yes, she takes PayPal.) It was awesome. It was also kind of exhausting, so after it was over those of us who were still hanging around went out for some refreshments.

It was already fairly apparent to me that I was in the company of Kindred Spirits. I mean, we’d just spent hours and hours preparing for and then executing a fundraiser for homeless guinea pigs. It’s a niche product. But when I spotted the tragedy below that is “quesadilla’s” and whipped out my phone, one of my companions said “Oh, and did you see ‘wrap’s’ too?”

Heart.

Posted in apostrophes, honorary RPB member!, punctuation | 2 Comments »

Das Mauer (in meinem Büro)

Written By: admin - May• 13•11

Pink Floyd‘s got nothing on my colleagues. When we had construction barriers, some of the more creative types around showed the world what you REALLY do with a wall.

And, you know, foreign grammar and spelling.