George Carlin and airline announcements

George Carlin has a way with words. He's a great comic and a mesmerizing storyteller. As long as his beliefs don't cloud your judgement.

His routine on airline announcements had me laughing at my computer screen when I first viewed it. If you're like me, one who cringes at the misuse and abuse of English, then you'll enjoy this video.

(It's about 15 minutes. Come back l8r if you don't have time now.)

Lost in translation

Here's a great take on signs in Engrish. They try so hard to get the message across, but miss by ->| |<- this much. There's a great collection here, three pages worth. 'Tis to laugh.

9 words that don't mean what you think

Here's a little English lesson sprinkled with some gratuitous cleavage for no reason.

Let's start out with "irregardless." Hearing that word is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me.

Surprisingly, I was under a few of these misguided word definitions myself.

Cracked.com has the word list waiting right here.

Picture blast - in "Engrish"

Car names explained

Everybody in the world (except, perhaps, a few small Middle Eurasian Australopithicus countries) knows that FORD stands for "Found On Road Dead."

The other makes of automobiles also have mnemonics for their names. Yes, even CHEVROLET.

Check out this site of car name explanations and then bookmark it for future reference. You know you'll need it sometime in the future.

Is that cheese I smell?

If this Bud Light commercial was aired during the Super Bowl, then I missed it.

It's a clever idea which starts off quite funny, and is a running play on words and euphemisms.

Watch it again for the first time.

Feb-yoo-ary. Glad it's over.

We've been through 29 days of the same crap. It has nothing to do with the weather. Well, maybe a little, but it's really the news announcers, degreed individuals, executives and other seemingly knowledgeable people mispronouncing the name of the month.

Just like hearing the President say "nuke-yoo-ler" over and over, it seems that the vast majority of Americans mispronounce the month and say "feb-yoo-ary".

I've had it. I've quit correcting people because it does no good. People always frown when I do and I just can't understand why. I'm just trying to help. The heck with them lummoxes for another year.

It's finally over. Ol' feb-yoo-ary will be gone by the end of the day. Good riddance! And take all yer cold, snowy, windy weather with you. How can the shortest month of the year take almost an infinity to end? Let us all welcome March. One syllable, five letters all wrapped up nicely and neatly in a small package.

Next year, I hope to champion a new cause. I shall call it, "Put the 'brew' back in February!" (patent pending) Isn't that nice? Beer and a bad month in one. They both need each other.

Watch for it next year on an Internet near you.

A leaping thought

More goofy signs

Another installment of signs that give one pause.

I especially like, enjoy, relish, favor, appreciate and admire the sign on the left.

Check out the pictorial here.

If you were a punctuation smudge

Take this short 5-question quiz and find out what punctuation mark you'd be based on your answers.

I turned out as a Q-mark. I don't know what all the possibilities one could be if one could be a punctuation mark. Don't know if diacritical marks are included. If they were, I'd probably turn out to be a schwa or an umlaut or that upsidedown e doohickey. My partner, Miguel may turn out as a tilde. Sales people could be exclamation points. Who would be a pipe (the mark above the \)? And what the hell is that thing below the tilde? It's a `. Can you see it? And did you know the # is, in some circles, called an octothorpe? And there's an interesting story behind how the @ got associated with the Internet.

Wait. Where the hell am I going with this? Hold on; lemme reread.

Oh yeah. Take the punctuation quiz right here and report back in the comments. I will obviously question your results.

(Presurfer)

Nine manliest names

What constitutes a manly name? Is the name Buck more manly than, say Matt? How about Francis? What first comes to mind when you hear name Francis. Sinatra? Scott Key? Bacon? Interesting, wouldn't you say?

We don't chose our names; our parents do the chosing for us. We may have coined ourselves a nickname but never a great name, let alone a manly name.

Here are some of the manliest names you may or may not have heard and the faces that go along with them. You may be quite surprised.

More unfortunate names

Two people get married. She has a surname and so does he.

Then the newspaper publishes the wedding announcement, hyphenating the names together.

That's where things get funny.

Check this out.

English - a comical language

Colder'n a well digger's glutes

Saturday morning here in the midwest. The weather guy said it was 0° outside. Yup. Zero.

I looked outside. He was right. There was no temperature. Nothing. Zip. Zilch. The thermometer was shut off. It said nothing. There was an obvious lack of temperature.

Everything out there, trees, shrubs, house was looking at each other as if waiting for some unseen other shoe to drop.

But there was nothing. No temperature. It was zero.

(Sometimes my imagination just carries me away.)

What sort of American English do you speak?

Take a short quiz to find out what kind of English you speak.

Pop, soda or sodapop. Hoagy, grinder, hero or submarine sandwich. Aunt or ant.

Sah-sitch or... nevermind. The quiz is along these lines.

My results are:

60% General American English

20% Upper Midwestern

10% Yankee

5% Midwestern

0% Dixie

Take the quiz here.

(MissCellania)

Also, check out how to speak Chicagoese here.

Thieves in the tool shed

This one guaranteed to get a comment.

A Christmas Haiku

A Reindeer Haiku

by Dee Ann

Pulling the fat guy
Really should have stayed in school
Thank God for Vixen

Rejected iPod engravings

Engraving your iPod surely makes it unique and may have a detrimental effect on the resale value. If you really don't care, have your iPod engraved with your own special message.

Some people have done just that. And had Apple do it. But, just like trying to get vanity license plates from the state, there are some things they just won't print.

Check out some of the messages that Apple refused to engrave by clicking here. Warning: strong language; discretion advised.

(FakeSteve)

Abbreviation origins

More English language stuff, this time it's about abbr.s.

Where did the pound sign originate? (Not the "octothorpe" on a phone.)

Mrs., V.I.P. and the K for a strikeout in baseball.

Interesting and amusing with a dash of history thrown in free of charge.

Check it out here.

(Neatorama)

Curiously Flabbergasted

"Flabbergasted". What a word. We still use it today to describe being astonished or unbelieving. According to Dictionary.com, its origins are unknown. But chances are, it's from the 19th or 18th century. Yeah, that narrows it down, don't it?

Why do we use this word, "flabbergasted"? Most probably because it's a little more powerful or, perhaps a little less powerful than the word "astonished", depending on the situation. Let's dissect the word, shall we?

Is it possible to be "flabbered" but not "gasted"?
"Damn! I ate too much turkey and I'm flabbered."

How about being "gasted" and not "flabbered"?
"I had three bean burritos and now I'm just gasted."
(With accompaniment.)

So, with this logic, the similaries would conclude that being flabbergasted means you ate too much. And you will fart a lot. People, beware, if this is in fact true.

But if being flabbergasted really means being astonished, then if someone ate a lot, and had the farts, YOU would be flabbergasted by the current way the word is used. So you're both the same.

So what should we do about people who use the word flabbergasted? Banning the word outright is a no-win situation. People will still be flabbergasted for years to come. No investment of laws and law enforcement will stop this. Hell, I just let one go and I'm flabbergasted that it happened.

What I suggest is this: Flabber=blubber and gast=gassed. The remaining "ed" we just blame on the previous centuries and coloquialism.

And if someone tells you they're flabbergasted, from now on, they've had too much to eat and are about to erupt nuclear-rectally with fallout.

So just back away.