From Lorraine with Love

I'm sure some of you have seen this before, but it's a good one. If the your/you're question ever needed one definitive statement to clarify, this is it:

I love the Musketeer giving the message a friendly, jaunty feel. It makes me feel okay about posting something with the word "shit" in it, because Thaddeus here is oozing family-friendliness and a good dose of "just a healthy grammar lesson kiddies. Cheerio and all that. Don't forget to floss!"

Thanks Lorraine - this is one of my favourites!

Calling All Helens

Now that's exclusive: a boutique just for Helens (more than one Helen, made obvious by the lack of apostrophe). That's gotta be tough on business - there can't be that many Helens out there. BUT, this is potentially good news for me - my middle name just happens to be Helen. I'll have to drop by and see if that counts (because, if my eyes aren't deceiving me, those look like some pretty snazzy white fedoras on sale there).


This store got punctuation busted by Becky's (as in, belonging to Becky) iPhone. Thank you again, my vigilant compatriot!

Hannah's Post, and 2 Just For Fun

Hannah forwarded this to me - the apostrophes are great, but the comma makes all the difference:

It save lives... I wonder if we could start a postering campaign and plaster these far and wide as a warning to those who don't take us punctuation nerds seriously? SEE? This is life or death stuff we're talking about here!

Okay, I have 2 other quirky things to share that don't belong here at all, but which gave me a laugh. First, I have to sheepishly admit that my sister and I have been going through a phase of reading trashy romance novels and mailing them to each other when we're done. Both images are from books she sent to me. This first one is all about the artwork - I've heard that drawing hands is one of the most difficult aspects of creating art. Proof positive:

Okay, that's hard to see. Here's a close-up (sorry, a bit fuzzy):

Is that... his thumb? Egads! That must've been a terrible accident. Or does he have 6 fingers and that's his index finger kinked up over her hand? That would (sort of) explain why he has his wedding ring on his middle finger.  [Okay, I've spent entirely too much time studying this. I've tried to imagine that what I thought was his pinky is actually his thumb, I've tried to make my hands fit together like theirs with my "girl hand" pinky tucked away like the bride's, and I've concluded a few times that our hero, Cody, had polio as a kid and I'm making inappropriate fun of a cripple.]

My other bit of fun is a line of text from a 1972 Harlequin romance with a British heroine. She's an emergency ward nurse who, at one point, has to deal with an abused baby. I've highlighted a sentence from the scene just after:

Well, I don't know if tea and battered baby taste good together either, so I'd probably hold off on mixing flavours too.

[As an aside, because I love asides and because I've already crossed the family-friendly line for this post, the author's name is Betty Neels; when my partner Craig saw the book, he commented, "Betty Neels? I just bet she does..."]

Dr. Becky's Pet Peeve

My friend Becky has a grammar pet peeve that I share with her (really? I hear you say with surprise). [I threw the Dr. in the title because a) she is one, and b) I have brainy friends and I'm not afraid to brag about it.] She sent me this picture with the following comment:

At a fancy restaurant in Vancouver.  Boooooo!

I realize that when you gotta go you figure it out pretty quickly, so you can't argue with the functionality of these signs. All the womens and mens in the restaurant know which door to use. I do like the font, but FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, WOMEN AND MEN ARE ALREADY PLURAL, YOU FANCY VANCOUVER RESTAURANT OWNER!  ARRRRRGH!

High five Becky, high five.

Inguiry

Guestion: What's wrong with this picture?

I personally guite like it.

I wonder if this means the landlord is a little dyslexic... which then makes me wonder if one might be able to rent the place and skip a zero at the end of the rent check.  No, I'm pretty sure a 5 followed by a zero spells five hundred. Maybe you should inguire at the bank...

Jesi, thanks for being guick with that iPhone!

Rush & Rush

Cue the country twang and sing along if you like:
I'm in a hurry to get things done,
Oh I rush and rush .....

 

 and screw up this sign....

Okay, that's lame - sign doesn't rhyme with done or fun.  And speaking of lame... the lettering artist put an apostrophe on 'til (which can be considered correct, although there are a host of really dull arguments that claim "till" is the more correct way to shorten "until." AND, as an aside to my aside, Alabama actually sings the full word "until" in the song...), but there's a missing apostrophe in "Lifes." I can't even make fun of it for being a plural - it ain't even a word! (Oh, sorry, still in country twang mode.)

I do feel a little guilty that people put their lives at risk to take pictures on the highway, but Jen S., you made my day!

Weakly Treatment

No kidding. I got one of those face packs to energize, or clarify, or whatever my skin (they throw words at us that make us think we'll be magically transformed into younger, fresher, more vibrant - see? There I go doing it too - women). Here's a snippet of the instructions on the back (feel free to imagine a younger, fresher, more vibrant version of me, standing naked in the bathroom save for a puffy mint green spa headband, face smeared in exfoliating scrub, camera in hand... hot, right?):

Okay, it's not that easy to read, but fill in the blanks and skip to the end of the English bit. Quenching bath... blah blah blah... circular motions.... blah blah blah... to perfect your complexion... blah blah blah.... WEAKLY TREATMENT?!?

Well! They might have saved me the effort and put that first. I could have saved myself the $3. I struggled with the grammar at first, but I guess it's like saying "sickly child". (No, really I'm not that dumb. What I did first was realize it's a typo. THEN I got into playing with the grammar.)

What this is, is an unintentional bit of wisdom. We're all fools for the promise of perfection. I'm thinking about pitching a new, more "honest" system of labelling to spa/beauty product companies. The instructions will go something like this:

Rub this on your face. It smells good. Rinse off. You will continue to age.