FOODIE FRIDAY for May 29, 2009

BESSE, one of my friends and fellow grammarians from my college days, is lucky enough to be in England. (England is home to two of my very favorite things: Muse and Refreshers candies. It's also very close to the top of my list of Places I Must Eventually Visit. As much as I love the New York metro area, I am damn jealous of your location, Besse!)

Anyway, so Besse found this takeout menu for a pizza place in her area. Since it's early and I'm in a lazy mood, and since Besse did such a fantastic job of talking about the hilarious errors on this menu, I'm going to share her commentary with you. She says:

I've been meaning to send this British takeaway advert to you for your Red Pen site. (The place calls itself "Mr. Pizza" on its advertising, but that's not what's on the side of the building, which is the first clue that it's sketchy. This flyer is the second. The food is the third.) There's so much wrong with it that it's hard to decide where to begin...

The area of Norwich where it's located is called The Golden Triangle. Not "Golden The Triangle."

"Pizzas" obviously doesn't need a possessive apostrophe.

"No allowed" should be "not allowed."

"Get on 1 free" just sounds dirty.

When did large get an extra "L" in it as suggested by the abbreviation "lrgl"?

"Sea Food" vs. "Seafood"

The reverse side of the flyer has "colaslow" listed several times instead of "coleslaw."

I'm sure you can find more... Plus, Brits put sweetcorn on their pizza. That's just "wrong" in general.

Besse also notes that "In the defense of this pizza place, I don't think English is the owner's first language." Yeah, I would truly hope English isn't this guy's first language. If he's a non-native English speaker, these mistakes are a lot more understandable than they would be if English is actually his first language!

Thanks, BESSE, for finding this amusing menu for us to enjoy! Happy Friday, everyone. :)

HUMP DAY GRAMMAR for May 27, 2009

So last night I was on the phone with MAMA GRAMMARPHILE, who is not only the best mom ever, but also Red Pen Inc.'s most avid reader/fan (I've posted 975 entries on this crazy website, and I'm certain she's read every single one of them...told you she's the best mom ever!).

Anyway, since she knew today was Hump Day, she jokingly told me to keep the Hump Day Grammar post clean. And so smartass little me got to thinking... Is it possible for me to do a Hump Day Grammar post that's actually clean?

Why, yes, Yes, it is possible.

Usually when I'm searching for Hump Day Grammar material, I look for the funniest/dirtiest things available. This time, though, I looked for something clean to mock.

Clean like, you know, soap...



It's almost like this item was tailor-made for a clean Hump Day Grammar post. Yep, I found us some Sex Soap!

I have no idea what this "BE - WEAR" nonsense is. I know the soap is made in New Zealand. Is "BE - WEAR" some sort of meaningful phrase there? Does anybody know?

Also on the "does anybody know?" note, exactly how can soap be considerate? How can sex be knowing? And exactly which endangered (not endagered!) species or animal is this soap not made from (the person who wrote this indicated it was just one animal or species, but not which one it actually was)?

Happy Hump Day, everyone. Be sure to wash behind your ears, and make sure there's no lint in your bellybuttons! :)

Special thanks to MAMA GRAMMARPHILE, whose tongue-in-cheek "clean" comment inspired this post!

I wonder how many calories that main course has...

I wanted to save this one for a Foodie Friday post--or a Hump Day Grammar post!--but I couldn't wait until Friday, or even Wednesday, to post this. It's just too funny. Plus, I imagine that many of you reading this post are doing so during your first day back to work this week. And the first day back to work from a long weekend off is never fun, so I thought this post would make you giggle.

Apparently the road to hell is paved with good intentions plus broken spell-checkers and laziness in proofreading. I found this on FMyLife.com...




Just in case you needed another reason to remember to proofread your e-mails, especially business-type e-mails, I figured this post would serve as a good reminder.

Also, what the hell grocery store sells roast fuck? And how many calories is it? Also, what wine should you serve with it? Just curious...

I know who Robert Pattinson is, but who's this "Pattison" dude?

Hmmm. If I were so crazy about a celebrity that I wanted to change my last name to that celebrity's last name, I'd make damn sure that a) I knew how to spell it, and b) that if anyone else wanted to make a joke about me wanting to change my last name to that celebrity's last name, that they, too, knew how to spell it.

That being said, Nikki Hamels doesn't have a bad ring to it, does it? And yes, that last name is definitely spelled correctly! ;)

A baseball-related catastrophe!

OK, I called it a baseball-related catastrophe in the title of this post, but really, there are several catastrophes here. There shouldn't be an apostrophe in "MVP's." If you're referring to more than one MVP player, it's just MVPs.

It absolutely kills me that this poster, 50% of which is really, really hot (the Hamels half, not the Schmidt half), is spoiled by a giant apostrophe catastrophe. Speaking of Hamels, I'll be at Yankee Stadium today watching Hamels pitch the third and final game in this Phillies/Yankees series. Broken molar be damned, I will still be screaming like crazy for Hamels. Let's go, Phillies!

21st Century Grammar Breakdown.

The other day two of my co-workers were having an argument. I was walking through the area at exactly the wrong time....they pulled me into the argument because they just knew I'd have an opinion on this issue. The one co-worker was whining about how he didn't want to listen to Green Day because they were "uneducated" and "had not gone to college" and so, therefore, why should they be allowed to speak with any authority about political issues? The other co-worker argued that Green Day can talk about whatever they damn well please. I argued that it was not necessary for a people to have attended college in order for them to be educated, and that freedom of speech allows Green Day to talk about whatever they'd like, and that, furthermore, if someone doesn't like what Green Day has to say, then that person is not forced to listen to Green Day talk about their political beliefs.

Today's post illustrates one facet of my argument. I'd be willing to bet that whoever wrote this Green Day article is a college-educated journalist, yet he was not educated enough to realize that who's doesn't mean the same thing as whose. Even without a college education, I'm willing to bet that Billie Joe Armstrong himself is smart enough to know the difference between the two. Poor Billie Joe was obviously misquoted here--I'm sure he said who's, which, of course, sounds just like whose, the word the writer erroneously wrote instead. Sigh.

FOODIE FRIDAY for May 22, 2009

Man, it actually kinda hurts to do a Foodie Friday post today. See, I broke a tooth earlier in the week, and my mouth feels all weird and unhappy, and eating is not currently the most pleasant experience for me. At least not until Tuesday, when the tooth will hopefully be fixed. So today's Foodie Friday entry doesn't deal with actual food. It deals with a restaurant. Well, at least I think it's a restaurant. VICKI D. snapped this photo. She says: I saw this neon sign in the window of a deli in Lyndhurst , NJ. I couldn’t help taking a picture of it to send in…what does one do in a “dinning” room?

My thoughts exactly. If you dine in a dining room, do you din in a dinning room? Apparently "din" can be a verb (a fact I didn't know until today). "Din" can mean " to sound or utter with clamor or persistent repetition." So is the place in this picture just a very annoyingly noisy room?

Thanks, VICKI, for spotting this one!

E-mail FAIL!

KIM forwarded me this e-mail...which was originally sent to her by her college. You'd think that personnel at a college would know how to properly spell the word student's. Instead, they screw it up and make the word look like some sort of new-fangled and bizarre contraction.

KIM's e-mail to me says it all... Fucked-up. And sigh. Yeah, I second that!

Morbidly bad typos.

You would think that writers who are writing about somebody's death would have enough respect for the dead to, like, proofread these sorts of articles carefully. Today's Red Pen, Inc. post proves that this is not necessarily the case.

This first typo was sent in by PHRANK. I don't think it's the dead body that needs any sort of test in this case...I do think the writer needs to take some sort of typing test, though!

And just when you thought it couldn't get worse than that error...I'm here to tell you that it totally can be worse. I'm pretty sure that referring to a dead rapper as a "raper" is a pretty egregious error. Thanks to LEANNE for spotting this one...



Someday when I'm dead, I swear I will come back and haunt the hell out of any writers who make any sort of typos or misspellings in any articles they write about me. I'll be some sort of grammar poltergeist who chucks red pens at the heads of writers who make these sorts of silly errors. It could be fun...

Those Yahoos just couldn't make up their minds about this one...

I saw this error when I checked my e-mail yesterday afternoon and immediately took a screen capture of the mistake. Twenty minutes later, I checked my e-mail again--the mistake was gone. A little while later, I checked my e-mail again, and the mistake was back. An hour later? Gone again.

So now we can assume two things:
1) I'm mildly obsessive when it comes to checking my e-mail, and
2) The Yahoos were really confused about which of these two words they should be using. (Each time I checked, the right "rein" was in the blurb...but the wrong one was in the headline 50% of the time. They clearly kept switching the right word in and out of the headline as they tried to make up their minds about which word to use.)

I guess I should quit my complaining, 'cause if those Yahoos wouldn't make so many mistakes, I'd certainly have fewer blog posts to share with you guys. And I love writing blog posts for you guys. So, to the Yahoos over there in Yahoo-land, bring it on! I'm ready and waiting, red pen in hand!

HUMP DAY GRAMMAR for May 20, 2009

Hmmm. When the word "eat" and the topic of sex are related, as they are in this case, I thought the tendency was for guys to go more for felines than for poultry*. Silly me.

Also: what's a "sanwich"? And why the hell is this Yahoo Answers post under the topic "Mythology & Folklore"?

* That's my attempt at not being completely crass and trying to avoid saying the p-word, which I personally have no problem with saying, but I don't wanna offend anyone who gets grossed out by that word!

Hot baseball player...not-so-hot comma placement...

So yesterday's "representitive" error wasn't the only mistake I spotted at Yankee Stadium over the weekend. One of the nine (that's right, count 'em--nine! And now you know why they're my second favorite team...) BILFs on the Twins had to suffer through having his picture hang out next to a very unnecessary comma on the big screen.

If "upstate" happened to be a town, then that comma would be correctly placed. But it's just an adjective. In a sentence like this one, no comma is needed between the adjective and the noun it modifies. And this comma looks pretty silly...especially in close proximity to such a pretty face. Poor Brendan Harris!

TO/TOO/TWO TUESDAY for May 19, 2009

My buddy CLAY found this sign on his apartment door. Apparently they deliver homonym errors straight to your door these days...who knew? I know what isn't allowed on my balcony*: homonym errors!

Also, what are "trash clothes"...and where do you buy those? I want to stay away from that store...

Thanks, CLAY, for spotting these funny mistakes!

* OK, so I don't have a balcony. But if I did, there would be a strict "no homonym screw-ups" rule in effect 24/7.

MISSPELLING MONDAY for May 18, 2009--part deux

I took this picture during the Twins/Yankees game on Saturday. In between screaming at Joe Mauer that I love him, screaming at Justin Morneau that I also love him, taking pictures of the aforementioned ridiculously attractive ballplayers, and actually paying attention to the game, I was also spotting grammar and spelling errors at the ballpark.

If you refer to someone as a representitive, I'm betting she could accuse you of sexual harassment, couldn't she? Tee-hee!

MISSPELLING MONDAY for May 18, 2009

LEE G. from Baton Rouge found this amusing misspelling for us. Gosh, I hope this misspelling isn't on the door to a proofreader's office. That would be very, very bad for business!

Thanks, LEE, for spotting this one!

BILFtastically hyperactive!

Maybe I'm just bitter because I can't have real ice cream (have I mentioned before that being allergic to cream totally sucks?). Or maybe I just want an excuse to talk about baseball since I'm getting ready for a totally BILFtastic weekend. No, I'm not seeing my Phillies this weekend...I'm seeing my second favorite team, the Minnesota Twins. They'll be playing the Yankees, and between the two teams, there's a whole lot of BILFs. Joe Mauer and Justin Morneau (I am totally retarded for them--you have no idea), plus Blackburn, Nathan, Crede, and Harris...oh, and those BILFs all belong to the Twins (who knew there was so much hotness hangin' out in Minnesota, of all places?). Out of the current Yankees, I only have one player I'd view as a BILF (if Mussina was still playing, he'd be at the top of my list, though), and that's A-Rod. Yes, I know. He's a tool. A steroid-using tool, at that. But I like his eyes. And for a guy, he's really very...pretty, haha.

So anyway, in honor of all this baseball-related hotness that I'm totally, hyperactively excited for, here's a baseball-related post. It's actually a baseball-related apostrophe catastrophe. You'd think that if the Phillies really want to own this Graham Slam ice cream, they'd use an apostrophe, right? The e-mail should say, of course, that this ice cream is the Phils' go-to frosty treat.



It kinda looks like the Phillies' marketing team really needs to bring someone aboard who knows how to write well and use good grammar. (And if any Phillies marketing folks read this, please take note that I am a hardcore Phillies fan who just happens to also be a Grammarphile. Pick me, pick me, pick me!)

Have a happy weekend, everyone!

FOODIE FRIDAY for May 15, 2009

Who's hungry for Chinese food? YVIE found a bunch of Engrishy mistakes from a take-out menu and combined them into one picture for our viewing pleasure. My favorite error here is the "light greasy" in which their food is cooked. Which mistake is your favorite? (There are so many to choose from...)

Thanks, YVIE, for spotting these funny little mistakes!

The woes of a web geek/grammar geek...

Fellow bloggers and web geeks, you'll appreciate this post.

My StatCounter's been acting up lately. For some reason, it's not recording all my site stats--it's only recording about 70% of my actual page views. It's being a little bitch, and I've been annoyed with it.

Now, the reason I know for sure that the damn StatCounter is recording fewer stats than it should be is because I have a Bravenet account (Bravenet also records stats). Bravenet is recording a lot more stats for me than StatCounter is. The reason I usually prefer to use StatCounter over Bravenet is because StatCounter has cooler and more extensive free features, while Bravenet (which is also, at its most basic level, free to use) tries to get you to pay for a lot of its cooler features. That, too, is annoying.

Anyway, out of frustration and curiosity, I logged in to my Bravenet account today so that I could find out how many hits I really had on my site so far (since StatCounter has decided it's cool to lie). This is what I found:


I just. Can't. Win.

Sigh.

I BET THEIR COPY EDITORS DIED ON OCEANIC 815 for May 14, 2009

I'm not posting a Lost-related grammar error here today. Instead, since we won't get to see our favorite hot redneck for several months (son of a bitch!), I thought I'd post this little piece of eye candy here instead...

Much cuter than a grammar error, right?

Also, at Red Pen, Inc. reader PHRANK's request, here's some eye candy for the guys, too...


So, the finale... Um, HOLY CRAP. This may have been my favorite Lost episode ever. It also might be the episode that made me scream the most. At the end of the episode, I let out the most pitiful howl. Seriously. I'm going to try to make this post somewhat coherent, but I have no idea if I'll succeed. My mind is still going a million times a minute, you know? Regardless, here are my thoughts on the episode (these are based on the actual notes I took while watching--because yeah, this time there was so freakin' much going on that I actually had to take notes!):

* I'd heard a rumor that what's-his-face who plays the asshole ex-husband in Dexter was going to be Jacob in an episode of Lost. At first I had a difficult time taking him seriously as Jacob because all I could think was, "Hey, there's that wife-beating douchebag!" Once I got over that, I think he did a pretty decent job, although I somehow envisioned Jacob as being more exciting. He seemed sort of bland, you know? Like, why is this guy so damn special and revered on the island? (Perhaps a question for season 6...)

* We got to see a pretty decent glimpse (side-profile-ish) of the statue! It really did look a lot like Anubis. And was it holding an ankh?

* Was that ship that Jacob and the other dude were watching...the Black Rock? And what the hell was their cryptic conversation all about? Also: I could have sworn the not-Jacob dude looked familiar, but I couldn't place him. Is he someone we've ever seen before?

* So then we saw that Jacob had interactions with several of the castaways prior to their time on the island. We first saw Jacob interact with young Kate; later on, we saw him interact with young Sawyer, plus Sun and Jin, Hurley, Sayid, Jack, and Locke. This is interesting, because we've all been picking apart so much of what we've seen of Lost this season, but they're starting to make us come up with new theories because now we're starting to consider what we haven't seen or been shown. Did any of you guess that these folks had met Jacob in their off-island lives already? I hadn't. I was too busy analyzing what I'd seen in the show to start wondering about what they hadn't showed me had already happened to the characters.

* I could have sworn, when Ilana and company were on that kayak, that they were gonna get shot at. Remember the episode a while back in season 5 where the castaways were shooting at unknown people on a kayak-type boat? Looks like I got that theory wrong...

* Ilana and her buddies have a box. Lapidus is freaked out about what's in the box. I was fairly certain that it was Locke's body, although I wasn't sure how that could be possible. It saw sort of like season 4 all over again, with being teased about something being in a box (coffin) and us not being quite sure who or what it was.

* Juliet...was awesome tonight. She was just superb in all the scenes she was in tonight. I loved how she corrected Sawyer on the sub, saying that it was "we" who wanted to leave the island, and then her putting the plans in motion to get that sub back to the island. Nice work, Juliet.

* Jack, who used to think Locke was nuts, told Richard--when Richard told Jack that Locke had never seemed particularly special to him--to not give up on Locke. Hmmm, will Jack eventually end up eating those words? (Since now it seems like there are two Lockes running around, and one of them is kinda creepy-ish and bad?)

* I was disappointed that (until the end of the episode) Ben wasn't given too much to do. He looked appropriately shocked when Locke told him that he (Ben) needed to kill Jacob. This brought back memories of season 2: Ben making Locke kill his own dad (even though Sawyer was the one who really killed Locke's father). Now, I suppose, Locke is kinda getting even for that.

* Was Ellie really the leader of the hostiles at one point? That's what Richard said, but that seemed strange to me. I never got a "leader" vibe from her.

* I about flipped the fuck out when Sayid got shot. Is he a goner, or is he gonna be OK for season 6?

* I knew--just knew--Vincent would show up in this episode.

* And then we found out that Rose and Bernard have had their own little happy hippie commune in the forest, away from everyone else. I really like those two. I wish we'd gotten to see more of them in this season. At least now their absence has been explained. And really, Bernard's "Son of a bitch!" totally made me giggle.

* Right before Lapidus made his point about not believing anyone who has to say they're the good guys, I was thinking the same thing. I don't really trust Ilana and her friends. The guys seem like jackasses. I'm still not entirely sure what those people are up to. But we did find out that Ilana knows Jacob...

* Jacob's living in the foot of the freakin' statue? Really?

* Another note on Jacob: There was a scene (when he was sitting outside, and Locke was busy being pushed out a window) where he was reading something. It was Flannery O'Connor's Everything That Rises Must Converge. Hmmm...I wonder what significance that might have...

* I loved the moment when Sun found Charlie's DriveShaft ring in the crib. Precious.

* Those Apollo candy bars that we saw on the island in previous seasons made an appearance in the vending machine at Jack's hospital; that was the excuse Jacob had for talking to Jack.

* At first I was thrilled that Sawyer was having such a mature conversation with Jack in the woods. Then he beat the living snot out of Jack. Ahhh, the Sawyer of season 1 is briefly back, haha.

* Juliet broke my heart in the woods when she was talking to Sawyer, telling him that she'd be OK with Jack using the bomb to make it so that Oceanic 815 made it back to LA safely, meaning that she'd never have met Sawyer--because, as she put it, if she'd never met him, then she'd never have to lose him. That killed me. Haven't we all been there at some point, thinking that very same thought, wanting to completely forget someone we cared about because that person had hurt us too badly for us to deal with it?

* I loved how the guitar case that Hurley brought on the plane actually came from Jacob. Also: Jacob made it clear that Hurley had a choice to make about whether or not he wanted to go on the Ajira flight. Interesting that Jacob, who seemed to give so many orders on the island, was focused on how this was a choice (not an order) for Hurley.

* So Chang turned out to not be such an ass after all--he was trying to save everyone, and it appears that Miles, in turn, saved him. (All together now: Awww!)

* Looks like that annoying creep Phil got death by scaffolding. Was it wrong of me to laugh at that scene? Because I totally freakin' did.

* I thought that Juliet had died when she'd gone down the (what do you call it--hatch? tunnel? hole? You know what I mean...). God, that scene with her and Sawyer was heartbreaking. I've been Team Skate all along, but man...I didn't want to see her go like that, although admittedly, it was an absolutely brilliant scene, and Sawyer looked appropriately devastated.

* We finally find out who can answer Ilana's question: "What lies in the shadow of the statue?". Richard--er, Ricardo--can! And he answers it in Latin. Unfortunately, it's been a few years since I took Latin, so I have no effin' clue what he said.

* Sun and I, and probably all of you, were thinking the same thing: If that's Locke in that box, and that Locke is just a dead body, then who's in that statue right now with Ben and Jacob? That, I'm sure, will be a major component of season 6...

* Jacob to Locke: "You found your loophole." In time, like to travel back to the island? Or was there something more to that question...?

* Jacob was so very cold to Ben. After the kindnesses we'd seen Jacob display with the castaways when he met them off-island, this coldness was kind of a surprise. ("What about me?" Ben asked, after a pretty passionate speech to Jacob. "Well, what about you?" Jacob answered. At which point, Ben stabbed him and then Locke pushed Jacob into the fire.)

* When Jacob said to Locke, "They're coming," what was that all about? Did he mean Ilana's people? Or other people? It sounded like he was afraid of these people...

* And then, in the final moments of the final episode of season 5, we find out that Juliet is not dead (at least at that moment), and she manages to make that bomb work, and then everything...goes to WHITE. Which is about when I started howling.

So now it seems like Jacob is dead, and I'm assuming that Juliet is also dead (how could she not be?). The rest of the characters we know and love seem OK (right? Except for possibly Sayid?). While this finale gave us a lot of information, it also left a lot of questions hanging. Will Sun and Jin reunite? I was hoping that would happen in this episode, and it didn't. Also: What's Desmond have to do with all of this? We didn't see him in this finale, which totally surprised me.

How did you like the finale? What were your favorite moments? Where do you think Season 6 is going? Talk to me in the comments section...

Also: For your reading pleasure, here's Doc Jensen's Lost finale recap. Brilliant stuff, as usual!

It's an apostrophe thing. You wouldn't understand.

PETER, who sent in this amusing error, asks, "Wasn't there a horror movie called The Thing?" As best I can recall, there was. The movie came out at the end of September 2008, and the "Thing" in question, the star of the horror movie, was quite obviously the Mets' bullpen... ;)

PETER also notes: The Mets are trying to lead the league in apostrophes. I say, if they allow my Phillies to have the NL East title this year (again!), my boys in red and white pinstripes will surely be happy to allow the Mets to keep leading the league in apostrophes. I think that's a fair deal, don't you?

Thanks, PETER, for spotting this funny error!

HUMP DAY GRAMMAR for May 13, 2009

I'd say the third time's the charm, but even when she knew she'd misspelled Wednesday twice already, she went and misspelled it again--in a different way.

And then she had the nerve to whine about people correcting her spelling. (I wasn't one of those people. Instead of correcting her on the Yahoo Answers site like everyone else did, I figured I'd correct--read: mock--her right here on ye olde blog so that you guys could get a chuckle outta this, too.)

Also: I beg to differ with her on her point that Hump Day is the day to hump people. She's got it all wrong. Just because Wednesday is Hump Day doesn't mean you can't hump people during the other six days of the week! :)

The caveman cometh...

Red Pen, Inc. reader WINONA tipped me off to this crazy website's existence. She says: My husband found this site while searching for jobs online--the job posting was that they'd pay you $4 to write a 2000-word minimum story about how to pick up women. Not only is the posting hilarious (and hilariously cheap), the site itself is wonderful on all levels. Get out your red pen--and that's just for the main page--run-ons galore, with some apostrophe catastrophes thrown in for good measure! The constant references to "woman" instead of "women" make me think of either cavemen or Animal the Muppet.

I only took a screen shot of part of the main page. I couldn't read any more of it because I thought I might die of laughter. Not only does the author of this site have a problem with punctuation and obvious issues with homonyms, but he really does talk like a caveman. "WINGMAN LEARN HOW TO PICK UP MORE WOMAN!" Hmmm, is that what he does before he clubs her over the head for, like, not picking enough berries or forgetting to wash his woolly mammoth-fur jacket?

I wonder if the Wingman is also the goober behind this crappy caveman-style writing...

Thanks, WINONA, for finding this hilarious website!

TO/TOO/TWO TUESDAY for May 12, 2009

BECKY found us our homonym error du jour, but it's kind of a cute homonym error. It's a polite homonym error. That's because we're dealing with a compliment. And compliments are good things, right?

Well, they're good things unless the right word to use in a given situation is really complement. Sigh.

Not only that, but there's a great misspelling here, too. Two letters in the word "health" are transposed. You'd think that someone writing about Medicare would know how to spell health, right?

I know one thing for certain: Of all the compliments someone could give the person who created this training program, "You are such a fabulous grammarian and great speller!" will not be among them.

Thanks, BECKY, for spotting these mistakes!

MISSPELLING MONDAY for May 11, 2009

ATTENTION! Yes, I'm talking to you! (And that's attention, like a-t-t-e-n-t-i-o-n, not like a-t-t-e-n-c-h-i-o-n, which isn't a real word. Got it?)


So anyway--your attention, please...



If you are a writer yourself, and you're writing about another writer, could you maybe learn how to correctly spell the word "writer"? I mean, that kinda seems like it would be a handy word for you to know how to spell, right? Or is that just crazy talk?

(And furthermore, isn't the most appropriate term to use here "playwright," not "play writer"?)

Thanks to STEVE for the top picture and to LEANNE for the bottom picture!

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY FROM RED PEN, INC.

There are a million reasons why I love my mother, but one of the biggest reasons is because she passed her good grammar skills on to me. Thanks, MAMA GRAMMARPHILE, for teaching me good grammar, for submitting instances of screwy/funny grammar (see above) for this blog, for being my most faithful reader (even when Hump Day Grammar posts make her cringe, she still faithfully comes back and reads more of my posts), and for lots of other things, too--most notably for being the most awesome mom ever.

Happy Mother's Day to my own amazing mother...and to you (if you're a mom) and your amazing mothers, too! :)

"Excuse me, sir? Can you please put that shop back where you found it? Thanks."

JOHN was apparently out at some place whose sign-writers don't understand that shoplifting and shop lifting are two very different things. Shoplifting is a very sneaky activity. The same is not true for shop lifting, as I'm pretty sure lots of people would notice if you just, like, picked up the entire store, put it on your back, and started walking down the street with it. (Also--how do they not know that in this context, videotaped should be one word, not two? Sigh.)

I want to take a moment to say happy birthday to JOHN! He's one of my closest friends, which means he knows me well enough to know that every time I start off a sentence with the phrase "Well, here's the thing...", I'm about to say something that nobody really wants to hear details about, haha. He's heard the gory details of the vast majority of my crazy stories, has been dragged into girly stores like Lush and still doesn't mind hanging out with me, and has put up with listening to lots of ramblings about my Joe Mauer/Justin Morneau/Josh Hamilton-related lust. JOHN puts up with my quirkiness (and I pretty much corner the market on quirky), and I'm very grateful for that. Everyone should be lucky enough to have a friend like him! So happy birthday, JOHN--have a fabulous day. You deserve it!

FOODIE FRIDAY for May 8, 2009

I think we have a hell of a repeat offender here, folks. The Melting Pot and their ridiculous e-mail blasts are baaaa-aaack! I'm pretty sure the running theme of this one was "How many unnecessary and incorrectly-used apostrophes can we throw into the e-mail blast without it blowing up on us?" The answer: Four.

I also like how they mentioned that "size does matter." Apparently stuff like the size of the IQ of the person who writes the copy for these e-mail blasts doesn't matter much...

UPDATE: I've found out that at least one person over at The Melting Pot has noticed this post. Hey, Melting Pot folks--if you guys think you might need a person to copy-edit your e-mail blasts on a freelance basis and want to work out a trade (for instance, some excellent copy-editing in exchange for gift cards/restaurant credit to use at your restaurants), hit me up! Yes, I'm being serious. I really like your restaurant and would really love to not shake my head and sigh when I open up your e-mail blasts. Just sayin'... ;)

Also, an update on the shopping trip I mentioned in yesterday's post: I bought 4 amazing dresses! One is turquoise silk with black lace/ribbon accents and looks rather lingerie-like; one is pink velvet with white ribbon trim and accents; one is a black lace party dress with an adorable hem and pink ribbon accents; the last one is a black knee-length halter dress with an embroidered hem. They all look awesome, and I had so much fun picking them out! In a regular retail store these dresses would have cost me about $1,500. But because I bought them at a sample sale, they cost me under $200...total! (I'm still on a shopper's high right now. Can you tell?)

Misspellings are NEVER in fashion...

I remember when I worked in a not-particularly-cosmopolitan area of Pennsylvania, I used to wear my Juicy stuff around town and the majority of the people I knew had no idea what it was. Some of my male friends/co-workers would look at my shirt, furrow their brows, and ask me what "Juicy Couch-ure" was. (They had never heard of the word couture, nor could they pronounce it.) This never failed to amuse me. Misspelling the word couture, though? That does not amuse me.

I have designer fashion on the brain today. In a little over an hour or so, I'll be sneaking out of the office early (OK, it's not really sneaking since I was given permission and since I came in early to compensate!) to go to a Betsey Johnson sample sale in the city. I'm a Betsey Johnson addict. I already have some of her handbags, underwear, cosmetic cases... At this sample sale, they'll be selling her dresses for $50 (daytime) and $75 (evening), so I'm hoping to pick up a super-cute bargain (her dresses usually cost a few hundred dollars each, so these sample sale prices are pretty freakin' amazing). I'll keep you posted! :)

I BET THEIR COPY EDITORS DIED ON OCEANIC 815 for May 7, 2009

OK, the theme of this post is: WTF? Last night's episode was crazy. I still can't wrap my mind around it all--so much happened, and so much is going to happen in next week's 2-hour season finale.

We got to see a lot of Richard Alpert in this episode--in 1997 and in 2004. (Not surprisingly, he still looked the same in each time period.) I really want to know more about him. Specifically, I want to know how exactly he can be an "advisor," as Ben called him, yet he seems to never really be able to make any decisions. He advises, sure, but he also is a follower, and ends up helping out in situations in which he's clearly not too enthusiastic about participating. I want a Richard flashback episode, dammit!

We saw Sawyer get the crap kicked out of him (and even Juliet got a little roughed up in this episode), Radzinsky being insane, Horace being a pushover, and Phil looking like his usual creepy self... Despite the fact that I'm 100% for Team Skate, I'm starting to feel really, really bad for Juliet. She loves Sawyer, and Sawyer loves her until Kate shows up. And now Kate's on the submarine with Sawyer and Juliet. We saw that sub heading away from the island, but--as evidenced by the previews of next week's finale--I'm sure it won't stay away from the island for long.

Speaking of Kate, she was obviously upset by how Jack so desperately wanted to change everything so that the plane crash never happened, etc, because she didn't see it as a world of misery like he did. Of course, she realizes that had that plane never crashed, she'd never have met Jack, and so she's pretty insulted when he wants to erase everything associated with life post-plane crash. Kate's trying to storm off, almost getting shot by some hostile, when who comes out of the shrubbery to save her? Sayid! I've missed him! It's good to see him around again.

So Jack, Sayid, 1977 Richard, and 1977 Eloise are trying to deal with Jughead, the hydrogen bomb, in the temple (that sounds like part of a game of Clue--it was Eloise, in the temple, using Jughead!). Meanwhile, 2007 Richard Alpert's galavanting around with Locke and Ben. We see (from a little bit of a different perspective) Richard pull the bullet out of Locke's leg, and we know that Locke has given Richard his compass back. All this while the new, slightly creepy Locke is standing there watching! Locke seems to be confident he knows what's going on, but the ever-unshakable Ben actually looks scared. When Richard confides to Ben that he's fraid Locke's gonna stir up trouble, Ben admits that that's why he tried to kill Locke. Richard didn't seem entirely surprised by that.

And now Locke's leading the entirety of the Hostiles to see Jacob. (Personally, I love how anarchist Locke got all of a sudden, how he thinks that the group shouldn't be taking orders from someone they've never even seen. Awesome.) And Locke plans to kill Jacob. And Ben seems really, really worried...

So what will happen to make the sub go back to the island? Will Sun and Jin ever reunite? What was Richard talking about when he said he saw the folks in the 1977 Dharma picture all die? What's gonna happen with Jughead? What happens with Dr. Chang, who eventually realized Miles was his son and also eventually believed that Faraday (RIP!) had been telling the truth? Will crazy Radzinsky and compan y come after the Hostiles? What will Jacob be like? Can Jacob even be killed? What the HELL lies in the shadow of the statue (they STILL haven't answered that riddle yet)? Ben always has a plan--what tricks does he have up his sleeve? If "dead is dead," then what is this new version of Locke? Is he a good entity or a not-so-good one? How will Desmond tie back into everything that's going on? Will Sawyer still have Juliet's back, or will he become closer to Kate again? And lastly, who, if anyone, do you think will not make it out of season 5 alive?

Kitties and puppies and snafus--oh my!

Those Yahoos are at it again! While perusing some of the popular pictures on Yahoo the other day, I found these amusing combinations of cute critters/not-so-cute errors...

First up, the "Asian Leopard Car." Uhhhh...can you really drive this thing? This looks more like a cat than a car. (It's a beautiful cat...one I wouldn't mind having as a pet. I adore exotic cats. Someday, when I win the lottery, I'm going to have a couple Savannah cats...whose names, of course, will be Chase and Cole.)

And then there's this cute puppy (awwww!)...and this made-up word. OK, it's probably just a real word attacked by the Typo Monster. But isn't it kinda funny to wonder what the verb "gert" would mean?

HUMP DAY GRAMMAR for May 6, 2009

OK, guys, get your "And this one time, at band camp..." jokes ready...

I get the point they're trying to convey...but they couldn't come up with a better headline than this? Really? The way they've written it, it sounds like the poor girl is jerking off the muggers...and, um, how's/where's that baton being used?

I'm pretty sure this would have been a much more wholesome headline if they had said "fends" or "scares" instead of "beats." Do you think the folks who wrote this were completely oblivious to how perverted it looked, or do you think they're snickering because they wrote something that could be interpreted in a perverted way? (Or, a third option--is this headline just fine, but the problem is that all of us have twisted minds and our thoughts are frequently in the gutter?)

Happy Hump Day, kiddos!

Baby talk!

From "Brith" to Age Three? C'mon, now--this is just sad. I'm pretty sure I know infants who possess better spelling skills than the person who created the title and/or spine of this book...

Thanks, BETSY, for spotting this very childish mistake!

TO/TOO/TWO TUESDAY for May 5, 2009

Hmmm, which site do you think they mean? The best site for fashion-related snark? The site that'll make you hungry for frosting? The site that'll make you want to NOM a cheezburger?

Oh. They meant sight. I suppose allowing "site" to slip through was an oversight...

Thanks, PETER, for finding this amusing error!

Well, that's kinda harsh...

Prosecution? Nope. Apparently these folks have a different way of dealing with trespassers...

KATHERINE, who snapped this picture, notes: ...As seen in the post office of (rather rural) Kasese, Uganda. English isn't the first language there, so perhaps it's a bit unfair, but my husband and I giggled nonetheless, imagining the cross burning, etc.

Thanks, KATHERINE, for finding this amusing bit of Engrish! (Does this count as Engrish? It sure counts as...something. Something funny, at least...)

MISSPELLING MONDAY for May 4, 2009

I complain all the time about how websites and print publications need to proofread their stuff a whole lot better, but (since I only watch one TV show) I'm oblivious to most of the spelling and grammar snafus shown on television, which means I rarely have cause to complain about bad grammar/spelling on TV.

Luckily, Red Pen, Inc. readers watch TV, and so sometimes they're kind enough to send in en error they saw on a TV show. RANIELLE spotted this one for us. She says: I missed "SURVIVOR", so I was catching up today OnDemand. Which was a good thing when this little beauty popped up on the screen. I seriously rewound and played and rewound and played and went to my dictionary and thought, "Who in the WORLD thought that looked OK?" I get that's what it SOUNDS like it should be, but it just looks as wrong as it is.

Nice catch, RANIELLE! This picture proves the point that folks in the TV world should be just as vigilant about proofreading as people in the web/print industries are. Not that web/print people are all that vigilant about their grammar/spelling (as evidenced by the 942 Red Pen, Inc. posts in existence at this very moment), but you know what I mean. :)

Hey, Quileute wolves? I've got a job for you guys...

Apparently I can't even listen to good music without being assaulted by misspellings. I just opened my Windows Media Player and was about to click over to the Media Library so I could listen to one of the many Beck albums I have saved there; in the process, I found this dreadful misspelling of the word sequel. Ugh.

I'd kinda like to hire Jacob and the rest of his pack to (in their wolf forms, of course) go chase down people who consistently misspell words (this isn't the first RPI post that was created based on a mistake that I found on my Windows Media Player). Maybe that'll scare some sense into 'em...

OK, it's Modern Guilt time. I'm just gonna go back to Windows Media Player and try to ignore the obnoxious misspelling...

FOODIE FRIDAY for May 1, 2009

I get quite a kick out of this picture, which was sent in by the lovely SASHA. Not only did the person who made the sign screw up the word "order" (which, let's face it, is NOT a difficult word to spell!), but he also royally screwed up the sentence. How 'bout changing that "with" to a "when you"? Or making the sign say something like "Free soft drink with the purchase of any lunch sandwich"?

You'd think these sorts of signs would be easy to craft, right? Apparently not. The message on the sign is short, but the grammar and spelling is not very sweet.

Thanks, SASHA, for finding this one! :)