Clarity
Dangerous Liaisons
Posted 23 Sep 2008
Daily Life, The Little Things | 3 Comments
Yesterday evening, I was sitting at the dinner table finishing up a lovely meal of home-made parsnip and curry soup (mmm!), when I suddenly remembered something that needed doing. I grabbed a pen from the nearby counter-top to jot a note to remind myself.
What?!? How the swearword did this pen get into my house? Did I pick it up somewhere and bring it home? Where could that have even possibly happened? And what sort of dangerous liaisons are they offering? Do I even want to know?
You can imagine my relief when I googled ‘Dangerous Liaisons 01785 822 557′ and came to a very safe and respectable site: www.dangerous-liaisons.co.uk. Whew! Potential marital conflict safely avoided.
That’s a hole, friend
Posted 22 Sep 2008
Language, Places, Signs | Leave a Comment
As I was enjoying Arts Fresco up in Market Harborough a couple of weekends ago, I meandered down an alley and past a service entry to a building. A hand-written sign on the door caught my eye:
I love the added definition of ‘deep excavation’ – that’s a hole. How very kind of the sign maker to ensure that the danger described by lofty verbiage was not lost on unwary potential trespassers.
And just in case anyone viewing the sign cannot read English, there is also an explanatory graphic highlighting the risk:
At least you know it’s the result of hard work …
Posted 19 Sep 2008
News, People | 7 Comments
Good ol’ George W, really putting his back into creating some economic turmoil.
Either the folks at Yahoo! News have quite a sense of humor, or nobody actually reads the headlines before they are published. This particular title has since been updated on Yahoo! … God bless whoever invented screenshots! (Check out the large scale screenshot.)
We’d like to thank a reader from Chicago for pointing out this hilarious headline, and we’d like to thank the editors at Yahoo! News for not editing it before publication.
Poorly marketed pear cider
Posted 18 Sep 2008
I enjoy pear cider. I do. And over the weekend, I savoured a bottle of St. Helier’s Pear Cider. It was tasty. My thanks to the people on a smaller island than the one I am on for making it. Very nice of you, indeed.
As I sipped my way through the pear cider, I took a few moments to study the bottle. I had not tried St Helier before and wanted to learn more about it. In reading over the back label, I discovered that cider makers are, perhaps, not the best at sales or marketing. Consider the following:
The label reads: In days gone by, cider makers always kept a corner of their orchard for growing pears. They used this to produce a pear cider for their family to enjoy, as they believed it to be superior to apple cider. They were right.
So, my immediate thought was why are pear cider makers admitting this? Previous generations of pear cider makers were either too stupid or too selfish to sell what they clearly believed to be their best product. Why tell the world this?
And upon re-reading the last sentence, I wondered the marketing value of a company suggesting that pear cider is better than apple cider – when that same company also makes apple cider. Doesn’t that tell the customer that its apple cider is inherently a lesser product?
Glasses required?
Posted 17 Sep 2008
Events, News | 3 Comments
It’s Wednesday, people, and we think it’s time for a guest comment. Today’s note comes from a reader in New York … and given all the bad news coming out of that city this week, we’re happy to spread some of the funnier stuff.
Last Wednesday, our reader was surfing the net (perhaps fearing the end of world) as he surfed up to post about the amazing work going on a CERN on Tom Feilden’s blog on the BBC Radio Today Programme website. He saw the first photo in that post and he was amused.
Our reader writes:
I saw the photo, and it just made me smile – and though one shouldn’t generalise, they all look exactly as one would envisage particle physicists to look. No doubt the eye-strain from the result of years spent in dark labs, and reading long hours. As a glasses wearer too, I can empathise, though sadly I lack the genius that no doubt they have. I just hope that they know what they are doing, recreating the big bang – even if on a micro-scale!
Our many thanks to our reader for sending in this in. And we’ll end by reminding all that we continue to welcome contributions via email.
