Guesswork

One of my hobbies, along with falconry and barking at the mailman, is coining neologisms that don’t catch on (I was this close - holding up thumb and index finger very close together - to coming up with microcelebrity, which I think has a real shot.) My latest concept in that vein is a quicker, […]

If you want to see how the English language is evolving, consider this recently received spam for the male enhancement product, MEGADIK:
Dolls always whizgiggled at me and even gentlemans did in the municipal john!
Well, now I sriek at them, because I took M_E GA D IK
for 6 months and now my cock is excessively greater […]

Below a list of Media/Communications/Technology things that irritate me. It’s far from a comprehensive list, and very subjective.
1. TV shows that use the title as a way of describing the entire concept “Who Wants To Be a Millionaire?” “Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?” “Don’t Forget the Lyrics” and
So You Think You […]

Phrasing notwithstanding, the sign above doesn’t indicate the door you should use if you want to mix and mingle with the opposite sex. In the gender-apartheid world of Saudi Arabia, “singles” means single men, and the other seating area, completed walled off from this one, is referred to as the “Family Section”.
Men […]

Ok, I promise not to turn this blog into a series of “look how funny it is that foreigners don’t speak English so good as me” pics, but I really thought this sign had comedic potential. It’s apparently an effective advertising tool too, because my colleague went and got his hair cut here just on […]

Prohibition in Saudi Arabia is a lot less entertaining than I understand it to have been in 1920’s America - there’s no Eliot Ness, no picturesque hillbilly rumrunners fleeing the cops against a backdrop of banjo chase music, and if there are crazy flapper-habituated speakeasies, no one’s told me about them. However, just because […]

When I was a kid, my grandparents used to have shelves full of Readers Digest Condensed Books; classic or contemporary novels with about a third of the words expunged for easy reading. The idea worked because you could remove most of the words from “Valley of the Dolls” without making it any sillier, and […]

If you live in the States you’ve probably known about this for years. However, we don’t have Friendly’s restaurants up here north of the border - “cordial but distant” is more the Canadian style - so it was news to me when I learned from Buffalo TV that with each meal there you can get […]

Yep, more happy snaps from my Chilean holiday. You should come over for the slideshow.
Anyway, this is graffiti from a wall in a park in Santiago. I don’t know whether it’s intended to be pro or anti Castro, or whether the commentary is supposed to be towards, about, or from him.
Makes me wonder though - […]

This isn´t meant to be a travel blog, but you gotta work with what you got.
I´m in Santiago Chile until Wed, and it´s a beautiful place - weather is sunny and around 28C, which is much nicer than Toronto, and the people are great. I´m at a slight disadvantage communicationally speaking because apparently I […]

Ad Age reports that the spinmasters at Coca Cola are now using the word “sparkling” rather than “carbonated” to describe beverages that make your tongue all tingly. Apparently the upscale terminology emerged during an earnings conference call with analysts, and is also reflected in new media releases.
It sounds like a pretty good idea, […]

George Weston Bakeries has a TV ad campaign going on right now for a new product: a square bagel being marketed under the Wonder brand. Apart from the shape, these “bagels” lack a hole in the bottom, and have the consistency of bread rather than of chewiness of the traditional bagel, presumably because […]

I just saw an ad on a Buffalo TV station (the city, not the animal) advocating organ donation. While it’s a worthy cause, I found the slogan a little unnerving: “You’ve been given the gift of life… GIVE IT BACK!” (emphasis mine).
Something like “You’ve been given the gift of life. Pass it along.” could convey […]

Engadget posts on a disturbing new development in the burgeoning field of canine-human communications. A company called Bio-sense is marketing a device that detects the difference between a dogs “regular” bark and its “alarm” bark, so you don’t have to go to the window every time Bucky sounds off. It’s intended mostly for use […]