fistful of plooble

Today's tiny headlines

Verizon has changed their mobile browser interface a bit, and the tiny headlines are now sometimes truncated when you view them. At first I was afraid that would stop the funny juxtapositions, but today proved me wrong:

Bush dismisses gas
Two arrested in deaths

Sophomoric, yes. But at least I'm not talking about the heat.

Ground control to Major Duck

I thought I was pretty down with British slang, but as I watched the BBC news this morning, I saw this crawl across the bottom of the screen:

Tiger Woods in determined mood as he looks to break his major duck this season at the USPGA chamionships

You never know what's going to be lost in translation. Reminds me of a guy I used to work with who grew up in North Carolina and hadn't traveled much until he went to England on a business trip. His hosts asked him what he did for fun, and he said he liked to dance. They asked what his favorite was, and as a good North Carolina boy who grew up going to the beach and dancing a particular homegrown R&B dance, he responded, "I like to shag." You can imagine their reaction.

Plus, werewolf poetry

A sign at our local Barnes & Noble.

Today's tiny headlines

From the Verizon mobile web browser news homepage:

Rumsfeld Denies Coverup
Saudis Back US Plans
Bank of America
Go Shopping

The gravest of constitutional chemical mechanisms

I have Google Alerts set up for keywords and phrases related to my new company, since it's part of my job, as The Tick would put it, to monitor the culture. I just came across a web site that I cannot figure out. It appears to have been translated from English to another language and then back again. Here's a choice passage:

Do they make bold to state "impeach"? One someone's airtight legal lawsuit is another's "remain out the Bushes."

Saturday 28 July 2007 @ 09:22:35 pm

YOU'LL NEVER DISCOVERY anyone as impartial, disinterested, judicious, and concerned only with the eudaemonia of the American people as a party chop laying into a politician from a challenger party. Thus the suit for the impeachment of President George W. Bush has turned organically from the very textile of the world. It's not that Democrats are moved by defeat with Bush and his party's electoral profit run--snake pit, the Dems profoundly rue that they've been took to this! It's that Bush's prevarications and offenses of the Fundamental law are so egregious, so without case in point in American history, that we must trigger the gravest of constitutional chemical mechanisms.

I would like to thank this group of Venusians or Uzbek spammers or whoever they are for introducing me to the work "eudaemonia," which I have now learned means well-being. Not to be confused with "youdamania," which is what overcomes the more oafish members of a golf tournament's audience whenever someone hits a drive.