Some while ago, I got an Epic Fireworks catalogue through the post - why they think a 2-man company would mount a £2000 display is beyond me, but it furnished me with food for thought.

In the olden days, fireworks used to have pretty names like Roman Candle, Bengal Matches, Silver Rain and Chrysanthemum Flower as befits their beauty. But in these boorish and aggressive times, they have Chav names: Fire One, Raging Bull, Hornets 28 Shot, Maverick, DP Thrust, Fragma, Shogun, Atomic Meltdown Rocket, Stinger, Heavy Duty and Six Machine to name but a few from the Revenge of the Guy selection pack.

Obviously Zen has given way to crass commercialism in the newly liberated Chinese economy. Sigh.

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Dear our friend,

Our site - http://www.4idiotsUSAsindrome.com

If others can do it, why not you?

FatLoss4Idiots program helps you to lose weight and it does that in the most healthy-way, unlike other fad diets in the market.

So, it has a fair chance of working for you as well, but, only if you are 100% dedicated to follow the diet - and if you don't get bored of it.

I have tried many diets, this one offers immediate results, which is motivating and keeps you going.

I hope I can finish the 11 days this time."

So, go visit http://www.4idiotsUSAdiee.com if you have made up your mind to buy it.

Here's to you,
communicationarts.co.uk Lord

Apart from the terrible grammar - which is only to be expected, why insult people you want to buy your scammy products by calling them idiots, and admitting that it's a fad, however unintentionally? I expect whatever it is does 'keep you going' - to the bog. I hope they catch something nasty off the seat...

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"Microsoft has developed BlueTrack - the world's most advanced tracking technology - and added it to the new Explorer Mouse. Remarkably, it works on virtually any surface...

BlueTrack technology works by emanating the light off the surface it's moving over. High-angle, imaging optics generate an exact replica of the surface, enabling it to respond instantly to your hand movement, wherever you are" - from a Microsoft business mailing

To emanate, in the sense I think they mean, means to radiate or send out - as in "the oven emanates heat when the door is open". But I am not sure what the marketing genius who wrote the above means: I don't think you can emanate off anything. Suggestions on a postcard please.

And from the same pages "Welcome to a world of easecheese, with BlueTrack™ Technology. Only available from Microsoft, this new tracking technology allows you to use a mouse on virtually any surface" - sorry, I made that up

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Mr Hill was being interviewed about new more stringent sentences being introduced today for breaches (not breeches!) of health and safety legislation. One might hope that someone as presumably educated as a lawyer would have a better grasp on English vocabulary.

Flaunt means to show off or parade, often outrageously. Lawyers might flaunt their wealth, for example.

Flout means to defy convention, ignore the law etc. Criminals flout the law on a daily basis.

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This blog is 18 rated and is not suitable for those raised on a 3-second attention span, reality TV and txtspk. Contains mild irony, occasional strong sarcasm, possibly perplexing metaphor, and light litotes. Future editions may also include any or all of these dangerously erudite figures of speech:

Anadiplosis
Antimetabole
Aphorism
Chiasmus
Epanadiplosis
Epanalepsis
Epistrophe
Epizeuxis
Hyperbole
Meiosis
Oxymoron
Pleonasm
Polyptoton
Simile
Zeugma

(no, I don't know what they all are without looking them up! But if I had a flock of chickens, that's what I might call them.)

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I wanted a self-inking stamp for the back of some Xmas cards I am making to sell more of my photos, and Google turned up a number of web sites. I looked at several, and this one made me feel happy and confident of their service: they explained more about how clear the stamp would be, and what I needed to do to prepare the artwork, than any of their competitors, and best of all, there was next day delivery if you ordered by 3pm.

Having completed my order at 2.52 yesterday afternoon, I was delighted to receive my stamp today - and a neat device it is. They said the resolution was equivalent to 600 DPI, and indeed it is - as crisp and lovely as an original print.

This is what I bought with this design in it (larger than life!) :

And these are my wintry card designs:

I'm going to try selling some at the Colyton Christmas fair next Wednesday - wish me luck!

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Note: That this is not one of those Benin repulic du cotonou west African scams that all they are after is to ripe you off your money and at the end you wil not receive your funds, but note that this is no scam and is directly from the Management of Western Union Money Transfer United Kingdom Head Office and our Motto is To Serve You Better. Contact us on our website on http://www.westernunion.co.uk (wunion6@googlemail.com) also note that you would be responsible for any payment that is needed for the transfer of your funds into your nominated bank account or at the counter directly from the Western Union Transferring Bank.

"This is not Benin spam, this is prime M&S Nigerian scam"

It beggars belief that anyone could think such illiterate drivel could possibly come from a bank, or that a bank would have a Googlemail account. I know some folk are gullible - but really!

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As I promise penguins in my header, I thought I'd like to see it here. And good news on the pottery penguin front - I've just sold a family to someone in Cambridgeshire, so they are all being bubble-wrapped ready for their dangerous journey!

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Thanks to my chum Marlene over on the DTP Forum for spotting this. Brilliant!

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I assume our Phil actually meant 'impugnment' - though I am not sure there is such a word in normal usage, and if there is, it should be strangled at birth. So, by substituting 'inge' for 'ugn', he made himself look just a tiny weeny bit ignorant. Oh, and his minor failing to explain how the UK government can limit our population to 70 million as he stated, when every single citizen of the EU has the right of abode here - that was a bit of a giveaway as well.

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Create your own at http://wordle.net.

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I read this several times and still don't really get what they are on about. I suspect some well-educated wine writer decided he or she needed to get down to the level of the common people, and this mish-mash is what resulted. 'Mangled metaphor of the week' is hereby awarded. I'd hardly call Viognier an upstart either - it was apparently known to the Romans! And Malbec is a traditional component of red Bordeaux wines. But why compromise exciting (?) copy in the interests of accuracy?

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Oh, if only the writer had read that through to herself before she committed it to print, and thought "I know, it needs a comma". Although I sympathise with the thrust of the article (promoting a cancer charity), as a result of this gaffe, I just found myself chuckling at the mental picture of eyebrow-garnished nipples rather than concentrating on the message. What a wasted opportunity, Ms Estridge.

You can read more about the worthwhile aims of Caroline's Campaign here (but be warned, breathless Facebook-style gushing prose and sugar pink all over the place. Not all woman are that girly, are they? Or am I just a mean old grouch who expects too much?)

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Eshot software will allow {company} to create full colour interesting emails using basic computer skills, broadcast that email to your list of contacts and monitor the response in real time, while automatically applying and processing an unsubscribe link on the foot of the mail.

In these difficult times its techniques like this that can make all the difference in cost effectively keeping your company and its products under the nose of your market place and list of business contacts, and can even be used to open new doors." - from a spam email advertising email marketing (careful - we are getting a bit recursive here)

You might think that someone hoping to make a killing from compelling mailshots would take the trouble to write grammatically and clearly - but I couldn't possibly comment. The software obviously doesn't do a very good job of filling in the blanks either. Not a good advert, I think.

I was mildly diverted by the noses opening new doors. Meanwhile the market place is recoiling from the item put under its nose. A curious metaphor...

Fortunately, they also tell me this information extracted under torture from a Taiwanese household appliance manual writer:

"To not receive future mail from ourselves please click here"

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Passerines in particular (which include most common garden birds) produce large numbers of offspring, the majority of which do not suvive to adulthood. Great *@&# for example produce clutches of 8-12 eggs. If all these survived to reproduce, Europe would be knee-deep in Great *@&# within a decade or so. But many die either in the nest or soon after fledging. Many more do not make it through their first winter.

which just goes to show that computers (or rather the people who program them) are much more stupid than the average bear. I wonder if it's just "tits", or the more laddish "Great tits" that triggered their bleepometer? What about marsh *@&# and coal *@&# for example?

Oh, and if anyone knows how to get four consecutive asterisks into a post, do tell The FAQ is silent on this matter.

See the whole thing.

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"If you are using Firefox please click here to install the IE Tab add-on. Once installed and Firefox has been restarted add www.cmyuk.netstationers.co.uk to the IE Tab Options found under the Tools menu.

If you are using Netscape 8 or above choose the 'Display Like Internet Explorer' option under the View>Rendering Engine menu item.

Other browsers are not currently supported. Please contact your sales representative for more information on this issue:
Jon Price
sales@cmyuk.net
0118 989 2929"

I just can't believe that anyone would bother to install plugins and configure his browser just to view a non-essential web site. The web developer - or the idiot who agreed to this specification - should be taken out and pelted with firefox turds till (s)he gives in. Then lightly beaten with the current WAI, HTML and CSS specifications for enlightenment.

I visited it in IE6 to see what all the fuss was about, and it's just some text in coloured boxes, a login form, and a couple of images. So, what's the problem, Mr Price? Do you live in the same word as most people, or a specially elevated corner of cyberspace on which us ordinary mortals shouldn't presume to trespass?

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He was being asked if there was any evidence that the new regulations on extended maternity leave would deter employees from employing women of childbearing age. (A pertinent question for the Department for Unintended Consequences, a body sorely needed by this government. Its sister department, the Office for the Bleeding Obvious, is also missing from the current pantheon.)

I assume he meant "anecdotal" - but his accidental neologism was quite fun. That's what we pay high-flying lawyers so much for, I guess.

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"However for the benefits to be reaped, firms need to focus on integrated applications that span different lines of business and different technology sets. Any difficulty in getting, for example, ERP, CRM, HR and business intelligence software to talk to communicate with each properly could hinder business efforts in general. IT just has to be fit for business. "- from a Computer Weekly podcast special received today.

Yet another example of some technobabble squeezed out from the marketing sausage machine without any proofing. I don't know why I continue to report on such tortured and slapdash English, I really don't - it is so prevalent and so many people are careless about what they write. Sigh.

As for 'ERP, CRM, HR' - perhaps it's the noise of the reader being sick in a bucket?

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We carry many different mntaiocides for mens health.

You don't need to be embarassed about iemtncpoy any longer, Cialis is one of the leading elcrteie dncsftiuyon maiditonecs on the market, for the last 5 years!" - spam message

A novel use for an anagram generator - making real words into incomprehensible rubbish to defeat the spam filters (unsuccessfully in this case). Perhaps the idiots that actually respond to this sort of dross can't spell either.

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Ingredients for a large bowlful (serves 10-12):

1 packet bulghur wheat

1 large carrot, 1 courgette, 1 small yellow pepper, 1 sm red pepper, 1 sm green pepper, 1 red onion

1 lemon, 2 cloves garlic, a large handful of fresh garden herbs including lots of mint and parsley (balm, thyme, chervil, oregano etc. optional), slurp of extra virgin olive oil, S&P

Borage flowers to garnish

Method:

Soak wheat in cold water for an hour or two, then drain in a sieve 'til fairly dry (or squeeze in a teatowel if in a hurry). Put in a big bowl.

Chop the vegggies finely (which takes ages but is worth the effort). Add to the bowl.

Make a dressing with lemon rind and juice, crushed garlic, chopped herbs (stalks and all), oil and seasoning. Pour over mixture and stir well, adding more salt if necessary. Leave to mature for an hour or two while you sip some nice wine. Then go and pick some borage flowers by gently tugging the centres to loosen from the stem, and sprinkle over the top. Perfect!

Tip: you can add other veggies too, but unless eating all at once, avoid cucumber and tomato which go watery and spoil it. Leftovers keep for a day or two in the fridge otherwise.

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He replied that he never endorsed any political party, observing that "the word politics comes from 'poly' meaning many, and 'ticks' - blood-sucking insects".

Of course it doesn't - but in some ways his explanation is close to the truth!

You can hear the clip for a few days.

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But today I saw a new - and pretty odd - double plural today - inelegantly combining an ignorance of a very common Latin word, and of punctuation, in a single word!

"The credit crunch has meant rates, products and criteria’s are changing on a daily basis".

Cringe. I shan't name the guilty party, as it's someone connected with work...

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Spammers have a vested interest in elegant variation (how many synonyms can they invent for male appendages for example?) - which - they hope - gets them past the spam filters so many people use. Some of the results are accidentally quite poetic - if somewhat lacking in understanding of 'English as she is spoke'. This one caught my eye:

"Greetings, brakes a software? Qualitative replacement is necessary!"

I guess they really meant "Hey you, is your computer knackered? Buy some illegal software from us and we'll finish the job for you, guaranteed cheap." But I have a vision of some robed sage declaiming the phrase out of a lighted window in sonorous tones!

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http://whatabunchofspeciouscrap.com

Sale 25% Discount

Our World Wide patent writing tools enable simple sentences to become more sophisticated and professional.

Enhance your writing with:
Grammar check
Thesaurus
Spell check
English Dictionary
Templates
Punctuation corrections
Improved clarity" - from today's spam, and the fictitious, or at least syntax-errored, Mr Write Right [Andrew%20Goefferies@whatabunchofspeciouscrap.com]

(Names have been changed to protect the innocent - or at least to deny our Andy the pleasure of any web traffic.)

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Actually, what the twerp is suggesting is discretion, not discreteness, for his/her dubious pharmaceutical products. However, I guess that the target market is probably not known for its intellectual or grammatical abilities.

Discrete means separate, distinct, self-contained - as in "the population of Uplyme parish lives in several discrete settlements, including Uplyme proper, Holcome, Harcombe and Rocombe".

Discreet means hidden, private or covert, as in "your package of expensive fake pharmaceuticals will be delivered in a discreet brown envelope, so no-one will know how sad you are."

I think that some of the confusion may come from that close relative of discreet: discretion - which has ony one "e".

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You are global and local
You are agile and regulated
You are speed and quality
You are growth and lean"

You're what?

Who was paid to write this gibberish I wonder? I came across the Teleform site as I'm writing a user guide for a client. I thought I might find out more what the product did, but instead, I came across this wonderful jargon-fest:

"Cardiff Teleform is a cornerstone piece of the Cardiff Intelligent Document solution.   It is the only solution that allows you to unify all of your paper-based processes throughout the enterprise, even processes in different departments, businesses and geographies.   This unified approach ensures you a consistent experience and full auditability of all of your processes.  TeleForm’s bullet-proof enterprise-class design ensures zero down time and unlimited scalability as the number of documents flowing through TeleForm increases. "

I nominate this for the Golden Bull Award. It's as stuffed with meaningless clichés as a plum pudding is with dried fruit. Yummy.

I think it could be summarised as "This product assists your business by automating data capture from forms." But I could be wrong, of course.

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No, he has hold of the reins of power.

Monarchs reign, and horsemen hold the reins to steer their steeds. Presidents preside.

Oh, and it never rains but it pours, especially if you don't proof your copy!

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http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/page/item/epeng001.shtml?src=ip_potpw

- look now, as the clip will only be there for a few more days.

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I don't know if it was the Doctor or the journalist who failed to get it right, but he or she meant exacerbated. Just because the spell checker didn't complain doesn't mean it's the right word! There is no substitute for proper proof-reading or for understanding of difficult words.

Exasperate means to annoy exceedingly; exacerbate means to make worse.

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