eponymousarchon

I often browse through the local Friday Ads small ads magazine. While I don't often buy things this way, I enjoy the range of items for sale. They also have a wonderful run of accidental (and often charming) errors and typos that raise a smile.

In the 90's, sellers had to phone-in their ad content to over-worked and non-technical call handlers.  This caused a continuous stream of 'Omega' computers and 'Epsom' printers advertised for sale. Now that most sellers submit their ads via email or text message, this kind of thing is much rarer (but usually much more mind-bending when it does happen).

Thankfully, there is still an old staple (ahem) of the Ad magazines to fall back on, untouched since the 80's. As a sales feature (and to aid browsing) the first two words of an ad are set in bold type - free of charge! The catch in this is that the typesetters embolden the first two words exactly. Whether you want this to happen to or not and without care of the consequences.

Unfortunately, the sellers don't always take this into account when providing ad copy:

Also: Just to prove me wrong, this week's issue has *two* printer cartridges for Epsom printers for sale. No Omegas though. Sadly.

And today's earworm is: "Ninety-nine per-cent  of gar-goyles look like  Bob Todd..."

Thank *you* Half-Man, Half-Biscuit.

/mug/coffee: 58% synced.

I feel that this says everything about Microsoft's new search engine that needs saying: ( http://www.little-gamers.com/2009/06/02/bingo/ )

Good News: I went in to town at lunchtime to do a little shopping - and the walk out was very pleasant.
Bad News: I was looking for 0.7 mm 'H' grade pencil leads (Bear with me on this)
Good News: I didn't find any. (See above)
Bad News: But I did check at the art shop.
Good News: Er, I bought you a present as well while I was in there dear?

(kyte is very long suffering with regards to my enthusiasm for art supplies. Sorry dear.)

You know, local elections always bring out the worst in some people, and parties.

Returning home from Farnborough yesterday, myself and Kit noticed that we were passed a sign for one of the 'issue' political parties (the UKIP, I believe), poking over a fence insisting "Say NO to unlimited immigration".

Being wishy-washy Guardian readers, we were both annoyed by this but Kit was the one who broke and commented on it first:

Kit: "You know, no-one's actually advocating unlimited immigration. At all."
Me: (picking up the theme) Say NO to misrepresented issues!"
Kit: (immediate) "Say NO to straw men!"
Me: (thinks) "Actually, that's what both they and us are saying - but we mean very different things by it."

And by then the car was well past the sign and the conversation changed.

I was following a link on mental health research that interested me when the penny dropped:

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/science-news/2009/thinning-tissue-in-right-half-of-brain-signals-increased-risk-of-inherited-depression.shtml

'National Institute of Mental Heath'  ...and a logo that is made up of the initials. The Americans have a research facility called 'NIMH'.

Did Mrs. Frisby teach them nothing??

At some point you'll need one of these:

http://noquedanblogs.com/diseno/haz-el-amor-y-no-la-guerra/

What the twitterati do when twitter's servers fall over again: http://noquedanblogs.com/?p=6255

In fact that whole damn blog is lovely and its RSS feed has now been lovingly slurped.

Also rernarkably handsome:
noquedanblogs.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/03/google.jpg

Today on Freecycle someone is offering bags of 'chicken poo' and someone *else* is offering horse manure by the shovel-load. It's that kind of day.