Strange, But True

Sometimes real life is stranger than fiction.

First we have a man carrying a dead weasel being accused of assault. The victim asked, “Why are you carrying a weasel?” Police said the attacker answered, “It’s not a weasel, it’s a marten,” then punched him in the nose, dropped the carcass, and fled.

Up next, a friend of mine volunteers at her local rehab shelter where she meets all kinds of used and abused women.  This tale is one that actually happened… it’s a tale of ” redneck lovin’ ” to use the abused woman’s words (we’ll call her Marylou) as an example of how her ex-husband treated her.

Marylou used to be a housewife. One Christmas, she received two gifts from her husband: a toaster and a dildo. She gave him a confused look and that’s when he said to her, “If you don’t like the toaster, you can go fuck yourself.”

Last up, we have Titanic II sinks on maiden voyage.

Most people would think twice before buying a boat named Titanic II. And sure enough, when Briton Mark Wilkinson took the 4.8-metre cabin cruiser out for its maiden voyage, it promptly sank. “If it wasn’t for the harbourmaster, I would have gone down with the Titanic,” Mr Wilkinson, who had to be fished out of the sea at West Bay harbour in Dorset, southern England, told local media. One eyewitness said: “It wasn’t a very big boat – I think an ice cube could have sunk it!”

 

Wacky Industry Jargon

I have been in the job market for a while now and I have talked with numerous recruiters and HR personnel.  Many times their accent to too thick to understand or they pronounce acronyms incorrectly, but I ran into one recruiter email today which made me laugh heartily for a few minutes.


Excellent problem-solving and coding skills

Good understanding of POOP (Principles of Object Oriented Programming) and coding best-practices, e.g. unit testing, reusability, refactoring, etc.

Experience with database development and design, both with RDBMSes and NoSQL solutions

Familiarity with web application architecture and deployment

I didn’t realize that some of what I learned in college was literally “crap”.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30686_3-20004585-266.html?tag=TOCmoreStories.0

Truth is Stranger Than Fiction – Episode 1

(or WTF of the Day)

I was driving along in New York City the other day… no, that is not the WTF… anyway…

I was stopped at a red light when I happened to look over at the garbage truck beside me. WTF?

Cheap Date?

Cheap Date?

What’s the story behind the plaid shirted, child sized doll strapped to the under-fender of a garbage truck?

Other interesting things I’ve seen this past week in which I do not have a corresponding photo to show is a mailbox shaped like a small block Chevy V8 (Maine).  I’ve also passed one of those fish shaped mailboxes with a rope tied to it’s tail that led to a “stick fisherman” silhouette a few yards away as if it was catching the fish-box (Delaware) — that one made me laugh out loud for a good five minutes.

I’ll be posting more when I can find the friggen photos.  I have filled up an 8gig card and working on another 2gig one.  That’s about 1500+ pics with a few videos tossed in the mix.

Spell it like you mean it

As we grow up and learn new words, sometimes the words we hear are not spelled quite like we imagine them.  I’ve always been an avid reader of fantasy and sci-fi as our family bookshelf at home was stuffed with my mother’s large collection of the stuff.  I was reading Tolkein in grade school and Ray Bradbury in middle school.  Along with the territory came a lot of large words that sometimes required me to pull out the 50 lb, foot thick Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary that we had.  I hated to pull that out often, so many times when I ran across a big word I didn’t quite understand, I took the context of the word and made a “best guess” and continued on.  While most times I found this method worked quite well and allowed me to expand my vocabulary immensely, it backfired a few times.

My favorite example of an English word that sounds nothing like it’s printed (because it’s French): rendezvous.  When I first encountered this word in print, I couldn’t pronounce it and wasn’t in a position to look it up (remember kids, this was before cell phones, internet and even personal computers).  I pronounced it as “rez-a-ven-dus” for that was as close as I could get.  In looking at the context of how it was used, I guessed the word meant “ron-day-voo”.  A word I knew from TV and movies, but not one I ever encountered before in print.  For many years, I read that word as “rez-a-ven-dus” and used the meaning for “ron-day-voo” until in high school when I finally had that word on a vocabulary test.  I was surprised to say the least. 🙂   To this day, I still read that word as “rez-a-ven-dus” if I am trying to read quickly since that is how I learned it.

Another one that gets me tongue-tied every time is Worchestershire sauce.  I look at that word and my natural inclination is to say “wor-ches-ter-shire”.  No one understands me if I pronounce it that way though since everyone knows it as “wur-ster-sher”.  I can’t bring myself to say that though.  Closest I get is “wur-chester” and just leave off the last bit.

On another note, my oldest niece made me laugh because she couldn’t say C3P-O’s name correctly last year (the gold humanoid robot in Star Wars for those ignorant of the movies).  At one point, she was teasing her younger sister about spelling words she got wrong and I put her in her place by asking her to spell “c” “3” “p” “o”.  She came back with “c” “p” “3” “o” and she got all red in the face trying not to laugh (she’s a good sport most times).  It stopped her teasing while the rest of us had a good laugh to boot.

Interesting Names and Places

Sgt. Dick Beaver, a member of the same Army company as my brother.  He’s quite a character!

Gottfried Gottfried XVI, also a member of my brother’s company.  Not only is it unusual, but there were 15 generations before him back unto the American Civil War.  He did not name his son Gottfried, thus breaking the line and causing him to be disowned by his family for it.

Latawata Rd. (sound it out loud) is the first offramp after a very long bridge over a lake along I-40 near Checota, OK.

One of the long, main, back roads through town is named Needmore Rd.  At about the halfway point, there is a very short connecting road named Needless Rd.

A small neighborhood being constructed nearby named Camelot Hills and it’s only street is named Arthurs Ct.

Laughed until I cried

Aside from painting walls, installing doors, and various household chores, I surfed a bit until I came across this comic.  I thought it kinda funny at first, and then I found out it kept on scrolling down.  I was laughing so hard by the time I got to the bottom that my eyes were watering. 😀

Back to work, clothes to wash, dishes to clean, garbage to remove, etc. etc. etc.