retarded sign(s) of the day

Three identical banners in the window of a title-loan company. They read:

0%

Interest

Free

Which, to me, with no other punctuation, means “100% Interest”.

Considering that it’s a title loan place that might actually be what they mean, I don’t know.

Billboard Liberation Strikes Out at Domestic Spies AT&T

NSA_2

Originally uploaded by Billboard Liberation Front

Too bad that the remaining Americans who don’t already know about AT&T’s domestic spying probably have no idea what the NSA is, or does.

From the Billboard Liberation Front’s Press Release:

AT&T initially downplayed its heroic efforts in the War on Terror, preferring to serve in silence behind the scenes. “But then we realized we had a PR win on our hands,” noted AT&T V.P. of Homeland Security James Croppy. “Not only were we helping NSA cut through the cumbersome red tape of the FISA system, we were also helping our customers by handing over their e-mails and phone records to the government. Modern life is so hectic – who has time to cc the feds on every message? It’s a great example of how we anticipate our customers’ needs and act on them. And, it should be pointed out, we offered this service free of charge.”

Misplaced Quotes

Was driving back from lunch today and really needed my camera – I saw this on the back of the car in front of me:

The Real Estate “Lady”

Blue Cross halts letters amid furor

Blue Cross halts letters amid furor – Los Angeles Times
Its request to doctors for data that could lead to policy rescissions was widely criticized.
By Lisa Girion and Jordan Rau, Los Angeles Times Staff Writers
February 13, 2008

Facing a torrent of criticism Tuesday, Blue Cross of California abruptly halted its practice of asking physicians in a letter to look for medical conditions that could be used to cancel patients’ insurance coverage.In a statement issued about 6 p.m., the state’s largest for-profit insurer said, “Today we reached out to our provider partners and California regulators and determined this letter is no longer necessary and, in fact, was creating a misimpression and causing some members and providers undue concern. As a result, we are discontinuing the dissemination of this letter going forward.”

The announcement came after blistering rebukes Tuesday by physicians, patients, privacy experts and officials including Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and Sen. Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) after The Times disclosed the practice.

The letter had been sharply criticized Monday by the California Medical Assn., and Tuesday night its president, Richard Frankenstein, said: “This letter was part of Blue Cross’ pattern of unfairly canceling policies when people need coverage most. We’re relieved that Blue Cross is ending this particular tactic but continue to have serious concerns about this company’s practices looking forward.”

It’s good they’re doing this, though they’re still totally evil and this is only a bow to public pressure – I am sure the tactics behind the scenes will stay just as bad or even get worse than they are now. However, I really have to take issue with the crap language they are using, and they’re joined in it by the California Medical Association, who I would like to consider as the good guys — just not linguistically.

I am referring, of course, to the use of “going forward” in their letter, and to a lesser degree “looking forward” in the CMA’s letter. The Dimwit’s Dictionary describes “going forward” as a torpid term – A “vapid phrase used in the place of a vital one.” In every instance that “going forward” is used to describe future actions, it can be deleted without impact to the sentence. Observe:

“As a result, we are discontinuing the dissemination of this letter going forward.”

“As a result, we are discontinuing the dissemination of this letter.”

Exactly the same meaning. After all, we’d hardly expect them (at this stage in humanity’s technological development anyway) to “discontinue the dissemination of this letter” going backward.

Same thing here:

“…continue to have serious concerns about this company’s practices looking forward.”

“…continue to have serious concerns about this company’s practices.”

Yahoo! CEO-Speak Translation

Daring Fireball: Translation From PR-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Yahoo CEO Jerry Yang’s Company-Wide Memo Regarding the Microsoft Takeover Bid

Random Shots Around Town

Periodically as I drive around town I see some random sights which make me stop and ponder. Either they’re silly, or they’re sad, or they’re just odd. Here are a few that have made me ponder, lately.

This broken-down receptacle is a blight on the street, while advertising “Operation Brightside” – one of those urban-renewal “make our streets pretty” kind of failed programs.

Next up we have a house that makes me laugh. Because if you’ve seen regular row houses like we have here in the city, especially around this area, you will notice that this one looks like a ham-fisted giant came by and slammed it into the ground, obliterating its lower story.

And last, and my personal favorite. I have seen these clothes-donation  boxes springing up in various places around the city, and I admire them immensely. Here’s an organization whose whole business model is predicated on the fact that the people it is targeting either can’t or don’t read.

Who in their right mind wouldn’t rather give their old clothes and shoes to a charity organization, if they were paying attention?

And, you have to be fair, they say it on the side just as bold as brass “We gonna resell yo shit for dollas.” and you know that people do not read that. They do not pay attention. And I guess they deserve for some entrepreneurial soul to come and exploit that.

OK srsly?

How lazy/retarded/tech-challenged do you have to be to need or want this thing? (bolding mine)

dotPhoto

“When we were testing the Eye-Fi card with dotPhoto, I took my Canon camera and Eye-Fi card to Amish Country. The next day, I brought my camera to work and started answering email. After a while, I remembered the camera, and opened my dotPhoto account. There were all the pictures I had taken the day before – neatly transferred without any effort, without cables, without time, thought, or software my pictures just magically appeared in a new dotPhoto Album.

‘Wow!’ I thought. ‘This is the way technology is supposed to work – like magic.

This Eye-Fi card has the power to change the way we handle photos!’”

superBadIssues here:

A) You don’t even fucking edit what you upload? Not all your pictures are worthy of going straight-to-web, there, Ansel. That’s how your ‘secret’ collection of rimjob shots ended up on that site that time, ‘member?
B) Seriously? You’re saying that hooking the cable to the camera, or putting the card you’ve already got into the slot of your PC is too much trouble?
C) Seriously?
D) You want technology to work “Like magic”? What are you, a retarded geriatric?

Teh Funny B4 Teh Intarwebs, Pt. II

Another fave, this in more of an “Engrish” tradition, though not from Japanese, from Castilian. This we actually deciphered after much hilarity and head scratching. I think this person (again, this was pre-Intertube-translators) must really have sat down and translated this word-for-word from a dictionary.

Madrid, May, 29 Th. 1997

Dear Sir:

In January of 1994 1 acquired in the REICOMSA concessionaire of the Street XXXXX Fernandez XXXXXXX, my NISSAN PRIMERA Invitation vehicle with registration X-XXXX-XXX.

Until the date, all the services have carried out them in saying concessionaire. In the last revision for change of platinums, filters, controls, etc., at 42.000 km., in the month of May, I observed, for chance upon bending over me in the floor to pick up an object, that the silent met dive and with lacking in pieces of foil.

I commented it in the shop and they indicated me that the guarantee had concluded in the month of January, that they understood my problem, but that reclaim it to the Department of Attention to the Client of the NISSAN, in Barcelona.

Like user and consumer, I understand that all product has a limit of guarantee and the silent, to the same as all the components,- except rubbers, battery, etc.- they should have a period of conservation in good state, of at least the time of the guarantee. I understand that the product doesn’t have the characteristics of necessary conservation, not being necessary be “tecnico” in order to know that a silent is not deteriorated in 3 6 4 months, and therefore, the faulty material utilized in their fabrication, he didn’t arrive final of the guarantee.

The client, it is not technician in order to determine the oxide of the materials utilized by the maker, máxime that is not normal that the same “they are thrown to the floor periodically, in order to examine the first floor.”

I understand that the NISSAN doesn’t manufacture automobiles in order to last just the period of guarantee, nevertheless of being seized would please that I they tell it, so that my next vehicle is not of that mark.

I solicit the attention to the exposed case of their Department of Quality, and they resolve favorably to the one which I consider joust reclamation.

Sincerely,

There was funny before there was internets!

I was chatting with a friend yesterday and we were discussing our love for listening to the English/Scottish/Irish speak. It’s that charming “almost the same but not quite” that makes it seem as if (as I think he said) they’re reading from a script instead of just conversing. (For the record I always had a similarly-strange but different type of feeling about Dutch children when I lived in Holland. I would hear them speaking this perfect Dutch and be all overcome with their mad skillz n stuff. Like “OMG, they’re so little and they’ve learned to speak Dutch so WELL!” and then remember that was their native language and they weren’t learning it like I was. It was weird. Maybe you had to be there, in my head, at that time.)

OK, so anyway that reminded me of some letters I had saved from my customer service days back then. See, before we all had internet access all day we had to find LOLs through our actual jobs. I had a pretty funny job, doing customer service at the pan-European headquarters of a major car company. Once or twice a week I would get these insanely funny letters from customers and then I got to make copies and pass them around the office. Everyone loved me for comic relief. When I left that job I took a few favorites with me (alas, not so many as I would have liked due to space constraints and not having them in digital format for easy transport – there was one series of letters, I think 11 of them in total, from a guy in Iceland that were amazing. Epic. Insane. Hilarious. Oh I wish I had those letters.)

As we were talking about how we love to hear the non-American-English people speak I remembered how great the Brits are at writing complaint letters. They have it down to a highly-skilled art form. There’s a lot of care and time and underlining and righteous indignation that goes into each one. So here’s one of my favorites. This was orginally handwritten, but I typed it out for posterity, careful to preserve exactly all of the underlining, punctuation, parentheses, quotation marks, etc.

Background, this guy lived in Ireland, bought a car there and complained to the main UK office. Having got no satisfaction he then wrote to the head Tokyo office, who sent the complaint back to us at the European headquarters. So he thinks he’s talking to Japanese people, which may or may not have affected his way of expressing himself, it’s hard to tell. Enjoy.

copyranter – I like you

I don’t know what I like the best, this particular quote used to highlight this particular post, the the clever-trousers name of the blog (copyranter) or the fact that someone exists out there who feels at least half as snarky as I do about suck-ass marketing.

Anyway, snark at marketing mayhem is always welcome in my world. Awesome collection of good bad and crazy-ass ads here. Check it out:

copyranter

“Politicians are the same all over. They promise to build a bridge even where there is no river.”

—Nikita Krushchev.

I stay away from politics here (unless a politician does something so visibly insipid as to pretend to know how to play stickball or hatches the meekest slogan in history), because who gives a shit what I think?…

He brought it right after he brought sexy

I was talking to Jeni last night about vaginal centipedes and remembered my own favorite little bit of venereal marketing mayhem. You can see the holes in this paper from it from being up on my work billboard for years.

I love this ad though, seriously. It’s a great example of what happens when all the wrong people with the right intentions (and access to stock photography) get involved in advertising, thinking that just anyone can do it.

Count the things wrong with this picture

Now, I know I live in the ghetto so my address is in this demographic. But still I was shocked to get this cheery 4-color postcard with an offer for $15 off the interest on my “first” [practically criminal] payday loan. Pink highlighting mine.

WTPF?

There’s so much wrong here, so much social commentary inherent and then waiting to be made, that I am somewhat paralyzed with the possibility and I can’t say anything.*

Think on it at your own leisure, talk amongst yourselves.

*I do love the assumption that this will be the first of many, many payday loans in my future. They don’t even front.

Close [your mouth] Sesame!

All Your Magenta Are Belong to Catherine Zeta-Jones

Color + Design Blog / Beware! T-Mobile Owns the Color Magenta by COLOURlovers

Don’t worry trademarks only apply to the industry sector that they are registered under and since DT applied for their trademark in the tele-communications sector you just can’t use the color magenta around anything to do with phones, digital media… oh and just about anything on the internet.

Spot the Error in Logic

Will slogan be for city what ‘Just do it’ is for Nike?

“It’s not really a campaign. It’s an identity for St. Louis,” said Kathleen “Kitty” Ratcliffe, president of the visitors commission, which introduced the new slogan and website at its annual meeting at America’s Center. A local marketing task force worked with a Kansas City firm to develop the slogan and logo.