english is a funny language

There is no egg in eggplant nor ham in hamburger; neither apple nor pine in pineapple. English muffins weren’t invented in England. Quicksand can work slowly, boxing rings are square, and a guineapig is neither from Guinea nor is it a pig. And why is that writers write but fingers don’t fing, grocers don’t groce and hammers don’t ham? Doesn’t it seem crazy that you can make amends but not one amend? If teachers taught, why didn’t preachers praught? If a vegetarian eats vegetables, what does a humanitarian eat?

In what other language do people recite at a play and play at a recital? We ship by truck but send cargo by ship. We have noses that run and feet that smell. We park in a driveway and drive in a parkway. And how can a slim chance and a fat chance be the same, while a wise man and a wise guy are opposites?

You have to marvel at the unique lunacy of a language in which your house can burn up as it burns down, in which you fill in a form by filling it out, and in which an alarm goes off by going on. And, in closing, if Father is pop, how come mother’s not mop?

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the most boring page on the internet

Some people are born boring; others like John Ingram, thrust boredom upon the rest of the world. And so as we tread upon the gargantuan bog called the Internet, we slip and wonder: why? Why did John Ingram create a site that has nothing but just 413 (exactly) words of text? Why did he create a site that has no meaning, no reason to exist, and no way to earn him even a cent, forget a fortune? But it takes all kinds, and Ingram is one of those. He is rational in his thought, grammatically correct in his writing (although) for some reason he hates capital letters), and has enough reasons to keep the world’s most boring site alive at all times since its “founding” in 1996. Is that why his site has now been translated into 12 languages including Finnish, French, Swedish, Norwegian, and, hold your breath, ladies and gentleman, Pig Latin? World War II is obviously history since here we have a German as well as a Hebrew translation sitting right next to each other. The site, Ingram informs us...

abort, retry, ignore poem

The infamous Abort, Retry, Ignore message box of Windows, with no option given to close it. Found this classic and fun poem about the "Abort, Retry, Ignore" message. I have been able to trace back the source to Annoyances.org. Here it is: Once upon a midnight dreary, fingers cramped and vision bleary, System manuals piled high and wasted paper on the floor, Longing for the warmth of bed sheets, still I sat there doing spreadsheets. Having reached the bottom line I took a floppy from the drawer, I then invoked the SAVE command and waited for the disk to store, Only this and nothing more. Deep into the monitor peering, long I sat there wond'ring, fearing,  Doubting, while the disk kept churning, turning yet to churn some more.  But the silence was unbroken, and the stillness gave no token.  "Save!" I said, "You cursed mother! Save my data from before!"  One thing did the phosphors answer, only this and nothing more,  Just, "Abort...

folding the brick - talent wasted on perfecting crease on glass

It is such a demeaning thought. A smartphone that has been able to do nothing more than pick up calls and take photos for nearly 20 years now, is on a new race. To get folded. A dumb expensive brick that it already is, today's so called smart-phones are the epitome of anti-innovation and waste of Earth's resources. A company today chooses to advertise its camera compared to its own from last year; and call it innovation. Obviously, siring five thousand talented staff from around the world means at least one line of improvement deserves to come out in the camera department. The same in the processor. But is this innovation? Innovation stopped on the day smartphone was made public. To give it a little credit: today's cameras take better pictures, but other that that, it's nothing. It has become a a slab, a brick! And now companies are on a new race to fold this brick. What could be more humourous and pathetic at the same time? Wasting so much of Earth's resources plus...

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