2000:  Touched By an Angel
2001:  Picture Perfect
2002:  Go for the Merman, Baby!
2003:  I Think I Remember
2004:  Ribbons and Tears
2005:  It's Right on the Tip of My Tongue
2006:   Sheila's Adventure

IN MY OPINION
Annie

Books Read in 2007

Updated 8/9:
"Maximum Ride--School's Out Forever"

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TIME WASTING

14 August 2007

I think it will come as a surprise to no one that I am very good at finding ways to waste time.  I don't really need any help with that little project.  I do very well all by myself, but this morning I confess to having received much inspiration from San Francisco Chronicle columnist, Jon Carroll.

Carroll's column mentions a web site known simply as "apparel" where he found some marvelous descriptions for its sale items, specifically for sunglasses.  I'll let you read the ones he found in his column.  Here are a couple that I thought interesting.  For "Valentino Sunglasses with rhinestones, the description reads:

"All office of the christian ministry ar shipped sameday vis UPS or USPS. Tracking list testament be emailed. All of our items ar 100% reliable and ar shipped flat from manufactures. FOR RETURNS PLEASE VISIT VISIONSPECIALISTS.ORG"

I'm not exactly sure what sunglasses have to do with Christian ministry, unless these originally were ordered for Jim Jones.

Another brand of sunglasses (Chanel 6006) is described as:

These Sunglasses ar 100% brandmark young and Authentic, verbatim from the producer. They amount consummate through certification of legitimacy, defensive caseful and dust ecclesiastics. Every mathematical product is exactly as pictured.

Maybe they can help me figure out that math problem about the two trains.

Some Marc Jacobs brand sunglasses are described as:

Marc Jacob's distinguishable title - standard work Parisian smart shaken immediately after indie whore coolheaded - is avant garde reductivism at its to the highest degree stylish. Cutting inch in time ne'er voguish, a partner off of Marc Jacobs sunglasses ostentate violation exclusively of fanfare.

Some socks bore the description:

Mediven Plus Rx offers patients stylish graduated condensation therapy in the broadest run of ready-made open-toe styles uncommitted today. Mediven Plus stockings feature film multiplied of the sort modern knitting features as our Radiance and Elegance lines. Blending MediSilk woollen thread upon a more than unintelligible stuff, Plus offers patients who care to hold back their varicosities, blemishes or scarring a considerate root in a semi-sheer stocking.PlusOpen-toe title, unintelligible stuff to hide out veins and blemishes30-40mmHg CompressionColors: Beige Men's leotard upon fly-front gap

At last someone who admits that some of the stuff is "unintelligible" and I really want to know what a men's leotard with a fly-front gap is.  Sounds like something you'd wear at a gay bath house.  (And what good are open toed socks anyway?)

I think we can state with some certainty that English is not the the native language of the writer of these descriptions!

However, that's not the big time waster.  A person commented in Carroll's guestbook that it sounded like the original description had been run through a site called "Lost in Translation."  It's a variation on the old game where you whisper something to someone and the comment makes it around the room and by the time it gets back to you it's hardly recognizable as the message you sent originally.  In this case, you enter a phrase and it translates it into five languages and back into English after each translation.  (They call it "Babelizing.")

I once heard that there was a big international incident because the phrase "out of sight, out of mind" got translated as "invisible idiot," so I thought I'd see what would happen if I "babelized" that phrase.  I didn't get "invisible idiot," but after going through French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish, what I ended up with was "of the Vista of the alcohol it is."

Well, you can just bet that I started thinking of all sorts of wonderful phrases to try to Babelize.

I thought I'd try some Bush phrases and see if I could make sense of them, but I'm afraid I broke the site.  My monitor began whirling around and green gunk began pouring out of it.

PHOTO OF THE DAY

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