I don’t know if this counts, but this error stood for about ten years of successive additions.
Under “UCLA”, under “libraries”, there was this entry:
Hours for all Librarie’s–Recorded message
That may have not been the case. It could always have been made from the remains of Oliver Hardy… <evil grin>
– Bob
Hmm. This isn’t really a blunder in the way the above was, but it’s a related kind of thing, and damn, but it’s just too good a story not to tell.
On Route 1, southbound in North Brunswick, NJ, at the intersection with Livingston Avenue, there is a self-storage facility whose roof is visible from an elevated stretch of the highway. It’s been there for many years, and when it opened, it used that roof for a sign: foot-high white plastic letters attached to the brown shingled surface, reading “PUBLIC SELF-STORAGE”.
I don’t know what they used to attach the letters, but it couldn’t have been very good, or applied well, or both. One by one they fell off over the following years until, around by 1995, the sign stabilized, reading “PUB IC ELF RAGE”.
I still have problems not breaking out into laughter thinking about it.
It never failed to send us into giggles when we passed it, and we frequently took visitors out by the place just to show it to them – and they almost always burst into guffaws when they saw it. Unfortunately, the place renovated a couple of years back, and removed the letters. Oh, the humanity…
– Bob
Statue-tory rape maybe?
Once, a few years ago, I was in a Geoffrey Beene store, paying for my merchandise, when I noticed a sign on the counter listing the prices of various forms of the mens’ fragrance Grey Flannel. The last item on the list was “After-Shave Blam.” What - you shave and somebody shoots you? I pointed it out to the salesperson who told me that that sign had been there for three or four months and that I was the first person to have brought it to her attention.
Oddly enough, it was correct the next time I went into the store.
Then there’s my favorite item from Successories[sup]TM[/sup]. (I’ve posted this before.) I hate Successories anyway, but this just adds to it. Dare to Soar “Your attitude, almost always determines your altitude in life.” What’s the comma for? It irritates me so much (we have that poster in the office and I have to look at it every day) that I just got on their website to complain about it. Maybe it’ll be fixed! :rolleyes:
Our town had some people parking old, non-moving vehicles on the street and decided to do something about it. But before having them towed away en mass the town took out an ad in the local paper telling the owners of the vehicles that they should move the cars and trucks on their own or,
“…the vehicles will be towed away and the owners will be fixed.”
It was supposed to read “fined” but you would be surprised at just how quickly those cars were off the street.
It’s been a long, long time since I read this book, so you’ll have to settle for a paraphrase rather than a direct quote.
It was in one of the “John Carter, Warlord of Mars” books by Edgar Rice Burroughs. One of the good guys was a Martian named Tan Hadron of Hastor.
So, John Carter and his buddy had been captured by the baddies, but the gentleman from Hastor managed to make his escape. The baddie summoned his servants to go chase him down, saying
“Great will be the rewards of the one who catches Hardon…”
When Expo '86 came to Vancouver, and local tabloid The Vancouver Province found out Princess Diana was coming to visit it, they gushed in their headline, SEE EXPO AND DI!
PS. jadailey, you’ve heard of Demotivators[sup]R[/sup], haven’t you? My favourite is “Adversity – That which does not kill me postpones the inevitable.”
There are two examples that have been reported in Comments on Cecil’s Columns:
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On page 60 of Triumph of the Straight Dope, there is a Slug cartoon of Cecil hitting a guy with a blackjack, which has no relevance at all to any of the columns, so apparently the wrong illustration was inserted.
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In the illustration for Has IBM discovered a way to teleport objects?, from page 198 of Triumph of the Straight Dope, the receiving machine is labeled RECIEVE.
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Finally, the SD Official FAQ the answer to question #18 reports, somewhat ominously: “Veteran Straight Dope readers may remember that a column once referred to ‘talking books for the deaf.’ Very funny. It was a new copyboy’s first day on the job. His body has never been found.”
Okay … I’ve wiped most of the tears from my eyes, and the ache in my side is subsiding, altho’ my family thinks I’m demented for sitting at the PC LOL. So, they may be right.
Part of my work involves reviewing (proof reading) technical documents by consultants. Many, many errors. Unfortunately for this thread, most are boring technical stuff.
However, in the spirit of the OP, back in the early 70’s, on a college bulletin board (no, an actual cork board, with stuff held on with thumbtacks) was a 3x5 typed card offering to type term or research papers, reports, etc. The card had several typos on it. Hope the would-be scribe wasn’t depending on that money for tuition. On second thought, I hope they were - Darwinism and all that. (That would be typed, on a typewriter - back in the olden days, when computers filled large air conditioned rooms)
Indeed I have. In fact, I have the despair.com (the actual company who produces them) 2001 calendar, which has place of prominence in my cube at work. I like “Apathy - If we don’t take care of the customer, maybe they’ll stop bugging us.”
Hello all,
I have some.
I work at a large Distribution Center with 500+ employees. You all know us. I guarantee it. My company frequently prints up dozens of flyers and banners which are prominently displayed around the workplace, in high traffic areas no less. These usually are about safety, production, charity, milestones, the usual stuff.
They never fail to produce something interesting.
For instance:
There was a flyer recently denoting 2 warehouse-wide shutdown days, urging everybody to fill out a vacation request form for Jan 26th, and Jan 29th, 20001
That’s right, should we still be employed there 18-thousand years from now…
Recently a flyer showed up stating that 94 or less injury accidents was a 30% decrease from the previous year, and 95-100 accidents would be a 50% decrease…hmmm.
They also have an ongoing posting for overtime, which often states:
‘NO VOLUNTARY OR MANDATORY OVERTIME GRANTED’!
There doesn’t seem to be any end to it either. On the HR door is a colorful poster with a catchy slogan: ‘Learn to recognize danger’ The picture…a ribbon snake in clover. For those of you who don’t know, its a member of the garter snake family…small, non poisonous, tiny teeth. I guess if you are phobic about snakes, you could be compelled to do something dangerous like turn and run into a tree.
Thanks for letting me vent.
Ooooh, Jeff, thanks for the date thing, reminds me of TWO posters at work…
#1 announces our monthly safety meeting, Wednesday, Feb. 14, 20001 - the topic is kinda creepy for Valentine’s Day - poisons
#2 announces that the Employee Benefit Fund will have Valentine cookies and other goodies, on Thursday, Feb. 14.
I guess we need patience, in the first case we have to wait 18,000 years; in the second, only till next year, when 2/14 is on Thursday.
Two years ago my parents gave me a dictionary for Christmas (I know, You’re all jealous!), I opened it up and just casually flipped the pages and the word enertainment lept out of the pages at me. I’ve not opened the dictionary since, except to show co-workers the enertaining entry, in fear of what else may lurk in it’s pages.
I used to work in an office building that also was home to our local paper. Every morning I would buy a paper on the way into work and almost every evening I would have clipped one or two articles that contained mispellings, bad grammar, etc. and put them in an envelope and address it to the editor and left it at the front desk on the way out…This went on for nearly a year before the guy caught me and offered me a job. I told him, “I may be over qualified, I flunked out of college”.
Oddly enough, my first real job after flunking out of college was as a proofreader. I was hired on for a Project at Lockheed-Martin proofreading Trident Missle System Console Mainteance Manuals. The paper manuals in binders had been transcribed to PC, and reprinted into binders. I had to compare a new manual to an original and notate it to make it match the original exactly. I spent weeks mostly un-fixing grammar and punctuation corrections made by the transcribers…Sometimes I love this country sooooooo much it makes me cry.
God knows why, but I have a tendency to pick up any Star Trek novel to read the synopsis on the back. Years ago, I read one wherein the Enterprise was in search of a Klingon vessel that had attacked several colonies (or something like this). The line read: “Enterprise tracks down rouge Klingon vessel.” I had horrible images of Klingons in drag thereafter.
I recall reading a review of the tenth anniversary show of “Dr. Who,” wherein Dr. Who must team up with his first two incarnations, and the title was listed as “The Tree Doctors.” And according to my cassette box for this episode, it starred John Pertwee. Jon Pertwee is the late actor’s name for non-Who fans.
Sir
A few weeks ago, my school newspaper had an article with the headline, “Apartment Ravished by Fire.”
I hope it was as good for the building as it was for the flames.
–Scribble
This morning I was watching tv and an advert came on for a local furniture store, and the presenter mentioned a sale on “Bedroom Suits”. I had to wait till the commercial came on again to make sure I wasn’t hearing things.
I wasn’t, he said Suits, and the screen, sure enough, clearly read Suites.
That may be a regional thing. I know some people from the York/Harrisburg/South-Central Pennsylvania area and they say “suit” for “suite” when talking about furniture sets. To them, a “suite” is a hotel room or office setting.
I learn something new everyday…I’m living In Binghamton, NY just a few hours from the Harrisburg Area…so I guess it’s a good thing I learned this now…saves looking the total fool when I make my next Furniture purchase.
Local shoe shop’s sign:
EXPERT SHOE DYING
–I also know of a pile of typos that bug me from the backs of books, though few are as entertaining. E.g. Stephen Rodefer’s Mon Canard has a blurb that mentions the singer “Chris Conner” (it should be Connor); Thomas A Clark’s Tormentil and Bleached Bones has a blurb that begins, “The rythmns and details of the landscape…”.
Country: The Rough Guide is mostly well-edited, not too full of errors, but there’s one doozy, a photo of “Townes Van Zandt, San Francisco, 1998”; just below it comes the info he died in 1997.
–N