Homophone Humour

Bread Pitt
Carrion Items
Good gnus, bad gnus
"If that's an a(u)nt, then that's for me!"

FYI: OED SEZ LOLZ OK... OMG!

TMI?

Das Kapital

Sorry, I don't seem to be able to resist playing with words. Anyway, here's the link I promised to my "W(ee)Seminar" about capitalization in titles/headlines:
Well, Lookee What We Have Here! Thanks, Tina. Best one I've seen so far.

Beware Double Meanings

My favorite example from France: At least they did try to clarify by adding "films or photos", but it still sounds hilarious ;) (Hint: Here again, punctuation can make all the difference - putting "films or photos" in parentheses instead of making the whole thing an enumeration of three forbidden things would have helped a great deal.)

P.S. I'm not even starting on "the enclosure of the castle" and the proper context & meaning of the word "comprehension". I am, after all, not a native speaker myself and don't really have the right to criticize my fellow non-natives :)

The Montgomery Story

Everything you need to know about Dr Martin Luther King and Ms Rosa Parks (and a bit of Ghandi as well) in the form of a vintage (!) comic book. Give it a read.

It's Groundhog Day. Again.

...and once again, the world (the Americanized part of it, anyway - and maybe those who've seen the movie) is looking at Gobbler's Knob in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania (those are real names, I'm not making those up!), to find out if groundhog Phil will see his shadow. Six more weeks of winter?
UPDATE: Doesn't look like it. Now, does that only mean the US eastern seaboard or what?

An English lesson with Mr Schmid

Life is beautiful.

 

 

Every single day...

Somebody reminded me that it's still Christmas on my blog and if I shouldn't change that. I had to agree - but as usual, what I SHOULD have replied only came to me later: It's Christmas EVERY DAY in HEAVEN ;)

 


Monty Python - Christmas in Heaven

Oh my God - it's full of... palindromes?

If you're not afraid of palindromes (an illness commonly referred to as "aibohphobia"), check out one of my favorite Weird Al songs: BOB!

Weird Al Yankovic - Bob von Clipfish

Eat your heart out, Annasusanna!

A blog is when Mr.Weese writes something on the Internet...

Students who know my little vocabulary tests will remember that I keep telling them to avoid the construction "...is when..." at all costs when explaining a piece of vocabulary in English. As some will just as repeatedly point out, it is, of course, theoretically possible to use said construction in a sentence WITHOUT making a serious stylistic blunder. So, for all you advanced English students out there, here's how to do it RIGHT...
Consider the following example:
"Halloween is when many people put hand-carved Jack-o-Lanterns in their front yards." (perfectly correct)
as opposed to
"A cat is when it makes 'meow'". (abysmal)
See the difference? The first sentence actually refers to a time ("Halloween"), as does the relating conjunction "when". "A cat", on the other hand, is not a way of telling the time at all (imagine someone answering the question of "When shall we meet again?" by saying "cat"...)! In short:

Only use "is when" if you want to talk about time!
(In fact, it's still the safest bet NOT to use it at all, I should say.)