Monday, October 22, 2007

where to begin


Josué saw this in a coffee shop in Seattle. Where do I even begin? And what is the deal with all the parentheses? And the alien exclamation point smiley faces with three eyes? anyway, if you are "a" "collector" of cars that don't "run" maybe you should leave this person a "message".

32 comments:

Briarwood Pups said...

Found your blog today and wow - I had no idea quotation marks were so frequently misused. This is very scary.

Brandon Dilbeck said...

Does it say the car has a "faily 'good' body"? I'm not convinced that this car works in any capacity.

Anonymous said...

I am sooo gonna start using the alien smiley face on my handwritten notes.

Oh, and (I'm)gonna start inserting parentheses( just for the heckuvit(!)

SSteve said...

Ok, a lot of the signs we see here are the products of less-then-learned people, but this one has got to be the result of some weird drugs.

I know this isn't the blog of unnecessary slashes, but "197Ø" FØRD Rancherø is just nuts. Sure, you can put a slash through a zero to distinguish it from the letter O but then why put slashes through the Os? Are they the Scandinavian letter Ø? Was this vehicle manufactured by the little-known Norwegian car-maker FØRD? Maybe that's why it's such "A" "Collector's" Dream!

jspencer said...

I think he just wanted to get it put on every grammar and style blog out there, in hopes that more people would see it and someone will buy it.

MmmYarn said...

What a bewildering ad!

Anonymous said...

i think the flier had to be flashy, odd, make it look like the owner was trippin' to make up for the crappy car

john said...

Man, I bet there are some gooood drugs stashed in the door panels of that one.

Anonymous said...

Not to sound sexist, but this note must be written by a woman, or girl rather.

désirée e. said...

this is the kind of thing that makes me "not" interested in seattle

James Gilmore said...

A møøse bit my sister ønce.

stocknuke said...

wudnt buy this one even if it had 2000 dollars in the trunk !

fallfares said...

Quote .... overload.... can't ... take it....

Anonymous said...

This is so funny! I love your site! I've been enjoying oddly used " " for a while. Perhaps I'll contribute at some point.

David Birky said...

ssteve - wouldn't the car maker be Fjørd?

Unknown said...

Mmmm this is just... a "dream" come true...

Anonymous said...

Jimmy: I was smiling throughout this site, but didn't laugh until your post. Off-thread, but good.

Anonymous said...

hahaha this ad is nuts, but pretty much amazing!

And Jimmy, Mynd you, møøse bites Kan be pretty nasti...

:-D

Crystal said...

My brain hurts...

Unknown said...

Holy crap, dude.

"1970" = I have no idea what year this car was made or stolen.

It has "not" run in 1.5 years = It's currently teaching a class on existentialist philosophy, so it's been pretty busy.

because I (walk) to work = I hover, therefore I don't need this piece of shart.

But seriously, I kinda like the alien smiley faceclamation suns.

Ben Hamilton said...

This must be a cry for help, I can't believe someone actually wrote that, stood back and then thought, "No, yeah, that looks perfect. People will definatly understand that."
It must be a code. I'm not sure they want to sell their car at all.

Persephone said...

I guess that they wanted to make it "pretty".

Unknown said...

I love that the car is backwards in the picture!!!

Anonymous said...

Well, regarding "1," (although the whole thing is "1," I guess, since there is no "2,") the fact that the car has "good tire's," a buyer would probably want to know what thing(s) that a tire owns are good and why the tire owns them, what makes them good, and which tire has ownership. It's definitely something I'd ask if I was going to leave this person a "message."

Erin said...

There is so much going on in this one, so I'll just point out my favourite bits. I love the smiley faces with three eyes. My personal rule for exclamation points is that one or three are both acceptable, but if you're going to use two, you've got to make it a smiley face. I've never met a three exclamation point smiley face before, though. I especially like the second one, which appears to not even be intended to function as exclamation points anymore.

Then there's the "faily 'good' body." It's sort of like saying, "Here's another hint that this car is rubbish, in case you didn't pick up on that yet."

Also, I like "ATTN'. Seriously?

I love the effort that clearly went into decorating. You've got lots of little designs, various colours of highlighter, and a smiley face stamp (I'd like to point out that I also have that stamp...somewhere, which makes me happy).

Sarah said...

That looks like something my crazy aunt would write. And those alien exclamation points are so familiar...

Unknown said...

(If) anyone calls and leaves a "(message"), then they must not speak English and only be able to see the picture (which isn't that good anyway)

Anonymous said...

My favourite (part) of this faily ('good') "post" is all of (the) brackets(!!!)

Anonymous said...

My favourite part is the establishment of time allowed to view the vehicle. That's not sketchy at all, nope!

aliena said...

"I" is clearly a reference to the mysterious exclamatory alien visages.... And isn't the triple-underlined "A" eerily familiar? ~ Can you say, "'A' (sick) puppy"?!! http://www.unnecessaryquotes.com/2008/01/puppy.html

Unknown said...

I like how she used the Norwegian symbol in the "Ford" so it's more like "Fjord"

Sluggo said...

I'd like to point out the lack of closing brace at the top, and the one-item numbered list (whose only item actually consists of two points, separated by a slash, possibly implying an 'or' relationship). Basically what we have here is a person using all of the following for emphasis in the same document:

1. Underlining
2. Double-underlining
3. Triple-underlining
4. Double quotation marks
5. Single quotation marks
6. Hyphenation
7. Bracketing (using both parentheses and curly braces)
8. Circling
9. Single exclamation points
10. Triple exclamation points (with apparently mandatory mouth)
11. Title-casing
12. Uppercasing
13. Highlighting (in multiple colors)
14. Other idiosyncratic forms of text decoration, like placing slashes through the letter 'o'