News and More

This story is remarkable. It actually scored in two departments.

First, from the remarkably-poorly-written sentence department:

10-year-old driver flips van in Tennessee
Oct. 7, 2008 10:08 AM Associated Press

A 10-year-old was driving up to 90 mph when he crashed a van carrying a man who told police he had drank at least 15 beers and a woman who was trying to swallow as many pills as she could when deputies arrived at the scene, Tennessee authorities said Tuesday.

Whoever had wrote this sentence must also have drank at least 15 beers and a pill-swallowing woman. Even if Tennessee authorities speak in run-on sentences, you'd think a reporter could clean it up a little better than this.

Second, from the remarkably-like-a-Jeff-Foxworthy-joke department:

The children - two 10-year-olds and a 6-year-old - were related to the adults, said authorities who declined to further detail the relationships.

If your family tree doesn't fork, "authorities" may decline to "further detail the relationships."

Just sayin'...
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While we're on the topic of less-than-stellar writing, consider this spam e-mail I received this week:

From: Internal Revenue Service notice@irs.gov
Dear Applicant:

After the last annual calculation your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refound of $620.50.
Click on the link below to receive your refound:

http://newspuri.com/IRS-Refound/SECURE/mainpage/www.irs.com/portal/

Please submit the tax refound and allow 3-9 business days in order to precess it. If you don't receive your refound within 9 business days in from the original IRS mailing date shown on "Where's My Refound?", you can start a refound trace online.

Copyright (c) 2008 - Internal Revenue Service. All rights reserved.

You know, I didn't click the link to claim my "refound." I have the feeling that they would give me the opportunity to hand over information that would allow them to access my bank account. Then they could steal my money. Of course, if the quality of this trap is any indication of their intelligence, they would end up falling for a Nigerian scam and lose the money they stole from me. And I refuse to support a Nigerian scam.
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Oh, what the heck - let's stay on the poorly-written-sentence desk. This one is especially ironic as it comes from an article written about a classic literary work:

'Moby-Dick' chosen as Mass. 'epic novel'
Oct. 10, 2008 07:36 AM Associated Press

Melville wrote the book about a ship crew's confrontation with the elusive white whale in Pittsfield.

I've read Moby-Dick. I don't remember the whale or the ship leaving the ocean for a 150-mile journey inland to Pittsfield.
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DETROIT - Three seventh-grade girls at Trinity Lutheran School in Monroe were ordered to strip to their underwear while a teacher investigated the alleged theft of $42, their parents charge.

This could only happen at a private school. In public school, most seventh-grade girls don't have to disrobe in order for a teacher to see their underwear and anything they may be hiding therein.
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And finally, we have at last discovered why blondes are the collective butt of so many great jokes:

Blonde sues over brown dye
Oct. 8, 2008 07:24 AM Associated Press

BRIDGEPORT, Conn.- A Connecticut judge has given the brush-off to a blonde woman's lawsuit claiming L'Oreal Inc. ruined her social life when she accidentally dyed her hair brunette with one of its products.

Charlotte Feeney of Stratford says she can never return to her natural blonde hue, a shock that left her so traumatized she needed anti-depressants.

A Superior Court judge dismissed Feeney's 2005 lawsuit Monday, saying she never proved her allegation that L'Oreal put brown hair dye in a box labeled as blonde. The company also had disputed the claim.

Ummm ... if she was concerned about her "natural blonde hue," why was she dying her hair in the first place? And why can she "never return" to her natural color? Is there some unwritten code among blondes that says once you dye your hair brown, you're forbidden from ever again sporting blonde hair? Or has she simply never noticed that hair grows out in its original color, not the color it has been dyed? And don't even get me started on the whole anti-depressant thing!