The Smarmy Carny

This is a years-old internet classic. I thought of it again today, so I figured I'd be the eight millionth person to post it. OK, OK, so it's more like the 435,000th page to include the info, but who's counting (other than Google)?

Aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at an Elingsh uinervtisy, it deosn't mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht frist and lsat ltteer is at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm. Tihs is bcuseae we do not raed ervey lteter by it slef but the wrod as a wlohe.

According to Snopes, the origins are undetermined, but this particular paragraph was popularized by languagehat.com's RDIAENG post, which also attempts to find the source with varying degrees of success.

A grocery list

This week's site is The Grocery List Collection. Just as you might think, the site collects abandoned grocery lists, scans them, and places them online.

There are currently 1100 lists posted, and plenty of them are mundane — but that's what a grocery list is, isn't it? In the mix, you'll find some interesting lists, like lists of completely unrelated items, lists from the anal retentive (like me), lists worth five dollars, and lists with bizarre items such as kitten faces or poop bags.

You'll see lists from hastily written lists on Post-It Notes to carefully written, multi-column lists on notebook paper. You'll see the world's worst spelling. You'll see the various ways to mark off which items you have retrieved, from check marks to scribbling items off to no marking at all, which happens to be my method of choice.

Other than the pictures of the lists, there's not much else on the site. There are a few features missing from the site that I would have preferred: A rating system and a comments system would have given a community feel to the site and would have brought me back repeatedly. Also, keywords/tagwords would have been nice, particularly if each photo listed all the foods on it, so you could bring up all of the lists including bananas or rank food items by popularity. I have a feeling that either of these would probably require a site overhaul, though. It's too bad.

Napoleon Dynamite

This rules. Dominic Ranz Ebarle Errazo, a 13-year-old from South Carolina, stood up to spell his word in the spelling bee. The word? Chinook . . . but that really doesn't matter.

Errago asked for the definition of the word, and once it was given, he gave a decent Napoleon Dynamite impression and said "Do the chickens have large talons?"

It sounds to me like one of the judges says "We'll check that," followed by (what sounded like) the commentator saying "What was that?" You can hear plenty of discussion from the audience along with one person who actually has a clue give a brief round of appreciation. The commentator then asks "Was that a secret message?"

It's a good thing that Errazo chose the fifth round to make the fun reference, as he went out the following round for missing a simple, common word "nyctapelagic." Everyone knows it's "nyctipelagic!" Errazo ended up tying for 28th place.

Priceless. If I ran this blog for a living, I'd track him down and give him an interview.