Celebrating Sarcasm

Gems from English English

Eager to preserve the English language against a rising tide of nonsense, we asked readers to compose a piece of prose crammed with as many infuriating phrases as possible. Christopher Howse is amazed and amused by the torrent of replies.

(Courtesy: www.telegraph.co.uk.)

1)Proactive, self-starting facilitator required to empower cohorts of students and enable them to access the curriculum,” said part of an advertisement for a teacher sent by Brian Smith.
The cohorts will be empowered by the faciltator enabling them to access the curriculum .Some anti-social elements ?

2)Our profitability is on a downward slope,” wrote Peter Seaton, in the authentic voice of unthinking management, and we must examine all avenues to flush out unnecessary costs. Please go away, sharpen your pencil and have a rethink.”
All avenues should be examined to flush out unnecessary costs.Sanitation is of the utmost importance in management.

3)It’s not the end of the world, but, to be perfectly honest with you, when push comes to shove, you don’t want to be literally stuck between a rock and a hard place.While it is not the end of the world, when push comes to shove, you dont want to be stuck in those unmentionable places ,surely.

4)On the ground, you know, there are basically tons of dudes using English wrongly, but, basically, my single criteria is to expose language thats not fit for purpose? I guess, you know, thats what u r trying to do with this competition, yeah? Wicked. Basically, theres literally tons of words not used properly? But, you know, at this particular moment in time I want to look forward, not back, so we can move forward together? My particular skool was gr8, with teachers on the ground doing a brill job. Thats how come my English is so good? Kid’s today basically ain’t got a chance in hell? Untill we get the teachers we deserve the problem is basically a no-hoper. Cool. Basically, thats it, basically. ATB, Mr Les Bolton.How come this guy’s English is so good ? We hope he is not having his tongue in his cheeks !

5)The report into the crash said if there hadn’t been an error on behalf of the lorry driver, less people would have been affected.When asked to explain, the driver said “No problem. I myself personally think there’s no worries at this moment in time. The amount of people involved was not a lot. Whatever. Have a nice day.”Not many people are involved in the crash .Just a few..Not many bones are broken .Have a nice day.
6)Retirement has required a rigorous and robust reassessment of our core competencies, visions and values. Leveraged away from our work-stations, a raft of financial and strategic options underpins and overarches the reinvention of our lifestyle mission statement.It is only after retirement that they have assessed alll the core competencies ,visions and values.While in service such an assessment was not considered necessary.

7)A re-evaluation of our methodologies has led to a sea-change. Tasked with delivering sustainable growth in our external horticultural environment, a work-in-progress encompasses benchmarking the broccoli, risk-assessing the radishes and applying change management principles to the diverse peripherals on the compost heap.Benchmarking the broccoli ,risk-assessing the radishes and change managing the compost heap are part of the vision statement, especially the compost part of it.Let us engage this man as a consultant for our Business Process Reengineering execise.

8)Let’s stop obsessing and get down to the nitty gritty of fleshing out the gender issues. John. I’m wanting to hear inclusiveness and ethnicity here. A raft of blue sky thinking to challenge accepted orthodoxies. The bottom line is about empowerment and at the end of the day getting up to speed working 24/7 towards a coalition of understanding through best practice. This can only be fully achieved if the glass ceiling, in inverted commas, is transformed into a level playing field where the goal posts cannot be moved without leaving a substantial carbon footprint which inevitably would consign us all to the expediency of existing between a rock and a hard place. We must pick up the ball and run because we can no longer wait for the smoking gun of the next denial of service attack to consign us all to the wheely bin of history.Earlier we have flushed out unnecessary expenses . Let us now flesh out the gender issues.A raft of blue sky thinking is urgently needed. For this the glass ceiling has to be transformed into a level playing field.(We don’t mean we should level down the glass dome and start playing football there).The goal posts cannot be moved without leaving a substantial carbon footprint . This carbon thing would consign us to that God awful place between the rock and a hard place. We must run because we can no longer wait for the smoking gun of the next denial of service attack to consign us to the wheely bin of history.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/portal/main.jhtml?view=DETAILS&grid=&xml=/portal/2007/06/14/nosplit/ftannoy114.xml

Contrary to the common notion that paying taxes can be a painful experience, researchers at the University of Oregon say the practice actually may trigger feelings of satisfaction and happiness.

“Paying taxes can make citizens happy,” Ulrich Mayr, a professor of psychology, said in a release accompanying the study in the Friday issue of Science.”

That warm glow of altruistic satisfaction is yours when you pay taxes. It has now been found that the smirk you find on the face of the income tax officer when he makes a heavy demand on you is a product of altruism as well.Actually he wants to fill your life with a sense of purpose and a meaning in an otherwise drab life . He also motivates you to start working harder so that you earn more and pay more taxes the next season.
http://www.cbc.ca/money/story/2007/06/15/taxes-study.html

  A draft advertisement for the post of cricket coach for the Indian Test Cricket coach

The candidate shall have the following qualifications:

• Should be of foreign origin (preferably Caucasian); Australians will be preferred since Indians including us perceive all Australians to be straight-mouthed
• Coach and his family should have no issues with spending 4-5 months in extreme hot and humid conditions of India
• Coach should be willing to wear BCCI provided t-shirts for key public events
• Should be willing and able to bear occasional slaps from cricket fans
• Able to communicate reasonably with players having different levels of English skills (from Sehwag to Ganguly)
• If chosen, will not refuse offer within 3 months from the date of announcement”

http://www.desipundit.com/2007/06/13/job-announcement

“TIRANA (Reuters) – Reports that U.S.President George W. Bush had his wristwatch stolen while shaking hands with Albanians on his weekend visit are false, Albanian police and the U.S. embassy said on Tuesday.

“The story is untrue and the president did not lose his watch,” a spokesman for the embassy in Tirana said.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070612/od_uk_nm/oukoe_uk_albania

Paris Hilton says she is locking up her “dumb” act and throwing away the key. Hilton revealed her new outlook in a weekend phone call to Barbara Walters from a county jail medical ward where she is serving out … via WJLA-TV Arlington “

Ok, this has got to be weird news. Jail is a message from God? I was wondering who wrote all that drivel she spoke of to Barbara Walters, but I was hoping all that money buys smarter people than this. Or is she counting on the public to be stupid enough to buy this?”

http://www.topix.net/news/weird/2007/06/hilton-says-shell-no-longer-act-dumb

Comments

His lordship had lost his favourite pants and had to face a lot of hardship
Tears streamed down his face; with these pants such was the relationship.

“WASHINGTON – A judge had to leave the courtroom with tears running down his face Tuesday after recalling the lost pair of trousers that led to his $54 million lawsuit against a dry cleaner.

Administrative law judge Roy L. Pearson had argued earlier in his opening statement that he is acting in the interest of all city residents against poor business practices. Defense attorneys called his claim “outlandish.”

 A page from the prison diary of Paris Hilton

“Day 5: Gandhi went to prison. So did Martin Luther King Jr. So did Robert Downey Jr. and Martha Stewart Jr. and I think Nelson Mandela Jr. Mandela was imprisoned for, like, 50 years or something for being black and also for driving an uninsured vehicle, if I’m reading Wikipedia correctly. Nicky often mentions me and Gandhi and how incredibly thin we both are and how she wonders if he used bronzer.”
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-kenney5jun05,0,4717524.story?coll=la-opinion-rightrail

I am sure Paris Hilton,following Gandhi’s example, will take to the goat’s milk and pea-nuts breakfast and spin cotton cloth from the spinning wheel .She will also probably write her autobiography   on the lines of My Experiments With Truth

At the dry-cleaner’s, His Lordship lost his pants
Perhaps to the callous and irreverent white ants
The laundry failed to deliver despite his rants
This deficiency attracted 67 million bucks damage
Computed carefully on the basis of loss of image
The kind Judge finally agreed to drop his pants
But what about the fraud of signs in the laundry
Of guaranteed satisfaction and same day delivery
The agony caused is worth 54 million you agree
Only some few millions will restore his sanity
Since we cannot sue the white ants for perjury.

(“WASHINGTON – A judge who was seeking $67 million from a dry cleaners that lost his pants has loosened the belt on his lawsuit. Now, he’s asking for only $54 million, according to a May 30 court filing in D.C. Superio

Roy L. Pearson, a District of Columbia administrative law judge, first sued Custom Cleaners over a pair of pants that went missing two years ago. He was seeking about $65 million under the D.C. consumer protection act and almost $2 million in common law claims.

He is now focusing his claims on signs in the shop that have since been removed. The suit alleges that Jin Nam Chung, Soo Chung and Ki Chung committed fraud and misled consumers with signs that claimed “Satisfaction Guaranteed” and “Same Day Service.”

But Chris Manning, the Chungs’ attorney, says that can be considered fraud only if the signs misled a “reasonable” person. No reasonable person, he says, would interpret them to be an unconditional promise of satisfaction.”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070606/ap_on_fe_st/odd_67_million_pants)

An interesting piece of news which has recently caught the public attention is the confusing bathroom signs at the MacGuire’s Irish pub which send men to the women’s bathroom and women to the men’s.Now what is the outcry about ? The confusion is deliberate and built into the signs by the owners.If for the past 10 years or so the signs have been there and nobody seemed to mind them why has it suddenly hit the ceiling now ? Of course the Governmental intervention has come only now. All the while the public seems to have been enjoying the confusion as a joke. Jokes are jokes and will the authorities accept such funny institutionalised gaffes and allow a systematic leg-pulling of public by the pub owners.

A very interesting idea that emerges is the debunking that is going on in the background.The pomposity of the governmental regulation is as funny as the confusion of the bathrooms.Neither the bar owners nor the customers seemed to have any objection to the bathroom confusion which was only seen as a funny joke .If the regulatory authorities had a problem it was not the public interest they had in mind but a mere non-compliance of some obscure regulation in the rule-book. Hence the “deal” supposed to have been reached between the bar owner and the authorities in terms of which while the original bathroom doors with their confusing signs will be retained an additional set of flush doors will be installed which will show the signs correctly.
http://www.wtlv.com/news/strange/news-article.aspx?storyid=82924