YSaC, Vol. 452: No, really, that’s irritating. Stop it.
possible crt monitor offer, or things
“this monitor may have been bought in the second half of 2003, and may be an NEC Flat MultiSync 97F, maybe 19”, with a black case, or something like that
it may be as though it was dropped more than once in the past, although it may have seemed to work fine afterwards, but it may not have the base, the thing that monitors rest on and swivel over
there may have been a widening in the . maybe like seam in the case from how the monitor was originally made because of being dropped
it may not be large, but one could notice it if one looked at it
the structural integrity of the monitor has seemed to be fine since the last time it was dropped, it may be
this may have been years ago
the screen may ‘need’ to be cleaned, and there are some scratches on the plastic casing on the front of the monitor, and some maybe like small drop things of paint on the right side, it may be
it may be as though it seemed to work fine the last time I used it
may have been in the last month and a half or so
it may be as though I would be willing to give this away, if someone wanted it, in a particular case
I live not very far from downtown Pensacola, about 45 blocks from Palafox and Garden, it may be
it may be as though I ‘could’ provide more information or provide pictures, possibly, if someone wanted
it may be as though I would want to say something like pardon me if my way of writing will have caused undesirable things
“, or other things
It may be that you are not pardoned, as it may be that your pretension is annoying. I may have accidentally tripped and posted your ad on YSaC, and it may be that I’ve given you the tag trying too hard. See, because for all the may be‘s in there, the one thing you definitely did do is irritate me.
I may wish to thank Amanda for this listing. Meanwhile, also in our linguistically irritating/trying too hard category:
Would You Like to Saddle Up a Couple of Goldfish and Swim to Alaska? – 23
a little about me you ask? well okay.
as a kid, instead of a bike, my dad would make me ride a pogo stick to school.
the theme to the golden girls is my 3rd favorite song of all time
i love music i could go on for days listing bands i like, but a little example would be bands like crooked fingers, battles, black keys, mgmt, woody guthrie, ben kweller, caribou.
i play guitar and write songs?
i like ending any type of sentence in a question mark? especially when i write papers for school? just to mess with the professor?
i love art?
i like not shaving for extended periods of time? i usually shave when i go back home and my parents tell me i look like a hobo?
flannel is fun?
so is riding bikes?
my goal in life is to put on fake weddings for alzheimers patients, or become a famous tap dancer who quickly rises to fame and falls from fame even quicker.
i enjoy laughing?so tell me a little about yourself, and why you deserve to see my show and tell collection……….your photograph gets mine……………..
Not astonishingly, upspeak is just as annoying in print as it is in real life. If any of my students ever did this, it would only mess with me about as long as it would take me to draw the big red ‘F’ on their paper. If I was feeling particularly cheeky, I might put a question mark after it — just to mess with him. I suspect it may be as though I am the one enjoying laughing then.
Thanks for sending this one in, Marta!
it may be that these people are idiots?
it may be that they have a screw loose? or it may be two?
it may be that your hunk-o-junk monitor is worth exactly the asking price?
it may be that we need to invent Lola’s internet people filter to keep people like this from using it?
it may be that pushing these people’s reset buttons will make a better world?
I may respond to this ad. And I may do it just to duct tape his or hands together. So there may be a teaching moment here.
That’s the worst personal ad I’ve ever seen. I can’t even tell if it’s a guy or girl. I guess that’s less important than his/her love of obnoxious writing habits. I’m assuming it’s a guy but that’s something that should be clear!
But remember? You ‘May’ get a picture in return if you send one in?
From the shaving reference I would say “male”(I’m not going to say “man” because that implies a certain level of maturity that he quite obviously lacks), because when a woman goes for a while without shaving it’s not really noticable to others unless said woman opts for a ‘sleeveless shirt and short-shorts’ look.
On a related note, “…my parents tell me i look like a hobo…”. This is supposed to make you more attractive to me, that your own parents compare you to a homeless person? And are you sure it’s the lack of shaving or could it be an utter disregard for personal hygiene? Wow, your in-box must be packed, super-stud.
It’s a guy — it was in the m4w ads.
now, you of all people should KNOW that that isn’t necessarily the case…people post in the wrong categories all the time!
Wow. I did not know it was possible to be that vague while being so specific. It’s a “possible crt monitor offer, or things”? So it might not be a monitor? What is it, a pile of old magazines? A fondue set? It has the unmistakable flavor of a writer for whom English is not the first language. The grammar and punctuation are horrible, but at least everything is spelled properly and it’s not written in the barely intelligible, eyeball-melting pidgin most CL posters seem to use. The second fellow needs to learn that the ‘shift’ key can be used for other things besides the question mark. And then make an appointment with the nearest mental health professional, ’cause he ain’t right.
i may be forced to kick you upside your head. if you actually have one. grrrrrrr.
I have had a widening in the. And it’s not attractive.
Don’t you hate it when that happens? Your . starts looking more like a :
Can’t comment. Too irritating to read.
(But it is a wonderful chance to tell one of my favorite anecdotes from the Stone Age when I was a graduate assistant. I was riding the bus to campus and in front of me were two young undergraduates complaining about teachers’ unreasonable demands for their research papers. One young lady said, “She told us not to use colors on the title page! Can you believe it? Well f* her! I’ll use color on my title page if I want.”
Can I describe my joy when I walked into the classroom and found this young lady sitting there, ready to turn in her paper with the prettily decorated title page?
F her. Yes I did.)
“some maybe like small drop things of paint”
So you mean ‘drops of paint’.
This guy must be exhausting to be around.
Since it may be a computer monitor, it may be hooked up to the internet. If that’s the case, then that may NOT be paint…
Ewww… drmk, can we ban someone for spreading horrific mental images? I’m out of Clorox and my brain needs bleaching now.
Just kidding sj80, but still, ewwww.
I may live in the Pensacola area because my wife ‘might’ be in th “Navy” here. It might be that this is just how we ‘communicate’ around this area.
Hey, I’ve lived in Pensacola my whole life, and I do not “communicate” in the fashion of which you may be speaking. (I may have purposely written a ridiculous sentence so as to not end in a preposition; again, not the way I usually speak.)
The first ad may be a little less annoying if you imagine Strong Bad saying it. Give it a shot.
Try it as Brainy Smurf.
I prefer Strong Bad. Or Homestar.
This is exactly what thought while reading it, and I’ve only seen Homestar/Strongbad a couple times. Sort of came out as Strongbad’s spoken word parody of Enya’s May It Be.
I don’t think I have EVER encountered anything quite so painful to read, and then you go and post TWO of them. My brain still hurts.
The first ad is the longest disclaimer I’ve ever read. Congratulations, Craigslist poster!
Okay, I like it with the Strong Bad voice.
Still, I’d like to clarify for the few remaining semi-intelligent teens out there, we don’t all speak like that.
Thank you for your time. I hate txtspeak and like the English language the way it is the same as you guys do.
Marry me. 😀
Wait. What’s the age of consent where you live?
you rock!
Can I admit I couldn’t read the full ads?
lays head down on desk
You could make it into a drinking game. Every time you see “may be” or a question mark, take a shot. If you do manage to reach the end, you won’t care anymore.
I don’t believe I could reach the end , even if I only did a shot every third “may be”.
The training classes I just completed had an inquistive gentleman who posed quite a few “what-if” scenarios. We turned it into a (bottled water) drinking game, but it was quickly abandoned, due to lack of potty breaks during the seminars.
I’m a lightweight myself. By the second paragraph I’d be curled up under the table singing Jimmy Buffet songs off-key.
The last training class I went to I sat next to a friend of mine from another branch. The instructor had the habit of clearing her throat constantly. I don’t know if she was working on a hairball or what, but it really distracted me from the class.(It was Roth vs. Traditional IRAs,which would just be *SO* riveting otherwise.)My friend started poking me with his pen every time that the woman cleared her throat, so of course I had to poke him back. I ended up with a bruise the size of a nickel on my leg.
I don’t know, turning these into a drinking game in that manner sounds like a guaranteed recipe for alcohol poisoning for even your most dedicated alcoholic.
Legal advice from McWackyLitigation.com:
To keep from getting the pants sued off you, use fuzzy terms and end every sentence with a question mark.
“it may be?”
“it may have been?”
“it may be as though?”
“it may “need” to be cleaned?”
“I may still have a pogo stick stuck in my skull?
I think a lawyer might have advised that first numbskull not to sell something that sounds like it fell off the back of a truck (is it sad that all the ‘may bes’ made me forget what they were selling?)
But he’s not even selling it! He says he “may be” willing to give it away. Take that however you want, but he doesn’t list a price.
as a kid, instead of a bike, my dad would make me ride a pogo stick to school.
So when this poster was little, he was actually a bicycle and his dad made him ride a pogo stick? Or, no…his dad used to be a kid (not a bike, as you might have suspected), and made this guy ride a pogo stick to school. Somehow. Wait, what?
I’m not super-knowledgeable about grammar; there are probably lots of gaffes that I miss. But this kind of sentence structure seems to be everywhere lately and it’s driving me batshit. And I’m not just being snarky when I pick on this; I actually did parse the dad/bike thing the second way initially.
A few days ago I was on fmylife.com and one of the anecdotes began with “Today, while driving home, a homeless man jumped in front of my car…” and I swear I almost registered an FML account specifically to comment, “How could a homeless man be driving home?“. I am THAT OLD AND CROTCHETY.
I don’t have the excuse of age(yet), but seeing things like this does make me want to grasp the monitor and shake it hard. I know I’m not the best writer in the world, but I do try to at least make my sentences readable. Don’t they teach basic sentence structure in grade school? I think it comes right after learning to read without moving your lips. This is what happens when you show stuff like Hanna Montana instead of Schoolhouse Rock.(I have nothing against Hanna Montana, I just think Supergirl did the whole “using a wig as a secret identity” thing much better. And she could fly.)
Dangling modifiers, Count Blah. I used to keep a list of the funniest ones. Like
“When only five, my father taught me how to play golf.” That’s some young father.
And the best: “Having too much sex on television, children are influenced…”
“Having too much sex on television, children are influenced…”
I LOVE that. Too much sex on television only hurts you if you fall off, which is really easy with those new flat-panels. Unless you have some sort of harness system.
*cough*
Not that I know anything about that.
Ah, dangling modifiers. Thank you! I’m less of a “grammar expert” than a “grammar idiot savant” so I never know the official names for these things.
I may have wanted it when it was new……….
“Possible crt monitor”? It’s either a cathode ray tube monitor, or it’s NOT! There’s no maybe! Half-tube? Half-cath (sounds like a Starbucks drink)? Half-ray (Man Ray’s junior assistant)?
What is not just possible, but is in fact actual: the author is an idiot and the item in question is a POS.
The second ad is so frikkin’ annoying that I would put up with correspondence with this mutt so that we could set up a meet and I could kidnap him and take him to grammar and spelling boot camp, run by ex-English majors and similar folk (commenters on this site, for example). He’d learn proper use of punctuation, grammar, spelling if necessary, and not to piss off the people reading/grading his papers – in other words, we’d definitely press his Reset button. That’s if I ran the world, anyway …
Sorry if I’m more curmudgeonly than usual, but this is supposed to be a holiday in the US. My firm is open, however, and there’s no work coming in because everyone else we do business with seems to be on holiday!
*begins rummaging through desk for flask*
I’m in the same boat holiday-wise. I work at a state-run credit union so we only get state holidays off, not federal. That makes Presidents’ Day and Columbus Day my two least favorite days of the year, mostly because of the ten million phone calls asking “Are you open today?” Like I broke in because I love working here SO much I would want to do it on my time off. Yeah. Right. And then I’ll just break into the dentist’s office on my way home and give myself a nice root canal.
Maybe you’ll have time for a Pap smear?
Only if I can call ahead and get them to put the speculum in the freezer.
POS? POS? Hmmmm..is this a techno computer term?
Oh no? Then it must stand for….Piece of Shit from the bygone era of 2003. I wouldn’t doubt if it had an amber screen…
(?) – oops! Almost forgot my mandatory interrogatory squiggly thingy because I’m a professor-messing, flannel-wearing EDGY unshaven hobo!
BTW..This post was brilliantly hysterical Lo
My brother-in-law worked in Customer Service at one of those big box electronics stores (which shall remain nameless as I do not want to get sued into oblivion and end up living under an overpass with no internet)and one of his duties was helping with returns. He told me that eighty-five to ninety percent were considered PEU. When I asked him what that meant he told me,”Product Exceeds User”. It quickly became one of my favorite acronyms. When I read ads on CL I can’t help thinking “PEU” over and over.
I knew someone who worked at a company (in customer service/support) where they had a couple of good codes for problems. One was PEBKAC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard and Chair). My favorite, though, was the 1-D-10-T error.
Here in the tech support world, we prefer:
ID 10 T
Pronounced eye-dee-ten-tee
As in, “yeah, this user got an eye-dee-ten-tee error. I rebooted him.”
Same principle. They pronounced it one-dee-ten-tee, though.
“…Half-cath…” It sounds more like an unpleasant medical procedure than something I’d want to drink.
Yes, it is easy to tell you are both at work. I can see you both sitting there, thinking, “Is it 5 yet? Arrrgh, it’s only 2:05, exactly two minutes since the last time I looked!”
At least you can do YSaC at work! I never get to do YSaC at work, so if you see me commenting on here in the morning, you know I am “working from home”. 🙂
For me it’s 5:30. Which right now would be one hour and twenty-six minutes. Not that I’m counting or anything.
Nor me.
One hour and two minutes to go …
I work 7:30 to 6 four days a week. We were open today, but most people didn’t seem to know it, so it may be as though some work was processed, or things. It may be as though I could wish for a few more days like today? I love my job?
Please, please, please may I be a DI in your boot camp? I’ll bring sammiches!
Me too! I have fried bologna on white with mayo and processed cheese product slices.
I may have laughed loudly at the previous comments. I may have caused a scene in my campus cafe area. I may have read the second ad twice because I could not understand it the first time. I may have the desire to invent a grammar slap to use on the people who posted the annoying little ads.
While it is perhaps not quite weird/obnoxious/catchy enough to be Band Name of the Day (though if someone else thinks so, I won’t argue), I think that ainebegonia’s “grammar slap” should go RIGHT up next to JcT’s now-famous “Reset” button for people on The List of Things to be Invented When YSaC Commenters Rule the World. I’d like to make the personal request that the grammar slap be effective both actually and virtually. Thank you, ainebegonia!
I vote for the ‘Grammar Slap”, too! It should have a button right next to Reset. I can’t picture it as a band name, but it would make a nice video game.
Grammar Slap! – As a member of the Punctuation Police, you hunt down and viciously assault CraigsList posters who have only a tenuous grasp of the English language. Bonus levels include a French Prudential furniture maze and the mysterious zen Table of haiku.
I like the game idea. I could write one, but the only kind I could handle is those old text games.
You are sitting at a desk.
>N
To the North, there are dreary, gray cubicle walls.
>S
To the South, there are dreary, gray cubicle walls
>Inventory
You have: sweater, dirty coffee mug, computer with maybe a CRT monitor, keyboard, mouse.
>Use computer
What do you want to do with it?
>CL
I don’t understand that command.
>Craigslist
You are logged in to the interwebs. The Craigslist website is open.
>Read
The most recent ad: “… (inane drivel, very bad grammared) …”
>Grammar Slap
Who do you want to slap?
>Ad Author
A new window opens on the monitor. You see a video of the ad’s author writhing on the floor in pain.
>Inventory
You have: sweater, dirty coffee mug, computer with maybe a CRT monitor, keyboard, mouse, intense feeling of satisfaction.
Wow… that was a lot longer in writing than the idea was in my head.
Don’t forget your “Internet People Filter”, Lola. If we can invent that, we don’t need the Grammer Slap! People get caught in the filter and no matter where they go, they can’t get on the Internet. If other people stupidly let them use their internet, then THEY lose Internet for, say, 24 hours. Just as a warning.
How about a feature similar to those old cartoons where the character could reach through the phone and strangle the character on the other end? Screw rocket cars and self-cleaning kitchens, I want that!
It may be Grammar Slap is the patented superhero with guaranteed success.
I think the Grammar Slap needs to be a t-shirt. Anyone want to design it?
(Yes, I’m still working on t-shirts. Grumble grumble grumble.)
I wish I could draw so that I could execute the design for this concept. I NEED a Grammar Slap t-shirt. NOW. No pesky trademark issues, right? Just put YSaC…
I think the “Grammar Slap” should be simple and wholly luddite recognizable.
It should be in the vein of the red plastic “Panic” button people attach to their keyboards when they want to be humorous and hip.
Voila (or should I spell it WAH-LAH?)!: Two Spencer Gifts items under one concept.
Yet another vote for the grammar slap. An idea whose time has clearly come.
Tee-shirt… hmmmm…..
P.S. I absolutely adore this software that automatically breaks up strings of periods into sets of ellipses. (Witness the two orphans above.)
I contacted a woman on eBay about custom ordering some cat collars (yes, I am That Lady)and the only punctuation she uses is ellipses, whole strings of them. No capitolization, no apostrophes, nothing. Her emails resemble some sort of mutant Mad Libs with these random spaces and sentence fragments. I am tempted to ask her if she ever posts on CL.
Speaking of band names, I am sorely tempted to steal ‘Mutant MadLibs’ for mine. We don’t exist yet, but someday….
Or if not for the band name, then definitely for the title of the first album.
It may be that I can believe in six impossible things before breakfast and therefore it may be that I don’t even need to read your ad to may be irritated.
I may feel like I have been dropped into a bad “Get Smart” episode and may be speaking with a spy…but, I don’t know for sure.
When did Grammar become an elective course in school?
I think it was right around the time people were debating over whether ketchup(or catsup) could be considered a vegetable.
It may be that someone was dropped on his head as a baby. It may be that this happened more than once.
It may be his parents were those hippies they warned us about in school and it may be they left him in the oven with the gas on one too many times.
Is it bad that I’m just a bit tempted to put him back?
What kind of parent would make a child hop all the way to school? How far was this school, a mile? Ten? Farther? All that bouncing up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down…
Sorry, I just made myself dizzy. That might explain what’s wrong with the boy.
It may be that the second ad is a personal by Dr Evil from Austin Powers:
“Dr. Evil: The details of my life are quite inconsequential.
Therapist (Carrie Fisher): Oh no, please, please, let’s hear about your childhood.
Dr Evil: Very well, where do I begin? My father was a relentlessly self-improving boulangerie owner from Belgium with low grade narcolepsy and a penchant for buggery. My mother was a fifteen year old French prostitute named Chloe with webbed feet. My father would womanize, he would drink, he would make outrageous claims like he invented the question mark. Some times he would accuse chestnuts of being lazy, the sort of general malaise that only the genius possess and the insane lament. My childhood was typical, summers in Rangoon, luge lessons. In the spring we’d make meat helmets. When I was insolent I was placed in a burlap bag and beaten with reeds, pretty standard really. At the age of 12 I received my first scribe. At the age of fourteen, a Zoroastrian named Vilma ritualistically shaved my testicles. There really is nothing like a shorn scrotum, it’s breathtaking, I suggest you try it.
Therapist: You know, we have to stop.”
The true indicator of evil being that “the theme to the golden girls is my 3rd favorite song of all time”……….Really? (question mark very much intended)
I’m trying to figure out how one could have the hipster-leaning taste to mention liking Ben Kweller, and still claim to like the Golden Girls’ theme simultaneously. I’m hoping there’s irony involved in the GG reference, but this guy seems like enough of an asschapeau that he just might be serious.
Thank you for being a friend, by the way……..
“Asschapeau” is brilliant and classy. Nicely done.
I encountered the term “asssombrero” the other day, which amused me (tho all of those ‘ssses’ looks a little odd), so I was playing off of that concept …
I agree, except when I first read it, I was thinking “asschateau”, which isn’t nearly as classy.
Hipsters are seriously into The Golden Girls these days. I wish I was joking about this… but I’m not.
It makes you wonder; how terrible are his other favorite songs Maybe the ‘Jeopardy’ theme?
I ‘could’ have thought of a possible witty comment, but I may be ‘need’ scraping the brains that dripped from my ear off the nice carpet… “, or other things.
Check out a Kiwi or an Aussie sometime. I mean God Bless Paul Hogan and Peter Jackson, but nations of CHRONIC upspeakers.
It may be we have it ‘all’ wrong. It may be that the poster ‘achieved’ a deep realization that the monitor is illusory. It may be that they ‘do’ not want to present it as ‘fact’, being as it is illusory.
It may be that I am nominating this for the zen category.
It may be that I am “amused” by the fact that the ad in the corner of this blog all day has been for monitors “, or other things?
It may be that I am “amused” by the fact that you’ve been on this blog “all day”. You may be at work, too? (and I don’t mean that as a question, I’m just being quirky)
The pogo stick comment is a Brian Regan joke minus the punch line. This is obviously one of those people who persist in retelling jokes despite the fact that they don’t actually understand what makes them funny. The resulting mutilation causes severe pain to those of us who know the original joke (and have a sense of humor more advanced than “Hey, everyone’s laughing at that, it must be funny”). To everyone else it’s just confusing.
There is nothing I can say without detracting from the perfection of today’s discussion. Sarajean and Lola-I grovel at your feet, unworthy to bask in the glow of your wit today.
Dear Sir or Madam,
I may want your possible CRT monitor. I may come by your “place” between sometime between noon and midnight sometime next week, or next month. I could pay for it in a kind of a cash that could be considered legal tender in someplaces. It is probably made of paper. It may also have been made on a copy machine or color printer. It may get you into some “issues” with a bank or store so you may not want to pass it on. Look for me soon. I may be driving a blue or black or gray car or truck or minivan or possibly boat. I am white, black and or hispanic fe/male.
“Sincerely” yours.
I now have a train coach full of serious commuters looking at the looney old woman who is laughing hysterically. Thanks to you all for taking all the pain of my working day away. Grammar slaps, reset buttons, asssombreros and all. Respect as apparently the young say.
the 2nd one’s headline and especially his “goal in life” is just epic.
For the monitor one, I would say their writing did, indeed, cause undesirable things.
Is it wrong that I found that personal ad so hilarious?
That this person has too much time on their hands?
That I also like the question mark idea?
Because it makes you read it differently?
And that it is so annoying?
haha.