Tag Archives: humor

commentary

crash blossoms

Now there’s a name for the phenomenon of ambiguously or bizarrely worded headlines: “crash blossoms,” as suggested by a poster at the Testy Copy Editors site in response to the headline “Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms.”… Crash blossoms are a variation of “garden path sentences,” a type of sentence that leads the reader into grammatical or logical sinkholes that were not intended.

(via GOOD)

For someone who loves a good pun, crash blossoms, also known as garden path headlines, might just beat out the old standbys.  While I might not laugh out loud that easily, these had me chuckling at my desk a few moments ago, and so I just couldn’t resist passing them along.  Enjoy!

From whence the term came:

  • “Violinist linked to JAL crash blossoms” (“If this seems a bit opaque, and it should, the story is about a young violinist whose career has prospered since the death of her father in a Japan Airlines crash in 1985.” John McIntyre @ “You Don’t Say”) Continue reading →
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fun!

whoops

Jon Seale recently charged a slice of pizza and a Coke to his Visa card. The amount he saw on his online statement: $23,148,855,308,184,500.

The global gross domestic product is, by contrast, estimated at between a paltry $60 trillion and $70 trillion.

The North Texas man tells Robert Siegel that after he quit laughing, he called the bank.

“The girl that answered the phone actually kind of choked when she saw the number on her screen,” Seale says. “They have assured me they will take care of that.”

Seale was not the only person who experienced the glitch. It turns out that a small number of people, all using their Visa cards, were charged the same amount.

“My son made the comment that maybe with this amount of money we could afford to get season tickets to the Yankees,” Seale says. “I told him for this amount of money, we could buy the Yankees.”

(via All Things Considered)

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