In this age of laser printer and computer typography, it’s important to understand kerning — the spacing of characters in a proportional font. Otherwise, unintentional gaffes can arise:
(Thanks to dreamattack and Miss Fipi Lele for the photo!)
Remember, Catmas is this Friday! If you have a blog, that’s the day on which you are obliged to post a picture of a cat on it.
If you feel the need to be inspired or just want to see funny cat pictures, go to Catmas’ official site — Catmas.com — right now and learn about the dangers of overfilling the kitty litter box.
This will be the fourth year we’ve celebrated the first Friday of October, the day on which we’re supposed to post pictures of cats to our blogs, a.k.a. Catmas! Now there’s an official site: Catmas.com. Check it out!
[via Howl @ the Moon and reddit] E-greeting card companies aren’t the only people not thinking things through. Sometimes signmakers make unintended gaffes:
I was going to make Yom Kippur cheeseburgers for my Jewish coworkers on the company barbecue, but it looks like they’ve all taken a sick day today. What the hell?
Yom Kippur is the Jewish day of atonement and the most solemn day in the Jewish calendar, marked by fasting and . As such, it’s a little inappropriate to say “Happy Yom Kippur!”; it’s kind of like saying “Happy Remembrance Day!”. Better by far to say something along the lines of “Hope your fast passes easily”.
The meaning of Yom Kippur seems to have eluded the e-greeting card site DeepestFeelings.com. As a greeting card site, they really should know better. This gem is among their Yom Kippur cards:
If you think that’s where the cultural gaffe ends, you’d be wrong. That’s because DeepestFeelings.com also lets you include music with your “Happy Yom Kippur” greeting card. Here are the choices available:
Not only can I send my in-laws a nice “Happy Yom Kippur” card, but I can send them happy holiday music too! Now, which one should I send — Du Hast, the big 1998 hit by German industrial rock band Rammstein (most of whose lines translate from German as “You…You hate…You hate me!”), or J.S. Bach’s Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, quite possibly one of the best classical pieces about Jesus ever written (and ooh, covered by Josh Groban!)? Decisions, decisions…
UPDATE: “Du hast” translates as “You have”; the lyrics page I link to misinterpreted it as “You hate”, which in German is “Du hasst”; note the extra “s”.
(By the bye, can anyone tell me if there is an occasion when Du Hast is a appropriate greeting card music?)
Hey, today’s about atonement. I’ll use Johnny B. Goode!
Here’s a list of 25 signs that you’ve moved on from your crazy university days and into adulthood. It doesn’t necessarily mean that your lust for life has to end — my thirties represent some of the best and wildest times I’ve had (“He doesn’t need a bachelor party, his goddamn life has been a bachelor party,” said my buddy George once). But yes, I haven’t stumbled from a party at 6 a.m. in quite some time.
A quick note about item 24, “You drink at home to save money before going to a bar”: we always did that back at Crazy Go Nuts University. We called it “warming up”.