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“Your Honor, I Don’t Recall.”

21 Jun

June 21, 2016

I watch a lot of TV court shows. I TiVo The People’s Court every day, because there is nothing better than watching people sue over things like old coffee cans and hurt feelings. And while I’ve gotten a little tired of Judge Judy (who is getting just a bit soft and yelling just a bit less this season), I’ve gotten into her new production, Hot Bench, which I also record. That show, unlike literally every other court show out there (I’m looking at you, Judge Ross), is actually interesting. That show has three judges listening to the cases at once, and they sometimes argue among themselves about the outcome.

hot bench

But what drives me nuts about the shows are the litigants, not the judges. They all think that since they are in a court room they have to sound smart. For example:

“Your Honorable, me and my boo was operating the moving vehicle, AKA my car, for which I had been owning a drivers license…” etc etc etc….

They can’t just say “I was driving my car.”

But the worst thing is when they think they are being slick by saying “I don’t recall.”

“I don’t recall signing my life insurance away to my gold-digging wife.”

So did you do it or didn’t you? If you mean to say you didn’t do it, say “I didn’t do it.” Saying you don’t recall means that yes, maybe you did it, it is possible, but you just don’t have a memory of it. It isn’t a denial, it leaves open the possibility that whatever it was really happened, and it sounds to me like shiesty way of trying to lie without really having to tell a lie.

I can believe that you don’t remember if you had two waffles or three for breakfast on June 3rd, 2011, but I damn well know you remember if you hit a deer with your car last week.

 

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The Worst Line Ever Written In All Of Star Wars

23 Nov

November 23, 2015

Aftermath, written by Chuck Wendig in, I think, about 20 minutes, is the new Star Wars novel, bridging the events of Return of the Jedi and The Force Awakens. If you ever wanted to read a Star Wars book not starring any Star Wars characters and not taking place in any familiar Star Wars locales, with a cast of characters you really don’t give a bleep about, then Aftermath is the book for you.

 On the other hand, if you can overlook the little things, like plot and dialogue, it’s really not too bad. To be fair, there were 6 pages with Han Solo that were interesting. The other 360? Not so much.

However, there was a hidden gem of awfulness stuck in the middle. It was a line that jumped out of the page and stuck on the bottom of my shoe like a sticky lump. For no particular reason, the scene shifted to a fight between bounty hunter Dengar (from The Empire Strikes Back) and a new character ridiculously named Mercurial Swift.

I cannot stress strongly enough that Mercurial Swift is not a potion used by Harry Potter, it is a character’s name in Star Wars.

DengarIG88Fett-TESB30

Dengar is the smelly looking one on the left.

I believe this to be the worst thing ever written in all of Star Wars, and remember- it is in competition with every single thing Jar Jar Binks ever said.

Page 182
(Dengar to Mercurial Swift)

“Oh ho ho, you think I’ve lost a step, huh?”

“Can’t lose a step you never had.”

Dengar guffaws. “You little scrap muncher. I was putting away bounties while you were still in your space diapers.”

“What’s it say about you that you’re still in your space diapers?”

“You don’t much like me, do you?”

Anyway, aside from the fact that Dengar speaks like he’s in an old Errol Flynn pirate movie (“Oh ho ho”), what’s with “space diapers”?  Are they different than regular diapers? Do little kids in Star Wars sleep in space cribs and eat space oatmeal? Why was it important to stress that these are space diapers?

NOTE TO CHUCK WENDIG: On any planet they would still be called plain old diapers.

NOTE TO SELF: Do not buy any more books written by Chuck Wendig.

 

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