Went to camp and got a severe dose of kiddie flu. Also got really hungry because I refused to eat at a dinner table that bore this sign.

Trust me, there was more than one teacher

I was also arrested by security guards at a wildlife park for attempting to vandalise the following signs.

Death to all grocer’s

Not. A. Plural.

Then I got home with an incompletely-healed dislocated toe which, together with the flu, forced me to withdraw from last night’s almost-certain-to-win GroupThinkFC match. I’ll let Ant fill you in later. I’m too depressed.

From journalist (sic) and ‘million man’ Andrew Bolt:

John Pilger says Japan wanted to surrender, so the bombing of Hiroshima was yet another American war crime. Japan’s war-time Prime Minister begs to differ…

Gosh, whom to believe about Japan’s intentions - it’s leader or Pilger?

(Thanks to reader Owen.)

And grammar courtesy of another reader from south-east Queensland.

Over the past sixteen hours GrodsCorp has been blessed by a couple of visits by its number one fan, Timmeh Blair. Timmeh kindly came out of obsessive lurker mode to point out some apostrophe errors in my post about apostrophe errors on the Hungry Jack’s Facebook page. I humbly claimed the errors and thanked Timmeh for his help. But it must be a sad night at Chateau Blair, with no good shows on the telly, when Timmeh has nothing better to do than that.

(By the way, Timmeh leaves comments under his first name only — and the ’shift’ key must be stuck — without a link back to his own blog. This surely isn’t because he wants to try and stop his minions back home from finding out that he pays more attention to blog opponents than he does to them. Surely.)

But imagine my surprise when I checked the rather newish GrodsCorp group on Facebook this morning and saw this.

Look a bit closer.

Awww, shucks. Isn’t that sweet? As Toaf said last night about Timmeh: “He wubs his Grods.”

So I was checking my Facebook this morning when I saw this advertisement.

A more desperate and pitiful excuse for a corporation, with less sense of brand building, I’ve never seen — I mean, they can’t even write “flame grilled Whopper” proper

A couple of days ago Bridgit exclusively revealed the shittest advertisement ever made, advertising the shittest promotion ever promoted, and now it seems that Hungry Jack’s is also begging people to become “fans” of a shitty fast food chain on Facebook. I simply had to check it out so I clicked on the ad, expecting to see an abandoned corner in the wastelands of Facebook, but was horrified to see…

…1,952 fans!!!!1!

I’m genuinely shocked. How can somebody’s life be so devoid of meaning that they find themselves pledging their fandom of a fast food chain publicly? How? But then again, clicking on a button to become a “fan” of something on Facebook takes one movement of the hand, a fraction of a second, and barely a moment’s thought. These people would probably sign up as “fans” and then forget about it. They certainly wouldn’t go to the pathetic effort of actually writing anything on the Hungry Jack’s page, would they?

By clicking submit on your comment about a fast food chain you agree that you are a loser with no life

They would. Anastasia, Krystie (sic) and “Utegirl”, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

And the orthographic Nazi in me just can’t help pointing out the double-barreled apostrophe error on the chain’s super-exciting photo gallery page.

Hungry Jack’s: FAIL.

Remember how I ranted a few months ago about totally un-1337 people and organisations lamely embracing technology to try and sell their message?

Even religion — smarting from the way that younger generations are beginning to turn away in droves — is embarrassing itself by attempting to use technological tools to reconnect with tha kidz. The Catholic Church has well and truly entered the 1990s by discovering the power of mobile phone SMS. They have been sending text messages to worshippers in the false hope that using semi-literacy for Bible passages will bring them instant cred.

Well, now the Pope has sent his first text message. And it’s an apostrophe FAIL.

“Young friend, God and his people expect much from u because u have within you the Fathers (sic) supreme gift: the Spirit of Jesus - BXVI.”

Aaaaargh!!1!

AAAAAAARGH!!!1!

Needs more pastel

Since Ed has succumbed to the temptation we all try so hard to resist - not posting lolcats (oh, glorious lolcats!) - and clearly therefore GrodsCorp is now a site of more flexible editorial standards than we might otherwise have assumed, I think he’ll appreciate this graph posted today at GraphJam:

Amusing RSS feed plus grammatical grumpiness! If only there were cute kittehs.

I’m a self-confessed orthographic Nazi who suffers from OCD (Orthographic Compulsive Disorder). I get irrationally angry when I see incorrectly used apostrophes. I mean, not just kinda grumpy, but ANGRY! I get pictures in my head of people dying violent deaths and a sort of red film appears in front of my vision and I start flexing my knuckles and my teeth clench and I find myself walking into hardware stores asking for prices on chainsaws and…

Oh well, you get the idea.

However, I do take comfort in the fact that at least two people share my disorder. Bridgit Gread hates it when people put an exclamation mark inside brackets in the middle (!) of a sentence. Bron goes postal when people… overuse… ellipses…

Now, when Bridgit, Bron and I had our OCD support group meeting last night we decided that it would become increasingly easier to cope with our conditions as we found more people who share it. So, GrodsReaders, can you please share with us your own OCD triggers in comments?

Australian Education Union (Victorian branch) members today received an email from Branch President Mary Bluett. In the email Mary reiterated the reasons behind the series of four hour rolling stoppages that begin tomorrow and attached a recent letter (PDF) she wrote to education minister Bronwyn Pike, along with Pike’s response (PDF). Remembering that I am a total orthographic Nazi and a teacher, imagine my horror when I saw this in Bluett’s letter.

My retinas!

Firstly, Mary Bluett used to be a teacher so she has no excuse. Secondly, that must surely be somebody between Mary Bluett and the fax machine whose job it is to do a spot of proof reading and prevent that sort of shite ending up on the minister for education’s desk.

Mary Bluett’s school teachers obviously spent too much time forcing her to watch indigenous apologies, debate Australian politics and plant trees.

UPDATE (8:10pm): As Junaman points out in comments there is an error in Bronwyn Pike’s letter that I totally missed.

Bluett - 1, Pike - 1