Is This Real Life?

As mentioned in my last entry, a guilty pleasure of mine is reality television. Now, I am sure that some of you are probably rolling your eyes at my love for "bad" TV, but considering there are likely to be no more than five people reading this, I ask you to please bare with me and try your best to overlook this major "character flaw" of mine -- at least until the end of this entry.

To me, watching reality TV is a time when I can turn my brain off and just enjoy whatever escapades other people are getting into throughout their daily lives. And until recently, shows like "Say Yes to the Dress", "Little People, Big World", and "Survivor" served as my form of "relaxation therapy". There have, however, been a flood of new shows taking over my favourite channels. Shows like "Swamp People", "American Hoggers", and "Here Comes Honey Boo Boo" it seems, are fast becoming the new fad of reality programming.

I group these shows apart from the ones first mentioned because these all require a special kind of attention when watching. It's not enough to just watch mindlessly -- now you have to read subtitles. If reading subtitles wasn't enough, you have to exert an honest effort just to understand what most of the sentences mean or are referring to. The people in these shows speak English, yet somehow manage to leave us guessing at what they are actually trying to express.

Some of you may have started reading this with a dislike for reality TV, but let me conclude this by suggesting that it really does offer something for everyone. Whether it's for the person who just wants to relax at the end of the day by watching something they don't have to think about, or for the person who wants to challenge themselves by having to translate speech that's actually in their mother-tongue, (it's confusing to me too) in the world of reality television, there's a show out there for you!

This Cannot Be a Good Sign

As a vehicle owner, I am constantly faced with different distractions while on the road there are the bad drivers, back seat drivers (my boyfriend might say I'm guilty of this), cell phones, and those pedestrians that seem to just materialize out of nowhere. Now let's add poor grammar on signs to the list!

How can you expect anyone to stay focused on the road when faced with a sign like this? Does this mean that if we slow down or "brake" that we have already passed "it"? Are we talking about a car or a china shop here? I shouldn't be too hard on the guy. He does have excellent penmanship. Next!

"Perparing Your Child for College..."? Would it be wrong of me to feel concern for the children whose college preparation depends on the person who wrote this sign? The worst part is that the sign is advertising the university. If the school's intention was to get a certain message across, consider it received!

I can definitely appreciate what is being advertised here; who doesn't love pies and burgers -- particularly, the former? But besides the delicious calories waiting for you inside that food truck, there is nothing that can be said for this sign. Maybe the owner of this truck thought that the sign was too simple and that it needed an apostrophe to spruce it up? For now, this sign remains an unsolved mystery.

I take the offense committed to this sign very personally! Pun intended. I'm going to assume that what was meant  to be said was "Authorized Personnel Only". If this isn't the case, let me take this time to tell you all a few personal things about myself. I am 5'-9" tall, reality TV is my vice, and I love dessert (if you couldn't already sense my excitement over the "pie" sign)!

Try as we might to avoid it, bad grammar is all around us. It looks as though we will just have to start paying more attention when on the roads!