"Perfectly" Punctual
September 25, 2012 Yesterday we covered parentheses and quotation mark. Today, THE WORLD.
Or maybe just some extra apostrophes:
;)
This Beth belongs to Congratutation.
The booties are anyone's guess.
I see lots of apostrophes where quotation marks should be, but I have to admit, this is the first time I've seen it the other way around:
;)
I blame whatever madness drove the baker to add that L.
You might think periods would be easy to deal with, but if so, you're obviously a man with a death wish.
Or this baker:
;)
I don't really know who St. David is, but I'm hoping against hope he's the patron saint of punctuation.
On the opposite end of the spectrum is the three period run, or if you want to get all technical about it, the ellipsis:
;)
Because nothing conveys sincerity quite like trailing off mid...
With all these confusing options, you might be tempted to skip punctuation entirely, bakers. But that path has its own perils:
;)
Yeah, way to go, Bob. I mean, that was soooo great, that thing you did. Scha.
My personal favorite, though, is the wild card mish-mosh of punctuation patter:
;)
I dare you to do a dramatic reading of this cake.
And finally, the colon cake you've been waiting for:
;)
Come back after we slice it for the semi-colons.
Thanks to Elizabeth C., Miriam A., Doreen L., Ariel F., Sarah C., Gernez, & Kim T. for the excuse to link to Victor Borge's phonetic punctuation.
Reader Comments (71)
Forgive me, but I'm a librarian.I can't help but look up information, and offer it up to others. And if St. David (of Wales) isn't the patron saint of punctuation, then who is? Well, nobody specifically. But I have some candidates.
Brigid of Ireland, Catherine of Alexandria, Nicholas of Myra, and Thomas Aquinas are all patrons of scholars, who should know how to punctuate.
John the Apostle is the patron saint of editors, who might be called upon to settle a nasty apostrophe-quotation mark dilemma.
Here's who I think really needs to take charge. Saint Honorius of Amiens is the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs, and they obviously need him to intercede more often when it comes to commas and colons.
Anybody else suddenly very self-conscious of their own punctuation?
Whhhhhy? Why would someone make a colon cake? And then why would anyone cut it and eat it? What's inside of it? Is it red velvet like blood (a'la "Steel Magnolias")? Yellow like bile? I'm not sure I want to really speculate any further than that. I'm stunned that someone thought that cake was something they should request/make/eat.
Ok I am remembering a humor column I once read about getting a colonoscopy, and how, after you first wake up from the procedure, you're going to have a lot of air trapped you know where... and will probably spend the rest of the day having, uh, issues. But for more on the whole deal, no one tells it better than Dave Barry - http://www.miamiherald.com/2009/02/11/427603/dave-barry-a-journey-into-my-colon.html
I will never be able to get that song out of my head. Fabulous Sharyn. And I will never be able to unsee that colon cake. Who does that sh@!?
I'm sure the colonoscopy techs loved their dessert. I bet they would have loved it even more if it WASN'T shaped like a body organ. *shudder*
And Sharyn wins the internet with her song--someone needs to sing it and make a video, stat!
I actually thought it said "Way to Do Bob"... Hmmm....
Well, there is no patron saint for punctuation. But St. John the Apostle is the patron saint of editors:
http://saints.sqpn.com/saint-john-the-apostle/
So I think we need a prayer to him on behalf of these wreckerators.
Cake no 2: Perhaps the wreckerator used Purel hand sanitizer or Curel lotion and was inspired?
Cake no 5: In my world, Bob is a verb. He was my boss' boss at a previous job, and was notorious for swamping people with useless work on very short deadlines. So he became a verb. As in, you'd ask a co-worker if they want to go to lunch, and they reply: "No, I can't. I've just been Bobbed and I'll be lucky if I get to go home for dinner."
And that colon cake makes the infamous "pink slime" look appetizing. Ew!
#1 cake: green polka dots and purple border; tablecloth: green with purple polka dots. so close.
#2 I didn't have a "tab" when I was decorating cakes (before some of you were born). look towards the bottom- the blue border looks like monkey paws towards the right. itty, bitty, creepy little monkey paws.
#3 the first "y" is feeling a wee bit inadequate ("hey, there's a draft up here- yeah, that's the ticket")
#4 I am immensely relieved that the oozing strawberries weren't on the previous cookie cake. the word banner looks like a bear paw on the right side.
#5 first, they airbrushed it; second, they piped long bones on it; third, they added stripey stars. there was effort and thought on this one, peeps!!
#6 I think it's LOLcat speak
#7 ... ... ... (it's almost like morse code!)
P.S. I'd eat a bite of the colon cake as it's just not realistic. I don't encourage you to hunt for colon photos to prove me right, however.
@Dee Ann,
Wonderful post!
I have a cake to finish, so with humble supplication to St. Honorius, it's off to the kitchen I go .
Is dying here. My husband happens to be named David. Lol and I would worry if he was celebrating his period..really I would. Well at least I got my apostrophe cakes yay lol. That poor colon is very pale looking. That can't be a good thing to eat or to even look at.
St. David may not be the patron saint of puncuation but Titivillus is the patron demon of scribes. His duties included catching people sleeping in church but his job was primarily to cause medieval monks to mispell words and leave out pages when copying the bible. Obviously, he has realized scriptoriums are scarce now and has taken to hanging out in bakeries to gather the sins of mispellings and poor puncuation for his master.
On second look, I read the first cake as "Congratutation's Buth". So what's a Buth, and why does Congratutation have one? Or perhaps it's short for "Congratutation is Buth"...
Yeah, I'm pretty sure that St David cake is really supposed to be Happy 1st Period but it was probably from David Day or it's Happy 1st Period Day and it's from David. Either way, the baker really screwed that one up. I mean, look at all the posts debating this particular cake!
Some of these make me think people must be text messaging their cake orders. And baker's are reproducing the usual typos character for character. But "ST period David Day" is classic Cake Wreck in the "Under Neat That" tradition. Laughed out loud for the first time in a long time!
As a 36 y.o. woman battling her second round of colon cancer, the colon cake is freaking HYSTERICAL! I can see sending this to my gastro dr, and her entire team laughing. They are a very, um, unique group of people (the jokes they tell are gross and hysterical and immature and, well, awesome!), and they would appreciate this in ways the general public can't possible understand. So funny!
Perhaps the one for Michelle is simply poetic, or an excerpt from a story.
"Best. Wishes Michelle..."
I think we should all wish for best when placing a cake order. O.o
@Michelle thanks for sharing and the Best Wishes for you in your fight!!
Maybe we should view the second cake as a victim of a keyboard typo? An L is right next to a colon, and a single quote and double quote are just a shift button apart...
My husband and I discussing the last cake:
me: "It was probably someone sending this to his proctologist, someone with a warped sense of humor."
his answer: "It was probably someone who needs their head examined... by a proctologist!"
I thought the colon cake was "sphincterrific".
That last one had to have been made of chocolate cake or the joke is ruined.