Spotted on the forums at Engrish.com: screenshots of what may be one of the worst-subtitled bootlegs ever. Marvel at the transcribers’ inability to spell such phonetically simple names as “Moria” and “Gondor” while tackling other, more complex names with no difficulty…their repeated misinterpretation of “orcs” as a certain type of cattle…their inability to get the name Isildur right even once (“Aragorn”? “Sauron”?!!)…

Of course, the biggest question is: if this is a bootleg meant for the Hong Kong market, why isn’t the movie subtitled in Chinese rather than in its original language? Only those responsible for such a travesty could really explain…

Gack. As if Internet ads weren’t already annoying enough, one popular airline site has recently begun running ads which redirect the browser to the advertiser’s site when moused over. No click involved, just moving the mouse to the appropriate location.

Anyone besides me think this could potentially do more harm than good? For instance, imagine if you had just finished filling out a CGI form of some sort, then accidentally moused over such an ad, causing all your input to be erased. And even if the end result wasn’t so destructive, I, for one, would still be tempted to avoid buying anything from such an intrusive advertiser.

Yet another book I’ve stumbled across at the bookstore and am now thinking about getting: The Introvert Advantage: How to Thrive in an Extrovert World. I think there should be more books of advice for introverts; we’re underappreciated and often misinterpreted, and it doesn’t help that American society tends to be extroverted by default…

Oops. MP3’s Top 40 chart offers a link to download the latest track by the “incredible French act” Dirty Vegas.

One slight problem– as MP3.com themselves know, Dirty Vegas are from London.

“I’ve got monkeys in my pants.” A funny line in itself, but even more amusing when it’s uttered by an animal smuggler who’s completely telling the truth.

‘Twould’ve been really funny if he had some weasels stuffed down there as well. If only because Dave Barry would’ve had a field day with it.

[via Fark]

More fun witd tde inappropriate use of search-and-replace algoritdms. Here, several people’s misguided attempts to change HTML table headers (represented by the HTML tag <th>) to ordinary table cells (represented by <td>) have caused their writing to spontaneously develop a thick Brooklyn accent.

Well, my fall semester finals are over. You may now collectively breathe a sigh of relief. I feel like I did quite well, even on the dreaded programming final I mentioned a few days ago, but only time will tell what grades I’ve received.

Second, on a completely unrelated note, I was just reminded of an interstitial ad that I’ve been seeing on the web quite a bit lately which annoys my compulsive proofreading sensibilities. OK, so it’s not as much an example of bad proofreading as it is of the impending doom of the English language as we know it <sly grin>– but I’ll gladly admit that I had never seen the abbreviation “mpresd” until this ad came along.

Well. It’s quite a lucky Friday the 13th for yours truly; I’ve turned 20 years old today. The big two-oh (not, of course, to be confused with Big-Oh, something which will cause me endless grief on this upcoming Monday’s programming exam). No longer a teenager (not, of course, that I really did much teenager-like stuff while I was one, but that’s another rant entirely). One more year and I’ll be able to imbibe some potent potables, as Jeopardy! likes to call them; not that I’ve really ever wanted to…

Appropriately enough, one of my birthday presents was the much-hyped 20th Anniversary edition of Trivial Pursuit. That’s my entire lifetime covered by that game– a thought which is at once both astonishing and scary.

Now I only have to get to the point where I actually feel like I’m twenty years old. Right now, it doesn’t feel all too different from being nineteen.

An interesting and thought-provoking little Flash animation criticizing the “technical difficulties” brought about by America’s government. Well worth sharing, in my opinion, and with a clever URL to boot. (via boingboing)

Yay. Finally. Someone is suing one of those companies who come up with those absolutely idiotic fake-dialogue-box banner ads:

SPOKANE — A law firm has sued a California software manufacturer [Bonzi Software] for fraud, alleging that Internet advertising banners that impersonate computer error messages are deceptive. The banners have headings that read “Security Alert,” “Warning” and “Message Alert” with such messages as: “Your computer is currently broadcasting an Internet IP address. With this address, someone can immediately begin attacking your computer.”

At least I now know who to boycott because of those ads. Not that I was really interested in that blasted purple ape, anyway… [via Bonehead of the Day]