Monday, February 23, 2009

Damn the iceburgs! Full speed ahead!

iceburg Every trip to Walmart is an adventure - sometimes pleasant, sometimes horrifying, sometimes infuriating, and always entertaining.

Yesterday's visit to the Walmart on the south side of town was no different.

Moments after passing a dull-looking young woman wearing a t-shirt that said, "I'm allergic to stupid people," I noticed this stunning example of ignorance in the produce section.

Judging from the quality of the print job, this was no local gaffe - it came straight from corporate headquarters in Bentonville where someone obviously doesn't know his/her lettuce.

Of course it should have read "Iceberg Lettuce." It's a safe bet that whoever composed this sign doesn't know German. if they did, they'd know that the English word comes from the German combination of eis (ice) and berg (mountain). Hence, and eisberg/iceberg is a mountain of ice. Burg in German means castle or fortress. So the little sign in the produce department is actually advertising a new variety of "ice castle" lettuce. Who knew?donuts

I was still chewing on the ice castle lettuce discovery when I spied this example of the clueless use of an apostrophe over the donut case.

Which donut do they mean? There must have been 100 or more in the case - cake, yeast, glazed, iced, cream or jelly-filled.

2 comments:

Michael May said...

Meine Güte, und Sie kennen Deutsch auch. Es muss mit dem BMW helfen. Ya?

The Oracle said...

Ein bischen.