Is this some kind of joke?

Hmm, I dunno. This tidbit appeared in the Onion, so I guess it’s meant to be a joke, but raise your hand if this actually happens to you.

Friendly Note To Coworker Undergoes Eight Revisions

WILMINGTON, DE—A brief note from United Family Insurance employee Martin Schatz to a coworker regarding storage-closet office supplies went through eight rewrites Monday. “I wrote it pretty quick and was about to drop it in [Al Miesner’s] box when I noticed I used the word ‘stapler’ twice in the same line,” Schatz reported after delivering the final version. “It read kind of weird, so I changed the second ‘stapler’ to ‘it.’ But then it read even worse, so I changed it back.” Schatz also changed “Thanks!!!” to “Thanks…” fearing that the original punctuation was “a bit too much.”

Now, here’s the thing: I’m not saying I do this, but I’m also not saying I don’t.

The Catcherintheryeinator

What’s the one thing that could bring reclusive author J.D. Salinger out of hiding? Well, according to the Onion, it’s the new flick, “Terminator Salvation”:

“I believe that a writer’s privacy is among his most precious possessions, in that personal information about him distracts readers from what is most important: the work itself,” the author of The Catcher In The Rye told reporters outside the Claremont Cinema 6 theater, moments after seeing the film for the third time. “But on the other hand, the new revival of the Terminator franchise is just way too awesome for me to remain quiet any longer. Hello? Time-travel paradoxes? Freaking amazing!”

“How sweet was it when that giant robot hand reached in through the roof and grabbed that old lady?” Salinger added. “Or when those motorcycle terminators detached from its legs and started speeding toward the escaping resistance fighters? Holy crap, was that fucking cool or what?”

Salinger, 90, explained that he first became a fan of the Terminator franchise in 1991, when he saw Terminator 2: Judgment Day and found the character of the young John Connor to be “a striking figure of teenage alienation and disillusionment.” His interest in the series continued with his rental of the first Terminator film, which he described as “almost as awesome as the second one,” and his Amazon purchase of Terminator 3: Rise Of The Machines on Blu-ray.

Read the rest of “New Terminator Movie Brings J.D. Salinger Out Of Hiding.”

Spelling bee champ

From The Onion: Special Boy With Freakishly Large Brain Wins Spelling Bee.

The title kind of explains it all . . . or does it?

The airportorphosis

Check this out. You may think your local airport is bad but apparently, it could be worse. According to the Onion, “Prague’s Franz Kafka International Named World’s Most Alienating Airport.”

Commas, commas, everywhere

The Onion was just on fire last week with the word nerd funnies. Check out a pair of them:

Commas, Turning Up, Everywhere

WASHINGTON—In the midst of a crisis that may have reached a breaking, point Tuesday afternoon, linguists, and grammarians, everywhere say they are baffled, by the sudden and seemingly random, appearance of commas, in our nation’s sentences. Read more.

Man Use Big Word

HERE—Tom, a guy who think he so smart, use big word Tuesday and make feel stupid. Read more.

Idiomatically speaking

So the Onion reports that Idiom Shortage Leaves Nation All Sewed Up In Horse Pie:

A crippling idiom shortage that has left millions of Americans struggling to express themselves spread like tugboat hens throughout the U.S. mainland Tuesday in an unparalleled lingual crisis that now has the entire country six winks short of an icicle.

Well, ha ha, wouldn’t that be funny? And if it were true, apparently, we could all haul ourselves to Moondog’s hometown of Erie, PA, where they seem to be hoarding our nation’s idioms, including:

Being the cat’s paw

It’s a horse apiece

Six a one, half dozen the other

Burns my biscuit

He assures me that “it’s a horse apiece” means something like “it’s the same either way,” but I still have no idea what “being the cat’s paw” refers to.

What are some of your favorite idioms? Alternatively, which idiom would you, er, vote off the island?