Wednesday, September 12, 2007

What did he just say?

My tracking app for this blog shows what people Google to get to this site and there has been a number typing in "french benefits" so I thought I'd see what some of the other sites came up in Google.

One is called Eggcorn , a database of malaprops. A malapropism is the incorrect use of a word by substituting a similar-sounding word with different meaning, usually with comic effect. Egg Corn being one for Acorn. The site is very geeky in a linguistic sort of way and that appeals to me. I mean, I did read "Eats, shoots, & leaves."

Once, listening to NPR I heard the reporter utter this sentence.

"He left the court room followed by a phallics of photographers. Hmmm. Do you think he meant phalanx? What I'd like to believe is he just thought, "Look at all those "dick-heads chasing him." and somehow it stuck in his brain.

So back to this blogs name, French Benefits. I got the name from the following TV commercial that was drilled into our brains a few years ago.

Satirized in a an ad campaign for FedEx Ground:

In “Wrong,” a guy is chastised by his co-workers for being a source of misinformation. “Steely Dan is not one person,” berates one guy. “We get fringe benefits, not French benefits, it’s not the Leaning Tower of Pizza, and James Dean was an actor—Jimmy Dean makes sausages.” The guy is then told that he’s wrong by thinking that FedEx ground is too expensive. “So we don’t get French benefits?” he replies.

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