Fair warning: The below is pretty much just me complaining about the lack of proper grammar I witnessed today. You have been warned.

Here’s something you may or may not know about me: I love subtitles. I love them whether what I’m viewing is in English or something foreign. Whenever there is an option for subtitles, I use it. I’m not deaf; I can hear perfectly well, but there’s just something about reading the dialogue that really complements the whole presentation to me (notice my choice of words here, because there’s a purpose that I’ll be getting to).

This is the reason that I’ve loved watching things on Hulu. They manage to subtitle a good deal of their popular shows. Usually, they’re pretty spot-on, other than a few typos and that weird thing where apostrophes are replaced with symbols…

Anyway, I was watching Kitchen Nightmares tonight, and was surprised at how badly they’d subbed it. Completely messing up sentences, leaving words out…various things that were very obviously wrong.

None of that truly bothered me until THIS scene played out:

To put it in context, Chef Ramsey called the guy a “busy idiot.” His brother, trying to placate the busy idiot, attempts to tell him that the phrase is flattering in British English. Sadly, that excuse actually appears to work…but that’s beside the point.

Look at the subtitles. Someone at the closed caption company apparently doesn’t know the difference between compliment and complement (for anyone who is unaware, they do mean completely separate things. Compliment is something that flatters, complement is something that helps to bring completion – so you can see how silly this sounds). I’d let it slide if the word weren’t used like, seven times during this scene, all spelled the wrong way. It was figuratively blinding me from watching the show.

I’m pretty sure there are people that think this is borderline OCD behavior. To help illustrate just how distracting this sort of thing is to me, imagine you’re watching some show set in a specific time in history without electronics, like Game of Thrones. Now imagine that you’re watching, and suddenly, a ringtone starts playing in the show. You think, “why would they have a cellphone on a set like that, then ignore it?” But then the ringtone goes off again, six more times and no one bats an eye. Are you thoroughly distracted from watching now?

Closed caption companies: Hire people that know how to write sentences correctly. Hire people that can write out the sentences exactly as they’re said. Hire people that know the differences between common homonyms.

That is all I ask, really.

I finished all three seasons of Arrested Development today. It was a sad day for me.

Don’t you love it when you learn about something new and then it’s suddenly everywhere around you? Like learning a new word or phrase and then hearing it everywhere. Of course, you’ve read it or heard it before but glossed over it because you didn’t know what it was even though it feels like brand new information. I do like that feeling because it’s like lighting a lantern and revealing what was once obscured by darkness.

It kind of happened recently with the previously mentioned book I’m reading: The Hangman’s Daughter. The setting is placed in Germany in the 1600s in a town that still believes in the influences of witches. The main characters are attempting to solve the mystery of why children are being killed before Walpurgisnacht  (the night where witches gain their powers from Satan). It’s an event that is still celebrated in several parts of  Europe (though its original meaning has been replaced with friendlier festivities).

I didn’t think much of the whole Walpurgisnacht thing until it came up again in Magica Madoka (my recent favorite SHAFT creation). The next episode’s likely to revolve around the Puella Magi hunting the witches on the most active night for them. Not much was given to define the importance of the event as it was just mentioned casually, but it was nice to know the background information about it from reading, and it’s a pretty random subject.

Nothing really that interesting, but it did make me smile.

So I’m trying out Google Friend Connect, which is a type of plugin that makes sites more interactive for visitors.

The three features I’m testing are the Friend Connect panel, the comment section, and the Event Calendar.

Friend Connect will let any visitor sign in and basically follow this site, and list other sites that you follow that have Friend Connect. You can add other visitors as friends and see what sites they follow, and you can send invites to people to see the site you’re at. Your icon is whatever icon you have set up with whichever service you choose, a popular one being Google itself, but you can use other things like “openID” to sign in.

The comment section can be to leave me a message that might not have anything to do with a post of mine. The message is public, though, so it can be seen by anyone. You can also link to a video from youtube.

The Event Calendar shows an event I plan to attend, where it’s located, and how many days till it comes. You can also put that you’re going to go, and even click to have it added to your Google Calendar.

While none of this is really NEW, I think it would be good to spread the word about it so that it gets more use.