This weekend, I had a chance to catch up with my good friend Debbie, who I hadn’t spoken to in awhile. I called her on the cell, and so before launching into an extended exchange I made sure she was free to talk. “Well,” she said, “at the moment I’m at the store. Buying underwear, actually.”

“Excellent!” I replied, with gusto. “Perhaps you can settle a question I had…” — at which point I launched into an observation that the previous week’s mail had included a postcard for “1 free panty” at Victoria’s Secret. “Is that right?” I wondered. “Isn’t ‘panty’ like saying free ‘short’ or ‘pant’? Why do we say ‘pair of shorts’, anyway? Is it all about the leg holes?” To which Debs chuckled and said, “Only you could change a visit to the lingerie section into a conversation on weird grammatical rules. I’m so glad you called. I needed my John fix.”

Truth is, I know I get interested in weird little quirks, such as Victoria’s “panty”, or Mike Chertoff’s reference to “‘dewatering’ New Orleans” or the way my local grocery store likes to put up bright yellow signs reading “PRICE DECLINE” when “New Low Price” or “Sale” is shorter and simpler. Often, I can even figure out what might motivate people to make these perhaps odd choices (because “1 free pair of panties” might be construed as two, he’s a pompous ass, and head office said so, respectively.)

Anyway, now that we’ve established that odd things grab my attention, could you indulge me? Take this photo:

This group is the Buy.com affliate team. This is the introductory photo, so you can imagine who’s answering your e-mail or some crap like that. At least, you could, if they hadn’t blurred them out.

Seriously, have you ever seen a team photo that obscures some of the players? I understand why they highlight the front two women, at least — they’re actual Buy employees. The people in the back are employees of the company Buy has contracted to run the program. But isn’t that clear enough just from their relative size and position? Or even in the caption, which separates names by company?

I’d like to say “what were they thinking?“, but as with the other examples, sometimes I’m not sure if these people are thinking at all…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 7th, 2005 at 11:46 pm and is filed under Miscellany.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.