US woman @theashes stumped by cricketing tweets

A US woman, with no interest in cricket, came to regret picking the twitter handle @theashes after she was bombarded with messages about the test match in Brisbane over the weekend. The Massachusetts woman initially reacted with exasperation when her feed became overrun with talk of wickets, seamers and silly mid-offs. "This …

[Kubla Cant]

Pot, meet kettle

You write: "its[sic] incredibly annoying and rude".

Well, yes, it should be "it's". But your assumption of syntactical superiority is undermined by the following errors in your article (my sics):

"some of here[sic] new supporters began a #gettheashestotheashes campaign to send her to Australia".

"Quantus[sic] airlines offered to fly the young woman to Australia"

[Elmer Phud]

Erm, wrong icon?

Hate to do the pedantic thing here (Oh, no he doesn't).

There is an icon to use in such cases, its' the one with Jimmy Edawrds on it.

hth lol etc.

[Rob 9]

eh?

Who is "Jimmy Edawrds "?

;)

[Andrew Halliwell]

Re: eh?

This is

<------------

Famous for playing public school headmasters in old tv serieses and films.

[s. pam]

Do I have DumbAss tattooed on my forehead

Apparently she picked a bad week to qui sniffing glue......

[Bilgepipe]

Quantus??

Huge, famous and well-known airline name research fail.

[The First Dave]

Name

I am fairly sure that the well-known airline in question is called QUANTAS

(I think it is short for QUeensland And New Territories Air Service, so the final A would not make sense as a U.)

[Anonymous Coward]

Name

It is QANTAS, intials of Queensland And Northern Territory Arearial Services.

[Mark Aggleton]

Not New

Northern

[c0rruptd]

QUANTAS?

Actually, it's just QANTAS. No U involved at all. Does stand for Queensland And Northern Territory Aerial Service though, so you got that right. =P

Pretty sure its not even an acronym anymore either, it has just become a word in its own right...

[Winkypop]

QANTAS

Get it right chaps:

Queensland

And

Northern

Territory

Aerial

Services

[Ralph B]

@theworldcup anybody?

Someone might like to check if the @theworldcup Twitter handle is still available.

Not me though. Not a footy fan.

[Fat Jez]

rugby

Equally relevant for the Rugby Wold Cup in New Zealand next year :o)

[Mike Shepherd]

Hardy's revenge

This is some small recompense for our having to decipher US technical books written in terms of obscure baseball metaphors, so the authors will know they're "intelligent caring guys that you'd probably quite like if you met us socially".

[Spanners]

Give her credit

I think she is to be praised for eventually seeming to find it funny. Even if she isn't into cricket, at least she knows of its' existence now.

[JohnJon]

@Hardy's revenge

Funny you should mention the bit about baseball in tech writing. Just a few hours ago, I was reading http://www.bitbybit.dk/carsten/blog/?p=126

[Anonymous Coward]

I see a film

The Woman ... Sandra Bullock

Andrew Strauss ... John Malkovitch

Hillary Clinton ... Meryl Streep

The Australian 1st XI ... the harlem globetrotters

David Cameron ... Steve Carrell

William Hague ... Bruce Willis

The rest of the english cricket team ... Fry and Laurie

do we need a script ?

[Anonymous Coward]

re: film

"The rest of the english cricket team ... "

Fry, Laurie and Blackadder I reckon. But it would have needed to have been filmed when they were all still good. ;-)

"William Hague ... Bruce Willis"

ROFLsnort

[Anonymous Coward]

And US AIR plays Quantus(sic)

- And the penguins play the Barmy Army ?

Paris, coz she like a heavy bat.

[DI_Wyman]

Crickey!

..good job she didn't opt for @massachusetts. Just think of how many Bee Gee fans that would have pulled in

:-)

[Robert E A Harvey]

Just think of how many Bee Gee fans

Both of them?

[The First Dave]

Explanation Please

So, why exactly did she choose such a stupid name, if she has nothing to do with "The Ashes", and why did Twitter allow her to keep the account?

[Trevor Marron]

I have a friend..

Yes, just the one! And he lives at 'The Ashes' and it has nothing to do with cricket, it is the name of his house.

So why is it a 'Stupid Name'?

[Anonymous Coward]

so...

...It's your position that the only possible reason anyone could use those two words is referring to the cricket team? What do you think she did, maliciously choose a name the same as a team she'd never heard of that plays in a sport she didn't know existed?

Or is it your position that she deviously looked up current test matches, and chose the name in the hopes that fans would make a typo and get confused, thus giving her the opportunity to carefully craft a viral campaign which would result in a free trip down under?

Nasty, because Americans are conniving. Or are we stupid? I can never remember which stereotype to live up to around here.

[Steven Knox]

Purely speculation, ...

but there is a woman's name "Thea", and "Shes" could be a form of a last name or nickname.

Or perhaps she owns an upscale resort famous for its trees of the genus Fraxinus.

There are probably a few dozen other reasons why that twitter name may make sense for her.

[El Richard Thomas]

Name

The BBC story about this quoted her as saying that her boyfriend gave her "The Ashes" as a nickname, but neither of them could remember why.

I've never seen such a great big pile of steaming, contrived bullshit!

[bleh_meh]

In other news.....

dumb yank realises that there is other countries than the US

[Anonymous Coward]

better a dumb yank...

...Than an arrogant euro - who realizes that not everyone in the world is interested in the same thing. How about that - you guys are pissed off when Americans expect you to know about their culture, and then you're pissed off because you expect them to know yours!

Too bad there's no icon for 'jingoist hypocrite'. It'd come in handy around here.

[Spanners]

@David W

It is not the "dumb" that makes so many people irritated by people from your country. It is the parochialism.

[Aristotles slow and dimwitted horse]

The perfect sport for US armchair athletes...

The inaugural World series of cricket.

It's a perfect match. It's not too difficult a game to understand so even those in the Southern states can follow the action, and there is more than enough room for regular advertising breaks in amongst each and every ball of every slow and tedious over.

[Francis Offord]

Illiterate yanks

A wicket is a three bar gate.

[Alan Edwards]

TheAshes

Her name is Ashley something, for some reason she's been known as The Ashes for years.