George Ou: all your gerbils are belong to us

George Ou is a blogger for ZDNet. You may be familiar with the clueless ramblings of this anti-Apple zealot, especialy if you've followed, in an ultimate test of geeky monomania, the story that Crazy Apple Rumors (seriously) covered under the apt title Security Bitch Watch, a sad series of events with so many twists, turns and so much idiocy that it would leave your head spinning, hadn't you fallen asleep about two minutes into it.

In his latest misguided rant, he argues that Apple shouldn't mock Vista's user access control system as annoying and insecure, since the Mac's similar system is even more so: it actually requires you to type your password (so it's more annoying), and requires that pretty rarely (so it's less secure). Touché!

But the true embarrassment arrives in the comments string, where Ou attempts to drive his point home by referring to none other than the infamous Joseph Gerbils.

Joseph Gerbils.

At first I thought I was missing some American cultural reference. But after staring blankly at the screen for about 20 seconds, frowning, and finally saying the name out loud, it dawned upon me that Ou actually meant to say Joseph Goebbels.

The Macalope gently classified this as a typo, but I beg to differ.

This ain't no typo. A typo means that you know how to spell something, but you miss it.

Spelling Goebbels as Gerbils means that you've never seen that name written down. You've only heard it spoken. And you may or may not have a clue who the hell this archvillain actually was.

In any case, you're talking about things you don't know that much about.

Um, when was that other time Ou was talking about stuff he didn't know much about? Was it maybe all the time?

Ou has this to say about the whole fiasco:

If that's how you want to judge me, that's your prerogative. I'm an IT guy; I don't spell German very well especially when I'm posting improvised notes in a comment section. But if that means you won't take my IT advice seriously (or at least objectively), I can only ask you to reconsider. Thanks for the correction.

He doesn't spell German very well.

Damn.

I didn't know he was trying to spell German there. Good thing he told us. I thought he had what may be called a "brain fart." One of those embarrassing moments when you absent-mindedly do or say something really stupid. A momentary lapse of reason.

But no, this was a real attempt at spelling German. He made an effort, and now thinks, based on the result, that his German spelling skill is "not very good."

Let me help clarify things a little here. If you spell Goebbels as "Göbbels" or "Goebels," we can agree that your German spelling is, no offense, but really "not very good."

However, if you spell it as "Gerbils," you're a jackass. It's hysterical. It's All Your Base caliber. You deserve to be laughed at till the day you die.

George Ou apparently thought that the way to spell a German word was to find the rodent whose name sounds the closest in English.

There's no use in trying to explain it away. Here's my advice to George Ou: quit writing. Now. And hide in a cave.

By the way, "advice" is spelled "Rat" in German. Don't try to pronounce it.


Update: There must have been a horrible misunderstanding. Joseph Gerbils was real. Read the comment below!