Wednesday, September 9, 2009

Origins of WALE

What is the origin, and when was its earliest use, of the term "lame excuse"?

:According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "lame" was already being used figuratively to mean "imperfect or defective", in phrases like "lame argument", "lame account", or "lame excuse", in Middle English (i.e. the Middle Ages).

Welcome to what is the first of hopefully a lot of updates. We here at Team WALE are going to make sure that we offer the best experience possible. But first we need to spend some time establishing some items of interest.

How did WALE start?

It started when a customer came in and before anything else could happen, told us about a predicament he was in. When we told him we were understanding, and that if he could come up with an excuse we had never heard, we'd let him off the hook. It was then that he comically suggested wishing he had gone to excuses.com to have some ready.

And that got us thinking.

There wasn’t an actual excuse.com of any kind and then we realized that people everywhere have heard some pretty lame excuses in their lifetime. Apparently since the middle ages. So What A Lame Excuse was born.

How do you differ from other sites like FML? Or textsfromlastnight?

Other websites deal about personal stories that have affected the person telling them. Misery loves company and people love laughing at people’s misery. It’s a vicious circle. Here at WALE, we strive to not laugh at the accidental or incompetent but to mock the idiocy and recognize it for what it is. It’s a chance for the individual telling the story to say it with pride, not shame.

I’ve got a story I’d like to submit, how do I do it?

You can do it one of two ways. Either email us at sharealameexcuse@gmail.com or fill out the Share a Lame Excuse submission box on the main page and click submit.

Please keep stories grammatically correct. After that, there really are no rules.

Enjoy!

Team WALE