I didn't find out that this was wrong until I got my current job and folks started telling me that cars don't, in fact, need washed. Not that they aren't dirty - they need washing or need to be washed, but "needs washed" is wrong. Hilarious and absurdly wrong, to people outside of the Midwest, apparently. Though I can't for the life of me figure out why.
Also, there's a new V8 commercial claiming that the taste of V8 is "indescribable." Is there any way to describe V8 other than "cold tomato soup with too much salt"? Perhaps "watered down ketchup with too much salt"? I guess "virgin Bloody Mary" or "thing that invariably makes your hangover worse" if you're feeling fanciful. No seriously. I'm pretty sure that whoever started that "V8 cures your hangover" rumor was some kind of teetotaler who wanted to punish people for drinking.
Teetotaler, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, dates from 1834 and probably comes from something like "totally sober with a capital-T."
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I didn't really understand this myself until I got to Ohio State and heard people who weren't from northeast Ohio making fun of people from northeast Ohio using the construction. Later, in my Linguistics classes, I learned about regionalisms...
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