Am I reading the poetic maunderings of a youth regarding a romantic soul-searching staring match with his sweetheart–or is there somewhere a glorious spa for mollusks about which I ought to know? One little slip of spelling or pronunciation leaves me wavering in the dark. Which might be good, or might be bad–it’s all in the application of the moment. For lo, there can be such beauty and delight in Malapropisms and Spoonerisms and all manner of other happy tortures imposed on language. These joys are often best savored like a very dry aperitif by those intrepid souls fortunate enough to discover them, for the most frequent perpetrators of unintentional linguistic crimes rarely know the difference even if the error of their ways is pointed out to them by any well-meaning pedagogue or tiresome pedant.
From one letter's change can spring a new breed . . .
Whoever chanced upon the bag of “Mescaline Salad” before sharing its portrait online must have been elated both at the pleasurable frisson of surprise and the consideration of whether his dinner greens might in fact be hallucinogenic. After all, a product-testing could conceivably explain the truth-in-labeling serendipity itself. The “Sliming Tea” I found on the weight-loss product shelf at a health food store seemed to me as though it might have been assisted in its production by this post’s titular creatures, but on second thought I was reminded of the effects such dietary aids can often have on digestive tracts en route to achieving their, ahem, ends. This led me to wonder further if the product was to be followed by consumption of yet another product I spotted in the refrigerator case, the “Steamed Mini-Bum”–or if it actually produced the latter item.
You see how marvelously, magically this all works. One good mislabeling–or indeed, inadvertent libeling–can lead to yet another, and each offers opportunities of the richest and rarest sorts for improving one’s health, wealth, and entertainment, not least of all by virtue of increasing the quantity of belly-laughs-per-hour in a day. Best medicine of all. For example, if I should accidentally ingest some of the aforementioned miraculous products, I wonder if I would have been more or less inclined to accept the printed invitation I once read to attend the special breakfast being served at “Our Lady Queen of Heave”, which I rather pictured as a chastely Catholic version of a fine Roman vomitorium at which attendees could enjoy communal pancakes-and-puking.
Meanwhile, on the home front, I need only look at my voicemail transcriptions or activate the subtitle function on the television in order to enjoy the best garblings of garbage on offer. There, our friend Wyant becomes “why amps” and I, as Kathryn, get to become “Captain”; I really think Captain Sparks has quite a dashing ring to it, don’t you? Though it might be even better as it’s occasionally written, Spanks. But I have a feeling that Captain Spanks might receive communications less delightful or at least a tiny bit less polite-full than otherwise. Why, now that I’ve mentioned the name, I could even be getting a new reader or two who came here searching for one kind of play (‘swordplay’, if you will) and stayed for another (wordplay). Because that’s just how fantastically a misplaced consonant can change the path of one’s life. And don’t get me started on what can happen when something goes awry with one’s vowels! It can be a little disconcerting to get a message that one’s colonoscopy doctor (in this case, Dr. Panzer) on Wednesday will be “Dr. Cancer”, or discover that apparently the titration study for which one is scheduled might be a “castration study”, something that I think it’s safe to say not a one of us would show up for willingly (a quick return phone call to clarify, at the least, is required).
Stranger Danger: the slightest misunderstanding or misinterpretation can turn a perfectly innocent phrase into a dangerous expedition into unknown territories . . .
In that case, it might be best to obey the Spoonerific actor who implored his mistress to “sift and shave thyself” and make a dash for the nearest door. Potentially life-and-happiness-hazardous typos aside, there is still a whole universe of fun to be found in the misadventures of the lettered sort. I know my dear husband “Dr. Splotches” (thank you, Google Voice) and I have found a great deal of amusement in the translation of previously-unknown worlds through the artful misplacement of a letter or two along the way.
I adjure you, do not trust overmuch in your Spelling Supervisor or Grammar-Magic software to save you from your worst self. The machine knows not of homophones, colloquialisms or, as mine has proven many a time, what might to you be perfectly commonplace words and terms–I love the alternatives my computer offers for any words it finds unfamiliar, but they’re not often appropriate replacements, sometimes especially for use in mixed company. Scientific phrases and jargon can trip up the masters, but beware your trusting it’s (not its) okay to let a computer impose its (not it’s) will on your verbiage. Even artificially intelligent characters (I’m referring here to technology, not to politicians, zealots, critics and other humanoids) can slip on the banana skins of word choice and phrase placement. The computer is the veritable Dogberry of the modern world and not to be trusted any further than the assumption of GIGO can go. So I will leave you with Dogberry’s farewell admonition, “Adieu: be vigitant, I beseech you.”
At what point does an Adventure become a Misadventure? It might depend on whom you ask--and how the response is worded . . .
Art-Colored Glasses 
This is simply delightful!! 😀
The sub-titles can be so atrocious sometimes. lol.
My husband and I, we laugh ourselves silly when one of us mis-pronounces a word or two. It is so much fun. Silly times are good times.
Silly times are often simply the very best of times indeed! I’m so happy to hear that you married a silly person too–*that* is exactly what makes it so excellent.
HAHAHAHA! I laughed out loud reading this one. I should be above snorting about “sliming tea” and “steamed bums”, but I’m really, really, not. Especially after recent proof-reading adventures among the linguistic ailments that plague most graduate students, including me! Thanks for the chuckles, sweet lady!
So happy to help! No wonder I always feel so at home when I’m at your place–I’m at the same maturity level as your junior crew. 😀
“Mescaline Salad”? Now, that’s a thought…
I wouldn’t dream of serving it without poppy seed dressing, at the least.
Many belly laughs with this post 🙂
I’m happy to report that there is an endless supply of such foolishness out there ripe for the picking!
Wonderful!! I have such a hard time convincing my fingers to type the correct letters, and when I proof read, my eyes are sure the fingers knew what they were doing. Like Mayor Shinn was always admonishing in ‘The Music Man’, *watch your phrase-ology*. (To be perfectly honest, when I saw your blog for the first time, my mind read kiwisparks, hmm electrical fruit?)
You’re not the first to read ‘kiwi’ in my handle–would that I could claim to be anything as interesting as a delicious juicy green fruit or a fabulous denizen of New Zealand–but let’s just say that with all I’ve done to reading and writing thanks to my dyslexic talents, I probably deserve it!
Ahhh, so you know that I text without my glasses on… and allow spell check to correct and create the most magnificent and completely redunculous words (is that a word). Somehow “Dog is fed” becomes “Digit is fed”.. I was thinking that would be a cool name for a dog? Leaving you now with thoughts of a Steamed Bum in my mind.. oh, dear…
Yes, I could definitely imagine Digit as a perfectly outstanding dog name! Maybe two dogs, Digit and Widget? I did once know a goofy little Corgi named Gidget . . . Oh, there I go again!
🙂
Really enjoyed your post today, Kathryn. The Norm Crosby who appeared on late night television during my youth has been replaced by comedy bits on today’ late night shows that are built around the flaws in auto-correct. I laughed then and I laugh now. And, as you and others have mentioned, closed captioning is always good for at least a chuckle or two. Language traps can ensnare any of us, however, and it’s sometimes best to avoid them altogether. Being an expert of pasta names that you are, surely you’ll understand when I say that I’ve never ordered penne in a restaurant when in Italy and will always look for that tiniest of glints in the waiter’s eye when one of my traveling companions attempts to do so.
Hahahaha! I hadn’t thought of Norm C in ages–what a hoot.
I promise I shall be circumspect in the ordering of the aforementioned pasta in Italy–maybe I’ll just have some rigatoni or something and just bypass the whole ordeal. 😉 Unless I get in a terribly racy mood . . .
Just a few days ago, I fired-up the computer, and discovered in the headlines on my homepage an article extolling the virtues of “America’s Best Canned Bears”…
They said Budwieser wasn’t very good…who’d a thunk? 😉
Still cackling over the ‘mescaline’ salad.
You know, I think I’d be a little nervous if I were opening the ol’ pop top looking for a cold brewski and instead I saw something *grizzly*! Then I do believe I’d *need* some mescaline salad as an accompaniment.
Oh there is so much fun to be had, I like the suggestions that come up with predictive text on my phone, the way a name can be changed to something deeply inappropriate. But my favourites or rather listeners to me, are proverbs and sayings – I have the marvellous knack of mixing them up so that you get 2 or 3 proverbs mixed into one 🙂 I once spent a 3 hour bus journey in South India with my partner and our friend testing me – I had to say true or false as they gave me a proverb (made up or otherwise), belly laughs a plenty 🙂
Say, I think we went to the same college of Proverb scholarship! In our home, that skill is also applied vigorously to song lyrics (Richard is a particularly outstanding re-composer when it comes to those), and we have great gifts for scrambling and forgetting important parts of stories and jokes. Life can never be boring when there’s so much fodder for frivolity!
Three of my recent online finds:
“On the way I saw a couple of immature Bald Eagles and a couple of Red Tailed Hawks. In both cases they were making quite a racquet so it was easy to spot them.”
I didn’t know birds play tennis.
“We have a very old Nunhead cemetery not far from home, it dates back to 1800, Victorian times, but I don’t think anyone very famous has been berried there.”
I guess those fruits are poisonous to common folk but not to the famous.
“We encourage works that are outside the box and pieces with all mediums, sizes, 2-dimentional, or even 3-dimentional work.”
Too bad they let “dimentional” get out of its box and onto the page. How demented.
Outstanding finds! I would love to play tennis with some immature birds, myself. But they’d probably berry me.
I once had a college paper returned to me, with the admonition written boldly in red across the margin, that I should “please remember to poofread before submitting”
I wasn’t sure if my professor was trying to be funny,
or asking me to change my general direction
and assume a different voice while reading
your piece was surely a pleasure to peruse
it’s not every day you get that many smiles in one reading
I’m glad I didn’t get that paper handed to me, because I imagine I’d’ve been sorely tempted to red-ink the “poof” of the prof’s slipshod correction. Ha! What a goofball. (You can decide whether that applies to the prof or to me or both.) 😉
I’m afraid there is no saving me from my worst self. My grammar and spelling are a work in progress.
We’re all works in progress in our own entertaining ways. Since you write so well regardless of any grammar and spelling limitations, all *you* need is a good proofreader to keep you going!
I will try to restrain myself from calling you Captain Spanks, but now it’s in my head!
Well I have to admit it does have a certain *je ne sais quois* to it!
Now I’m REALLY looking forward to my recently ordered copy of “The Rivals”. Thanks for the laugh.
Ah, fun with Mr. Sheridan! Now you’ll get some *seriously* good laughs! 😀
Oh, how I needed this laugh, Kathryn, and sliming tea? Hmmm… Your sketches are awesome, too! 🙂 xx
Thank you, Lauren! I’m delighted you enjoyed this. A good laugh is better, even, than a cup of sliming tea!
xoxo!
Clever! This post made me chuckle. Thank you, as I was in sore need of a chuckle.
Chuckles do make good bandages for sore spots, don’t they. I’m happy I could help!
and how dare I comment after a post like this… even if it was magnificent….
🙂 You are too fine a wordsmith and thoughtful a commentator to go very far astray in print, at least as far as I’ve seen. But if you do want to fumble and bumble, why then you should feel very welcome and in good company doing so here!
I get some laughs from the spell/word checker which for echidna for instance (our egg laying spiny ant eater which is inclined to burrow under fences and get squashed on roads) it offers up Chicana as the possible correct word. It is very American.
Hmmm. Sorry as I am to think of echidnas squashed on the roads, I find that idea far preferable to the loss of any Chicanas I can imagine straying out into traffic! Poor echidnas, though. I think they must have a similarly modest brain-power (or magnetism for road toddling) to our armadillos’. It’s tough being an odd little creature so defenseless against mad drivers . . . .
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Reblogged this on How my heart speaks and commented:
Very amusing
Thank you, my dear, for the reblog! I am looking forward to the end of summer (for a change!) in part because I intend to return to at least a part-time blogging practice. Time to get back in the art-making and writing groove; I’ve missed the work! Hope you’re doing well—I’m *really* looking forward to taking the time again to visit friends at their own blogs. 😀
xo,
Kathryn