Don’t Even Think Of Snatching My Ass

/ Diane Henders

In a previous post, I speculated that my tendency to misread words and phrases might be merely a matter of needing reading glasses.  I was wrong.

I got the reading glasses.  Now it has become embarrassingly obvious that the problem exists in the central processor, not the input devices.

Back in the summer when the Olympics were on, I glanced at a headline and read “Art Irritating Life at London’s Olympics”.  My interest piqued, I clicked over to the headline, only to discover that instead of a controversial article on modern art, it was a rather bland discourse about “Art Imitating Life”.  Quite disappointing.

A few days later, I roared with laughter when I discovered what I thought was the ultimate truth in advertising:  the disclaimer “Errors and Omissions Expected” on a law firm website.  Sadly, it was just the standard cover-your-ass statement “Errors and Omissions Excepted”.  I still think it’d be more truthful the other way around, but perhaps I’m cynical.

I was pumped when I saw “Vulgarity – The Difference Between the Amateur and the Professional”.  I thought, “At last, someone is recognizing the value of my most pronounced personality trait!”

But no, it was merely a product of my childish hope.  When I looked at it more closely, it actually read “Maturity”, not “Vulgarity”.

Well, shit.  As this whole example illustrates, there’s no danger of anyone ever identifying maturity as one of my principal qualities.

Speaking of childishness, I also misread a local business name as “Dopey Repro” instead of Copy Repro.  And if you have any OPA restaurants in your area, you may be interested to know that their tagline (according to my twisted brain) is “Fat Cheek”, not “Eat Greek”.

But honestly, I don’t think that one was really my fault.  I only glanced at it, and at this angle the font is hard to read, don’t you think?

OPA! FAT CHEEK (You know I’m right)

I’m pretty sure my next slip-up was one of those Freudian things.  I almost never watch TV, but I’d just been forced to watch some of what I sincerely hope was a particularly sub-standard talk show.  I survived, but I was thoroughly traumatized by the prodigious and willful stupidity of the moderator.  I won’t even get started on the apparent intellectual capacity of the participants.

Shortly thereafter, I read “Psychological Vomit” in a headline.  It didn’t surprise me in the least.  In fact, I was pretty sure that was what I’d just witnessed.

Closer inspection revealed that the headline actually read “Psychological Portrait”.  But I’m sticking with my original reading.  What I saw on that talk show was either psychological vomit or psychological explosive diarrhea.  In either case, I needed a shower afterward.  You don’t want to get any of that stuff on you.

All this was crowned by the blog spam I got today.  It promised, “I’ll immediately snatch your ass”.

Oh, yeah?  Well, go ahead and try, buddy, but you’d better get your insurance paid up first.

The spammer escaped my misguided wrath when I re-read the sentence and realized the comment actually read “snatch your rss”.

Which still seems a little off-colour, but it’s probably just because I tend to avoid using the word “snatch”, in an attempt to avoid awkward misunderstandings.

So… have you read anything interesting lately?

35 thoughts on “Don’t Even Think Of Snatching My Ass”

  1. Pingback: This Post Doesn’t Suck | Author Diane Henders

  2. Pingback: Kiss-Ass Typo! | Diane Henders

  3. LOL! This was a hoot. I can totally relate, but my impairment spills over into the non-printed domain too. A tail-gater once overtook me and then proceeded to give me the finger through his sunroof. Whatever, I thought, swtiching to zen mode. Then he did it again. And again. At every single stop light! Well. Zen mode went POOF. I pulled up beside him and rolled down my window, ready to give him a piece of my mind. Turned out he was flicking his cigarette.

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  6. I love when you post about your misreading of things. And to be fair, it DOES kind of look like “Fat Cheek.” The only thing I’ve misread recently was actually on someone’s blog (I can’t remember who, unfortunately), and it said “She pulled out a bandana” and I read it as “She pulled out a banana.” Not terribly bizarre in itself but it would have been really out of context in that post. But mine aren’t as funny as yours are.

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  10. I’ll give you that Fat Cheek one, Diane… it does look like it from where I’m sitting. On a similar subject (food), I very often misread savage as sausage… which tends to throw sentences the like of “… the sausage barbarian tore into the flesh…”, and so on, into a whole new world.

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  11. There’s a local contractor that goes by the company name M. J. Moran. Lovely people work for them! Unfortunately, with the font they use on their trucks, I have never not been able to see it as “Moron.” (Check out their logo and tell me you don’t see it.)

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    • Oh, I’m still laughing! That is totally “moron”. Makes you wonder why nobody noticed when they were designing the logo.

      Kinda reminds me of a company I used to do business with : ViaGrafix. There was just no way I could read anything but ViagraFix. I hear they’ve changed their name…

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  12. There’s a spot on the highway with a sign that (for a long time) I thought marked the city limits for a strange place called “Fogarea”. It took months of my commute to see that it said ” Fog area”.

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