reading glasses

Objects In The Mirror May Be Scarier Than They Appear

/ Diane Henders / 33 Comments

Mirrors.  When I need them to tell me the truth, they lie; and when I really, really want them to lie, they tell the truth.

I’ve found that it’s important to adjust my expectations based on which mirror I’m consulting.  The ones in our bedroom and bathroom are very slimming, which is a nice boost to my self-esteem on a daily basis, but it sets me up for disappointment when I look in any other mirrors.

The mirror in my workout area makes me look as though I’ve strapped a life preserver around my middle, but I’m pretty sure that mirror has an odd distortion at stomach height.  (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)

And don’t even get me started about the mirrors in bathing suit stores.  Those ones tell the brutal truth about all the worst features of my body; and then they go ahead and pile on a bunch of ugly lies about my best features, too.  I’m pretty sure store mirrors were designed by Satan himself in the fiery depths of hell.

I was reminded of all this the other day.  No, I wasn’t buying a bathing suit – I don’t need that kind of trauma in my life.  I was looking in my magnifying mirror with my middle-aged eyes (wearing reading glasses, of course, because otherwise I wouldn’t see anything but a pink blur).

And I thought, “Well, those whiskers aren’t too obvious.  Guess I’ve got another day or two before I have to pluck them all out again.”

Then I realized the unfortunate truth:  Nobody my age will see my face-fur unless they’re peering at me from close range with reading glasses (and I’m pretty sure I’d notice that in time to take evasive action).  But younger eyes can see crystal-clear detail at any distance.

So those bristles I’ve been pretending “aren’t too noticeable”?  Yep, you guessed it.  To anybody with normal eyesight, I’m well on my way to a playoff beard.  Sadly, there’s no victory in sight.

Dealing with reality would take too much effort, so instead I’ve decided to invent the new and exciting “Middle-Age Mirror”.  For women, it’ll have subtle distortions at boob and waist height to bring back our hourglass figures, along with a nice soft-focus face area.  For the guys, the mirror will broaden the shoulders and minimize the beer belly, while providing a flattering magnification zone in a strategic place.

Now I only have to convince our legislators to make the Middle-Age Mirror mandatory in all public places.

Ahhh.  I look better already!

Book 14 update:  I’m almost finished Chapter 4, and those headstrong characters are surprising me already.  This is why I love writing – I never know what’s going to happen!

Phantom Glasses Syndrome

/ Diane Henders / 48 Comments

It pains me to admit that despite my commitment to remaining as immature as possible, my eyes have ignored the mandate and grown up.  In fact, they’ve embraced middle age with the same fervent enthusiasm as a teenager with a first crush.

The instructions on everything are now written in much smaller print than they used to be.  (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)  My distance vision is sharp and clear, but I spend far too much time hunting for the correct pair of reading glasses.

One pair for computer work.  Another pair for close work.  A third pair for that awkward range between one and four feet.  Bifocals for when I need to alternate frequently between close and mid-range.  I have umpteen pairs of glasses lying around the house, but the chances of finding the pair I need when I need them are slim to none.

Not only that, but I’m developing Phantom Glasses Syndrome.  Again.

When I was young I wore glasses fulltime.  When I finally switched to contacts it took about two years for me to stop pushing my glasses up on my nose even though the glasses were long gone.

Just to compound the embarrassment, I was young enough when I started wearing glasses that I didn’t know the significance of the middle finger.  And when I first developed the habit of pushing up my glasses, that was the finger I used.

Trust me, you haven’t been truly humiliated until you realize you’ve inadvertently flipped the bird to the entire audience at a public-speaking competition.

At least these days I know enough not to involve the middle digit in my habitual tics; but there’s still ample scope for embarrassment.  My distance vision is so good now that it drives me nuts to look through reading glasses and have everything in the distance blurred.  So if I look up from my close work for even a minute, I perch the reading glasses on top of my head.

You can see where this is going.  Yep:  Me, running around loudly cursing my lost glasses, only to have Hubby point out that they’re on the top of my head.

And that’s my other problem:  After spending so much time with my glasses up there, I feel the grip of the earpieces on my temples whether they’re there or not.  So now whenever I need glasses, I pat the top of my head first.  It’s okay if the glasses are actually there, but it looks pretty damn foolish when they’re not.

Fortunately I’ve discovered that my need for dignity is inversely proportional to my age.  So I’m thinking about adding a verbal tic to that habit just for shits and giggles.  Imagine, if you will, a middle-aged woman patting her own head and murmuring softly, “Good girl, Diane; good girl!”

I haven’t done it yet, but I’m tempted.  It would make social gatherings quite a bit more interesting… at least until people stopped inviting that weird old bag who keeps patting herself and mumbling.

But I suppose that’s still better than flipping everybody off.

Or maybe not… 😉

Anybody else have Phantom Glasses Syndrome?

Kiss-Ass Typo!

/ Diane Henders / 49 Comments

I don’t know whether it’s my eyes, my twisted mind, or simply the fact that I’m usually pushed for time and skimming text, but as I mentioned here and here, I misread phrases all too frequently.

Here are my latest malapropisms:

I was looking for a chuckle the day I clicked a link to YouTube, but I started laughing before the video even started to run.  Why?  Because I misread its title as ‘SNL Digital Snort’.   It was, in fact, ‘Digital Short’.  But I think they should go with ‘Snort’ – it’s much more appropriate for funny videos.

Spam is always fertile ground for misreads, probably because it’s so poorly written that I lose the context.  For example, a few months ago, I read ‘I got a wedgie’ in one of my spam comments.

“Well,” thought I, “Thanks for sharing, but that’s a little too much information.”  On second glance, though, it actually said ‘I got a webpage’.  Good to know.

Far more disturbing was ‘…they will be penetrated from this website’.  Yikes!  Remind me to steer clear of that one.

But no, wrong again.  It was ‘…they will be benefited from this web site’, which was less alarming, though slightly grammatically mangled.

And then there are headlines.

I was cheerfully skimming the tech news one day when I discovered the following damning headline:  ‘Cisco leaves the consumer networking market after selling monkeys’.

Well, those bastards.  I should think they’d slink away from the public eye after stooping to such a low.  Where the hell was PETA when this was happening?

You guessed it.  It was another Diane Special.  The headline actually read ‘…after selling Linksys’.

Oops.  My bad.

I knew I must have read this link wrong:  ‘Big secrets of how to sell women’ .  I didn’t even bother to get wound up about that one.  Sure enough, it was ‘How to sell TO women’.  Whew.

I ran across the next one on somebody’s blog (I think), but I can’t remember whose.  Up front, I’ll offer my abject apologies to whoever posted this.  They’ll probably need to slap me if they ever read my perversion of their words.

But I couldn’t help it.  It was a slightly blurry photo of printed lyrics.  The title was Hero and I read that with no difficulty, but I’m pretty sure the body of it said ‘Herpes’.  Twice.  Even after peering at it, I had to really concentrate before I could see ‘Heroes’.

The latest in my list would have made me laugh if I hadn’t been so certain it was just another case of my mixed-up reading.  On a music website, I read ‘kiss ass guitar’.

By that time, I’d become used to my own screw-ups, so I didn’t even permit myself a snicker.  I mean, obviously it was ‘kick ass guitar’, right?

Wrong.

I looked at it again.  Then again.

It really did say ‘kiss ass guitar’.  Talk about an embarrassing typo.

I guess I should have sent them an email and gently pointed out the mistake, but it didn’t occur to me until well after I’d clicked away chuckling, and by then I couldn’t remember where I’d read it.

But maybe it’s better that way.  Might as well share the joy – that website made my day!

Seen any good typos lately?

Don’t Even Think Of Snatching My Ass

/ Diane Henders / 35 Comments

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?