reading

The Sound Of Dementia

/ Diane Henders / 36 Comments

I really hope it’s not dementia, but my rate of misreads has increased considerably since I found the kiss-ass typo back in April.

Soon after that, I read ‘in my whorehouse’ over on Murr Brewster’s blog.  It wouldn’t have surprised me if she actually had written that, but she didn’t – it was ‘in my wheelhouse’.  (Murr is one funny blogger – go see for yourself!)

A short while later, I thought our Chamber of Commerce was mixing sacred with secular when I saw their poster advertising  ‘Holy Sponsorships Available for Play With The Presidents’.  A second reading revealed they were actually advertising hole sponsorships for their annual golf tournament.

My dirty mind kicked in when I saw the following tweet:  ‘I’ve ordered myself some Golden Snatch earrings…’  It took me a few moments to figure out that it was a Harry Potter reference and the earrings were actually little-bitty replicas of the ‘Golden Snitch’.

And I guess I wasn’t sufficiently recovered from that when I did a double-take at a condom ad trumpeting1 ‘GET UP TO ASS IN SAVINGS’.  It was in all caps with a sans serif font, which is always harder (I said ‘harder’… *snicker*) to read than mixed case (that’s my excuse, anyway).  After I’d finished giggling, it took me a couple of tries to decipher ‘GET UP TO $5 IN SAVINGS’.

Another ‘say what?!?’ moment arrived in my email when my Meetup group invited me to enjoy ‘Lesbian food and belly dancing’.  I’m a major foodie, but I’ve never heard of that cuisine before.  Turned out it was ‘Lebanese’ food, which didn’t seem quite as exotic, somehow.

Even business headlines weren’t safe.  I read ‘Things Sales Winners Deformity’ instead of ‘Do Differently’ and ‘get back to bananas’ instead of ‘back to business’.  And I discovered a cabinet company that offers ‘customer insults’.  Or possibly ‘customer installs’, though insults are well within the realm of possibility.

I can’t remember which community site entreated ‘Looking for a spare cowboy to borrow for a few weeks’.  But it turned out they were only looking for a spare ‘carboy’ to brew a batch of beer.

My mind was clearly on bodily functions the day I read ‘Fanfart’, which sounds like something to avoid at all costs.  The article was actually referring to ‘fanart’ – art done by fans of specific books.

But by far my most disturbing misread happened when I was perusing a music website.  I’m a huge Bob Seger fan, and I was indignant to discover they were snidely referring to his upcoming concert tour as “The Sound of Dementia”.  So he’s in his late sixties, so what?  Seger is amazing, and that was completely rude and uncalled-for!  Closer inspection revealed that the site was in fact a list of upcoming concerts: “The Sound of Dalmatia Tour”, “Bob Seger”, and “NeYo”, among others.

So I settled my ruffled feathers with the knowledge that the dementia was all in my head.  I didn’t know dementia had a sound, but in my case it’s apparently rather empty and echoing.

* * *

1 Would you believe I misread my own words while proofing this?  I saw “humping” instead of “trumpeting”.  Please… somebody help me…

I’ll Tell You What’s Normal…

/ Diane Henders / 32 Comments

I spend my days skating on the edge of normalcy.  So far I’ve been able to avoid unwelcome attention, but that’s due more to good luck than good management.  I can get away with my quirks as long as I live in a nice neighbourhood and shower frequently, but put me on a park bench after a hard workout, and somebody’s gonna call the loony-catchers.

This was brought home to me the other day when Hubby was driving and I was sitting in the passenger seat writing dialogue in my head as usual.  He glanced over and said, “Writing again, aren’t you?”

I shook myself back to reality and asked, “How did you know?”

“Easy.  You had that thousand-yard stare.”

I have what I prefer to call an “expressive” face.  What this really means is that there’s a near-one-hundred-percent probability that if someone snaps a picture, I’ll look moronic.  Sometimes when I’m absorbed in planning or writing a particularly intense scene, I can feel my face twisting into expressions of fear, anger, or whatever.

Add that to the fact that I almost never know the date and often take two tries to correctly identify the day of the week, and I’m concerned that if I ever get hospitalized and asked orientation questions, they’ll lock me up permanently.

So in the interests of retaining my freedom, I decided it might be smart to write a short primer on what constitutes normal behaviour for me.  At least it’ll provide a basis for the authorities to shrug and say, “Yeah, she’s always been like that.  We probably don’t need to lock her up yet.”

So here goes:

  • It is normal for me not to know the day/date.  If I’m travelling, I may not always get the city/province right on the first try, either.
  • It is normal for me to lapse into an apparently catatonic state during which my eye movements mimic REM sleep and my face assumes various inappropriate expressions.  It’s also normal for me to be irritated when summarily roused from this state.
  • It is normal for me to suddenly and inexplicably groan, slap my forehead, and rush to my office to type madly for minutes or hours. This may happen at any time of the day or night, and includes bolting upright out of an apparently sound sleep and scurrying away to type in the wee hours.

With hallmarks like these, it may be difficult to determine what is abnormal behaviour for me, so here’s a handy list of danger signs.

I need professional help if:

  • I turn down the opportunity to go to a nice restaurant or a blues jam or a drag race.
  • I fail to fondle fabric when walking through a fabric store.
  • There’s a garden available and I don’t plant something.
  • I take my car in for an oil change instead of doing it myself.
  • I don’t bake when it’s cloudy/raining/snowing… unless I’m reading or writing (those activities trump baking).
  • I pass up an opportunity to shoot a handgun, rifle, shotgun, bow, slingshot, or any other projectile weapon.
  • I walk past an unassembled jigsaw puzzle.
  • I don’t dissolve into a revolting pile of sappy mush at the sight of kittens.
  • I spill beer.  That’s a danger sign in itself, but if I don’t show extreme remorse afterward, it’s already too late – I’m beyond help.

What are your danger signs?

Evil Eyes

/ Diane Henders / 27 Comments

As I mentioned in an earlier post, my mouth keeps me in trouble.  I’d like to pretend it’s only my mouth that’s the problem, but now my eyes are getting into the act, too.

It started innocently enough.  One day I was out for a walk when I spotted a poster advertising “CREEPFEST”.

At the time, I questioned the necessity for a festival dedicated to creeps when pretty much any ride on the C-Train qualifies as a creepfest, but, hey, what do I know?  And anyway, I live a sheltered life.  It might have been a film festival for horror movies or something.  Later, I discovered it was actually advertising “CREEKFEST”, a family fun day down at our local Fish Creek Park.

Honest mistake.

But it got worse.  I was skimming a document online when my eyeballs snagged on the phrase “making goats is the first step toward success…”

Excuse me?

Success in what, exactly?  And do I really want to achieve the kind of success that requires me (or anyone for that matter) to screw goats as a first step?

When I re-read it, I discovered to my relief that the word in question was “goals”, not “goats”.  But apparently, making goats was indeed the first step… down a sad and sordid path.  It was only the beginning of the mutiny currently being staged by my evil eyes.

I misread a quotation:  “Beauty is only skin deep, but ugly goes all the way to the boner”.  Granted, the original quote wasn’t exactly inspirational even when read correctly, but that extra ‘r’ on the end just didn’t help the situation at all.

I misread a friend’s tweet:  “Think I’ll take up lap-dancing”. I was halfway through a bottle of brain bleach before I realized the tweet actually read “Think I’ll take up tap-dancing”.

Which, frankly, was disturbing enough, but it didn’t actually warrant a brain cleanse.

Even my favourite recipe website wasn’t safe.  I glanced at a recipe I’d printed, and misread the header as “cocksucker” instead of “cooks.com”.  You’d think that’d be a bit of a stretch, but the “-om” was covered by another sheet of paper, so the only letters visible were “cooks.c”.  And the ‘c’ and ‘o’ are quite similar in their header font.

But still.  Come on, eyeballs, gimme a break here.

If one wanted to get all persnickety about this, one might argue that there’s nothing at all wrong with my eyes, and that the problem actually originates a couple of inches behind my eyeballs.

Our theoretical persnickety commentator might also add that if one has a more-than-passing familiarity with words like ‘boner’ and ‘lap-dancing’ and ‘cocksucker’, one can’t reasonably feign shock and outrage at reading them, whether or not they’re in appropriate context (if there is actually an “appropriate” context for those particular words).

And if those were the only words I’d misread, I’d have to concede the point.

But making goats?

Nope.  I’ll admit to being slightly warped, but I’m not that twisted.

Maybe it’s time for reading glasses.