typos

TMI, Autocorrect; TMI!

/ Diane Henders / 52 Comments

This spring has been a bit… hectic.  I haven’t really had that many things on the go; it’s just that I haven’t had the time / energy / physical ability to do All The Things.  (Which is intensely annoying and stressful to a compulsive DIY-er like me.)  But it is what it is; and I’m trying my best to deal. Mostly I do okay, but…

On one of “those days”, I was running late. So I fired up a text to friends who were expecting me around 1:15:  “I’ll be there by 1:30 – I’m running a bit late.”

(Yes, I realize that texting complete sentences with correct spelling and punctuation makes me a Ridiculously Uptight Old Person.  So be it.)

Anyhow, I have a deep mistrust of technology and a near-pathological hatred of typos; so I re-read the message as my finger approached the Send button. And there it was:  “I’ll be there around 1:30 – I’m rubbing a boy.”

TMI, autocorrect; TMI! (For the record, “rubbing a boy” is not a phrase I’ve ever intentionally typed on my phone, so it was totally making that shit up.) Needless to say, I corrected the autocorrect before I sent the message. 

In this case, the consequences of sending the unaltered message wouldn’t have amounted to anything worse than lots of laughter and unmerciful ribbing, but it was a good reminder to check before I send.  (Unlike the time I emailed an interior design client reminding them of our upcoming inspection of their pubic areas.  Fortunately they saw the humour of the omitted ‘L’ in ‘public’.)

And in other news… I don’t find much humour in the media these days, but here’s a story from our local newspaper that made me laugh:  https://www.pqbnews.com/news/squawk-of-the-town-euro-seagull-screeching-contest-migrates-to-victoria-7987317.  What could be more fun than watching 60 people dressed as seagulls, squawking madly?

And here’s another joyful thing:  Despite my enforced neglect of the garden for the past couple of years, the miracle of spring blooms still happens!

What’s funny or beautiful in your world today?

Book 18 update: I’m on Chapter 25, and Aydan’s new partner just exhibited five completely different personas in under 90 minutes. That’s doing nothing for Aydan’s trust issues!

T&A and Dickie-bergs, Oh My!

/ Diane Henders / 26 Comments

It’s been a while since the universe offered me any naughty news; but apparently my dry spell is over. I came across several snicker-worthy items this month.

The first arrived courtesy of the normally-staid CBC: An article about a startlingly phallic iceberg, spotted and photographed by a man from (appropriately enough) Dildo, Newfoundland: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/oddly-shaped-iceberg-nl-1.6825578. I laughed myself silly(er), of course. Every now and then nature delivers a whopper that even I wouldn’t have imagined.

That fine upstanding dickie-berg must have lingered in my subconscious, because only a few days later I was working on Book 18 when my fingers ran ahead of my brain. Yes, Virginia, there is a BIG difference between ‘a long moment’ and ‘a long member’. I corrected the typo, giggling all the while.

Now brace yourself for the weird:

Y’know how a couple of years ago I mentioned that my brain occasionally spews random words for no apparent reason? Well, it happened again. I was sitting at my keyboard, minding my own business, when my brain suddenly blurted, “Tanimura and Antle!”

Wha-a-a-a-t???

Despite my perplexity, those names had a familiar ring; but I couldn’t quite place them. When I did an internet search, I discovered that Tanimura & Antle is a company that grows produce in California. I’d never heard of them before. Or so I thought.

Then, gradually, memory trickled back. I’d bought their brand of romaine lettuce… when I lived in Calgary. Which makes it at least six years ago, probably more. For the record, I don’t shop for lettuce by brand. I go to the store and buy whatever they’ve got. I couldn’t imagine why that tongue-twisting brand name had stuck with me; and I especially couldn’t imagine why it had suddenly popped into my mind nearly a decade later.

But then comprehension struck: It was simply the universe completing the dirty-mind trifecta. All those long years ago, Tanimura & Antle had a different logo, and apparently that poke from the dickie-berg had jarred the memory loose: Their lettuce used to be emblazoned with ‘T&A’ in a stylized font. And my puerile brain never forgot it.

If only I could apply that level of recall to something that was actually important!

Book 18 update: My concentration has been shattered by an out-of-control wildfire less than 10 miles from our house, so writing progress has been slo-o-o-w while I obsessively check the smoky skies and watch for evacuation alerts. But I’m hanging in as best I can, and the zany gang from the Weapons Lab is making Chapter 4 fun to write! Stay tuned…

Oh, Shift!

/ Diane Henders / 12 Comments

A few years ago, Dave (one of my trainers) was writing a workbook.  He proof-read it and passed it over to me.  I proof-read it.  Then I got thirty copies printed up and delivered them to him the night before the class.

He met me at the door, looking slightly nervous.  “Uh, there’s a typo in the workbook,” he began.

I shrugged.  “Whatever.  We’ll fix it in the next batch.”

“Um, okay, but…”

He was relatively new to my company, and we were still in the getting-to-know-you stage.  He looked me square in the eye.  “If you were typing the word ‘shift’, which letter would you absolutely not want to leave out?”

Sure enough, we were instructing our students to shit-click.  I laughed all the way home, then decided that perhaps not everyone would share my puerile sense of humour.  I called Dave back and got him to hand-print a little bitty ‘f’ in each workbook.

My brother’s keyboard actually looks like this.  It’s something about the way he types.  The wear pattern on my keyboard is different, but I’d love to be able to really, truly, shit-click.  And it seems to me that if you use a computer for any amount of time at all, a “Shit” key is not only appropriate, but practically necessary.

Some of my best memories involve typos.  Back in the dark days of my interior design career, I spent a lot of time writing technical specifications, and I also checked specs that other people had written.  I caught lots of typos, but my favourite was the spec that demanded a “certified horney man”.

Hell, I thought they all came that way.  There’s actually a certification for that?  Who does the testing?

Needless to say, the spec was duly modified to read “journeyman”, as it was intended.  But I still think it would’ve been fun to send it out and see what we got.

I also had an unfortunate tendency to discuss “tenant turkey packages”.  These were actually “turnkey” packages (for tenants moving into a new commercial space), but it got to the point where I couldn’t tell if I was seeing “turnkey” and reading “turkey” or vice versa.  And the accompanying mental picture was truly disturbing.

And while we’re in that, er, area…  Try sending out a proposal to redesign your client’s pubic areas.  See how fast you get a response.  I’m not even going to get into all the double-entendres associated with that.  It really is too bad that “public” is so easy to mistype, but it certainly makes for some interesting conversations.

Speaking of mistyping, my blasphemous fingers also insist on addressing my friend Chris as “Christ”.

What’s your favourite typo story?