From the annals of mishearing (a continuing series)
Caught in tv commentary this morning, what I heard as an alert about cell farming. Cell farming — the production of cultivated meat — is a real, though still very fringe, thing; the meat-simulacrum is expensive to produce, and many people are deeply wary of it. But there it is.
Then a visual flashed by — of a wrist scored by cuts — and it became clear that the warning was about self-harming.
From NOAD:
noun self-harm: deliberate injury to oneself, typically as a manifestation of a mental condition. [AZ: as self-punishment or whatever]
Now the phonetics. We’d like to think that the phonetics is as represented in our orthography: syllabication cell.farm but self.harm. But in fact the [h] of harm is just a (very brief) voiceless or breathy voiced counterpart of the vowel that follows it, with very low perceptibility, so it’s no surprise that we’re inclined to disregard it. And misread the speaker’s intentions.
Bonus: today’s foodie note. The spicy rice and greens stew I wrote about under “And now the good part” in my 9/1 posting “Send in the rabbits” has now tilted soupwards, with the addition of more chicken broth and some soy sauce, and reinvigoration with chili powder and mounds of high-quality grated parmesan. Wow. Fine lunch today, at least one more meal to come.
Meanwhile, I have laid in a small vat of seafood tofu egg-drop soup and a stock of Singapore-style fried rice, so that my food will get past nothing but Biryani Descending.
I do not cook — you really don’t want to let me handle actual kitchen equipment, and I don’t have any now — but I do assemble, and I’m a microwave wizard. You play things as they lay.
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