(#1) Xmas card from Tiny Bee Cards, offered on Amazon
Lizard warnings, lizzard warnings, lizards falling from the trees.
Archive for the ‘Errors’ Category
Lizardry
December 24, 2022Doctor F notes Baron F’s slip
October 27, 2022Today’s Wayno / Piraro Bizarro strip, yet another in their long line of Psychiatrist cartoons (today with Dr. Sigmund Freud as the therapist and Baron Victor Frankenstein as the patient) — a conventional form that, in the hands of an ingenious cartoonist, can be used as the vehicle for almost any joke:
(#1) The Baron makes a Freudian slip; Wayno’s title: “Unexpected Insight” (if you’re puzzled by the odd symbols in the cartoon — Dan Piraro says there are 6 in this strip — see this Page.)Doctor Doctor, this is no whim
I got a bad case of having created him
No pill’s gonna cure my ill
I got a bad case of having created him
Freudian slip, Frankensteinian slip: master, monster.
Yes, yes, a pile of bits and pieces jumbled together here (and full appreciation of the cartoon calls for lots of further background knowledge), so there’s plenty to talk about — and was, even before I introduced Robert Palmer into the mix. So grab your torches and pitchforks and let’s advance on this assemblage of oddly fitting parts.
Appetizer boards
October 25, 2022A follow-up to my 10/20/22 posting “The Funny Aperitif Board”, with its entertaining word confusion between appetizer and aperitif — but now getting serious about the two categories involved in the compound appetizer board:
the foodstuff category to which appetizers belong (call it SMALL-START-FOOD);
and the implement category to which food-service boards and platters belong (call it FOOD-SERVER-THING)
I’ll put off the funny part — the (intentionally) phallic appearance of the appetizer board in question — for a third posting in this series, taking off from my 9/11/22 posting “Plush life” (with its distinction between four modes of phallicity). But before we go on to ransack the modern English lexicon, let’s stop to appreciate the inspiration for all of this, the Grassooze appetizer board, laden with meal-preliminary foodstuffs:
The Funny Aperitif Board
October 20, 2022This is today’s Mary, Queen of Scots Not Dead Yet posting. I am overwhelmed by piles of undone things, but suffering from deep exhaustion (no doubt a consequence of the most recent jigglings with my medications). I am posting in a brief period (during which I’ve had salmon teriyaki and edamame gyoza delivered for sustenance) between long stretches of stunned unconsciousness.
I offer you, without critical comment (analysis to come in a later, more thoughtful posting), this remarkable Grassooze Services ad on Facebook back on 9/11:
Funny Aperitif Board on sale for $24.99
⭐Who says size doesn’t matter? With an illusionary length of 40 cm, this magnificent penis with perfect curves will keep all its promises
… One day, a great sage said, “Don’t let anyone convince you that your dreams are too big, buy a board in the shape of a penis.”
Patsy Baloney
June 29, 2022On Twitter yesterday, given a little push by my posting “Did that actually just happen?”, Merrill Markoe tweeted:
The Jan 6 hearings were once again amazing, stunning and magnificent. In a related story, because it is my responsibility and my job, I have recorded the valiant attempts made by the closed-captioning software to spell Pat Cipollone [AZ: the attorney who served as White House Counsel for [Helmet Grabpussy]]
MM supplied a series of screen captures with attempts at an orthographic rendering of
/ ˈpætˌsɪpǝˈloni /
of which her favorite (and mine) was Patsy Baloney:
(#1) Left, for the committee: US Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming; right: the witness Cassidy Hutchinson
Ask AZ: fat-fingered typos
June 26, 2022In response to my posting yesterday on “Thing sliced ham” — “thing sliced [in English muffin topped with thing sliced ham] looks like a nice example of a pure typo, an error in hitting the right keys on a keyboard” — Mike Pope asks on Facebook today:
MP > AZ: To what extent does your understanding / explanation of typos overlap with the verb to fat-finger as used in tech (and possibly elsewhere)?
And my reply begins:
AZ > MP: As a largely tech-ignorant person, I wasn’t familiar with the usage, but, yes, another species of typo.
Thing sliced ham
June 25, 2022On Facebook yesterday, Stewart Kramer reported from Grandma’s Restaurant in Oceanside CA (way down south, between L.A. and San Diego):
(#1) [SK:] Thing sliced ham? Thing as in Addams family, Fantastic Four, or Cat in the Hat? None of those seem likely ham slicers, except Green Eggs and Ham. The food was good, anyway.
For entertainment, SK jumps right in with a few fictional characters named Thing, knowing full well that they’re entirely, preposterously, irrelevant. Then, commenters chose to lump thing sliced together with “spelling mistakes” that are misapprehensions about how some words are conventionally spelled, surely not what’s going on when a writer is aiming for thin sliced. Instead, thing sliced looks like a nice example of a pure typo, an error in hitting the right keys on a keyboard.
The Stanford Dragfest
May 25, 2022From the Stanford Events Calendar for 5/20: at 7 p.m. on Wilbur Field:
(#1) The poster
The announcement:
A festival of the worst excesses of consumerism
March 19, 2022The Iconsiam luxury shopping mall in Bangkok, which is both mind-bogglingly immense (like the Mall of America) and absurdly high-end (like the Stanford Shopping Center), so resembling South Coast Plaza in Orange County, except that it takes over-the-top golden glitziness to a level I don’t think has ever been attained in North America. This in a 3/16 Facebook report from my old friend Ry Schwark, who is being touristic in Bangkok and sending reports back to us. The Iconsiam complex, in the center of the city:
(#1) It all glows gold, as if the Man with the Golden Toilet had run amok along the Chao Phraya River (the two hotel towers are part of the complex)
Then two photos by Ry from the interior:
On the error watch
March 9, 2022I’ll start with straightforward typos, where it’s getting the fingers to hit the intended keys that’s at issue, and then work out from there. From Greg Morrow on Facebook earlier today (exchanges lightly edited):
GM: My Dad’s got the 9-inch double-serrated Wüsthof bread knife and it is sweet. I don’t cover it exactly, I just want one exactly like it.
AZ > GM: Entirely beside your point, but I don’t cover it exactly is a beautiful example of a keyboard typo: cover for covet because R is next to T.