The author of the little — 67-page — guidebook The Old Editor Says: Maxims for Writing and Editing (first published in 2013), the old-school newspaper editor John E. McIntyre, writing as a curmudgeonly, sometimes imperious, character of the same name, as seen on the book’s front cover:
(#1) The name of this image file is McIntyreOldEdtor.jpg; that fact will eventually become significant
Tom Gauld’s cover art “Winter Garden” in the February 4th New Yorker:
(#1)
A lush indoor garden, in part representing a spring garden outside (narcissus, tulips), in part a garden fantasy (with huge trees, a parrot, a hummingbird).
Gauld — noted for his science-oriented cartoons and his goofily bookish ones — is an old friend on this blog (his Page is here). Meanwhile, here in northern California we’re going through our winter garden phases outside: a succession of spring flowers (narcissus of one variety after another, starting in December; flowering fruit trees starting now; tulips getting ready to bloom) plus specifically winter-blooming plants, like camellias and cymbidium orchids.
The fall special at Dan Gordon’s (on Emerson St. in Palo Alto), as it first appeared on the menu, about a month ago:
Summer Stew $16.95
smoked pork / cippolini onions / chic peas / prunes / red rice
(with the very notable spelling chic peas and with the misspelling cippolini for cipollini). But now the ingredients list reads:
smoked pork / cippolini onions / chickpeas / dehydrated plums / red rice
(with the notable dehydrated plums). Actually, all four ingredients have linguistic interest.
(Passing references to various sexual practices, so you might want to use your judgment.)
Today’s mail labeled [SPAM:#####]:
(#1)
The ad copy is seriously non-native English, so liquid pears for liquid pearls is an unsurprising typo, though the image of a man ejaculating liquid pears — pear brandy (Poire William(s)), for instance), pear liqueur, or pear cider — has a certain kinky charm to it.
The text in the video is clean, idiomatic English, right down to liquid pearls ‘semen’.
Follow-ups to my 12/9 posting on poach egg ‘poached egg’: from Tim Evanson on Google+, pouched egg for poached egg (which will, of course, take us to pouch egg); and from several Facebook friends, scrumbled egg for scrambled egg (and then scrumble egg). An egg party, with eggcorning and t/d-deletion.
In writing yesterday’s posting on MLB Pride logos, I intended to type the name Aric Olnes, but anticipated the S at the end of Olnes in typing Aric, and so typed
Aris Olnes
A very common sort of typo, in this case creating the name of a hermaphoditic deity of war,
Aris = Ares (Greek god of war) + Eris (Greek goddess of discord)
On ADS-L yesterday, Joel Berson relayed this story on upskirting (secretly photographing under a person’s clothing; the person is almost always a woman) from the Boston Globe:
Which the highest state court in Massachusetts, the Supreme Judicial Court — the oldest continuously functioning appellate court in America — has just ruled is not illegal. The activity as well as the word should go viral.
The decision is that “a state law intended to prohibit ‘Peeping Tom’ voyeurism of completely or partially undressed people did not apply to people who take pictures of people who are fully clothed.”
(Yes, upskirting is a Prt + PRP compound; and there’s now a base and finite verb upskirt as well (of course).)
Berson commented:
It’s not clear to me whether the prosecutors blundered in choosing to bring charges under the “Peeing Tom” law when there might have been some other grounds.
To which Victor Steinbok wondered:
Peeing Tom? Did this happen on pubic transportation?
Indeed.
Three recent mistakes on my part: a writing error; a mishearing; and a misinterpretation of what I heard.
Two brief entertaining items: a typo and an imperfect pun.
Yesterday, writing a postcard (by hand), I intended to quote an old (and not particularly good) dirty joke with the line “How far is the Old Log Inn?” in it, but started writing
How far is the Old Logg
when I saw the error, crossed out Logg and went on with Log Inn.
The error? I’d anticipated the double N in Inn, transferring it to the G of Log; “doubled letter” was part of the plan.
