Mispellings

I had no idea just how influenced I am by proper spelling and grammar. It turns out I’m more upset by typos than I thought.  However, it wholly depends on the format.

If it’s a text, I expect bad spelling. Small keyboards, touch-screens, auto-correct… When I get a text that says, “I garfled your Mothra, meat szygne at the cuxrths” I don’t fear that I’ve received a text from the Great Old Ones, I don’t rage about bad spelling, I just remember that I’ve sent plenty of those kinds of texts too. I’ll probably just text you back, “Whst tnhe heeeell wws tht text supooposed to mesan?”

If it’s a comment on-line, I forgive it. Same rules apply, many people are using their phones to respond. Touch screens, small keyboards… I can’t get too upset. But, I can insist that I’m able to understand the comment or you must delete it and try again. If I can’t decipher what you meant, then what is the point of having it online? Get rid of it.

I read a lot of amateur blogs, there are many typos. I tolerate it or at the very least, I get over it. The amateurs are passionate about something but they aren’t the world’s greatest typists. They get excited, type fast and hit “Post” before hitting “Spellcheck”. It’s a mistake but we’re just amateurs, I’m alright with it. I got a bit huffy with one person’s blog. I was just about to give up on reading it when I discovered English wasn’t their first language. Oops, my fault… I mean, if I had to write a blog post in French you’d see a lot more than a few errors.

But then there are the professional bloggers. People who write for a living. I hold these people to a much higher standard. When you make your living being a wordsmith, you’d better know the difference between “your” and “you’re”. I can totally overlook a stray word that snuck past spellcheck by masquerading as a different word. Typos happen and if you’re on a deadline, you rely on spellcheck. “On” looks alright to the spellcheck even though you really meant “in”. But when you misuse “it’s” and “its”… I have to slap your knuckles with a steel ruler. Also, have a proofreader. I’ve been guilty of editing my thoughts and restructuring sentences. When you read your own work you read right past those errors when you read your own work…

Somewhere in between the amateur bloggers and the professional writers are the small businesses. When I go to your website and I see typos, I get worried about your services. Yes, you may just be a plumber or you may just be a party DJ, neither job requires proper diction… But if you couldn’t be bothered to check your work while advertising, how can I be sure you’re worth the money I’m looking to spend. Small, local businesses can afford one, possibly two errors if I’m feeling generous. If I see multiple errors on your website, I take my business elsewhere.

Anything that invokes an air of authority must be absolutely correct. When I read physics papers and medical journals, I don’t see any mistakes. I think this is because they know that if I spot a glaring typo, it will damage the impact of their paper. They take the time to check their work because it is important to them. A text; not so much. When someone asks me to take part on an “official survey” and the question has a typo in it, just how “official” am I expected to believe this thing is? Here at work we have an automated ticketing system. When a problem comes up at a remote site, it gathers data from several spreadsheets and spits it out in a form letter. One of the entries is “Drivining Directions”. It’s been there for four years…

And finally, we get the mix of amateur and authority (and the spark that set off this “misspelling” fire). Nothing screams “dumbass” more than a website claiming to be the encyclopedia of all musical knowledge and referring to “Jimmy Hendricks”… If you don’t know what’s wrong with that, you’re probably not a “music” person and that’s okay. I probably wouldn’t even correct you if we were writing back and forth and you made that mistake. But if you’re a music person, even just a casual fan, you’re probably just coming back into orbit after realizing they got BOTH names wrong…  If you’re running a website that (even just humorously) claims to be the final judge of all music and you can’t spell the name of one of the elder gods of guitar… Wow… just wow.

They brought back Beavis & Butthead.  I don’t know why, I can’t imagine there were too many people clamoring for their return… but they are producing new episodes.  Out of curiosity, I’ve watched the new shows and they’re just as good and bad as the old show was.  It’s like they just went to sleep and woke up fifteen years later doing the same shtick with new fodder.  I feel exactly about the new show as I did when it first ran; a solid “Ehhh, whatever”.

But since I have been watching them I have been contaminated through splash damage…  The premise of a standard B&B show is: they get into some trouble, they watch some MTV, the trouble resolves itself.  That’s it.  And through their show (me watching them watch MTV) I have been exposed to some of the shows I’ve head about and never seen.  In small two minute clips with Beavis & Butthead voice-overs, I have now seen more “Jersey Shore” than I care to admit.

Still not enough that I know what the hell is going on in that show, but enough that I can no longer say I’ve never seen it.  I will say that I wouldn’t recognize any of the cast of the show if they walked up to me at a mall, but I think that’s saying more about the show’s influence on pop culture than my recognition skills.  Somehow this show has caught on and I guess it took certain existing fashions and influenced others but now I see where these people I run into get it from.  The “Jersey Shore culture” is everywhere.

Some of the “JS” attitude/fashion came before the show, fueling the development of such a show.  Now the show itself steers the fashion, it is the touchstone of douchebaggery…  When I see a group of them hanging out, I used to wonder what planet they were from.  I used to feel like an old man who just didn’t “get it”.  But now I see the truth and it was there in front of my eyes the whole time; Jersey Shore is nothing more than the latest youth movement, the Valley Girls of their time.

They don’t want to fit in, they want to be strange and unusual.  I understood this with other movements like punk, goth and emo because they all but promoted the idea of being the outsiders, the downtrodden.  But Valley and Jersey both appealed to the “up” sides, the rich kids, the popular kids who still want to be different without leaving the best keg parties behind.  I get it now!  Thanks to Beavis and Butthead who have shown me the light!

Now when I see these kids hanging out in their bad Jersey Shore fashions, I’m no longer perplexed.  I smile.  I chuckle slightly under my breath a small “like… oh my god…  fer sure!”  Then I smile again, because I know that in twenty years, their kids are going to find those pictures.  Just like some of you are getting discovered in those neon bandannas and legwarmers.  Every kid thinks they look sooo cool.  Every kid looks like a dork and none of them know it.  Parents tried to tell us, but we wouldn’t listen.  I guess it’s just something we all have to go through.

I’m cleaning out the scrap paper where I keep my “I’ll write about that later” notes from the last year. Here’s a bunch of unrelated crap I’m dumping on you at the last minute…

…

You know that feeling you get when you buy a blue pick-up truck and then you begin to see blue pick-up trucks everywhere? And you swear there were no blue pick-ups on the road yesterday! What’s that called? It’s not quite Synchronicity because there’s no real deeper meaning to it. I see online where some people have started to refer to it as the “Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon” but I won’t believe that until it’s in Wikipedia!

Anyway… The Krampus was a tiny memory in the back of my head from long-ago mythology studies. I recently wrote a short story involving him and BAM, I’m seeing him mentioned in every television show, every story I read, everywhere! I’m hoping it’s simply an over-active “mental reticular activator” and not the beginning of a new trend. I hate trends and I really don’t want to be part of one.

…

Here’s one that the more delicate of you may want to skip on to the next subject…

Okay, just go with me on this one… You know the movie “Mommie Dearest”? It was based on Christina Crawford’s memoirs right? Well, she was a child for most of the events, she may not have gotten all the information. In an age when talent was “owned” by the studios and women were not considered equal, it is conceivable that Joan Crawford had to do a little “casting couch maneuvering” to work her way to the top. It was the 20’s or 30’s, it’s entirely possible.

It’s also possible that she may have gotten pregnant during one of these trysts. A scandal may or may not have been a problem for the studio but a baby would probably ruin Crawford’s dancing/acting career. So it’s also possible that in order to keep it quiet, they took her to one of those “back alley doctors” we always hear about. If they screwed up the abortion, it could explain her inability to have kids later on.  She had multiple miscarriages and ended up adopting her kids “as a publicity stunt”.

And it would certainly explain the “no wire hangers!” scene.  She tells Christina it’s because wire hangers are beneath their station but that always rang hollow to me. Young kid probably didn’t know what an abortion was at that age, all she knows is; it’s 3am, mom’s dressed up like a Kabukimono and beating the living shit out of her. And who’s going to tell their kid about an abortion anyway?

Unsavory and distasteful subject matter sure but I think I could be on to something.

 …

Okay, we’re back safely in the normal crazy…

What are the colors we can’t see? HP Lovecraft wrote about these in “The Color out of Space” and a few other of his stories. When I read these stories, I’ve always imagined them as a shimmering metallic light. But I can imagine that, so it’s not an unimaginable color. For years I left the question alone.

Now I read about Cichlids having five rod/cones and seeing a spectrum we can’t see. We’ve only got three (like a TV or monitor, RGB) I’ve had one of these damn fish in the hallway of my house for years now, what is he seeing that I’m not seeing?  And should I be worried?

…

Zombies were in vogue this year. Lots of people jumping ship from Vampires to Zombies. I’m cool with this because my favorite genre is post-apocalyptic dystopia. Vampires are mostly considered solitary, quiet, sneaky bastards (mostly). When a vampire is after you, the rest of the world will go on just fine. But Zombies… Their story always seems to involve world-wide disasters. I love it! So, here’s my hierarchy of things to save during a disaster:

• 1: Myself. If I die, I can’t protect my family.
• 2: Wife and Daughter. These are the most important things in my life. If my dying will secure their absolute safety, #1 is overruled.
• 3: Weapons. The next step is to secure food and water. If I succeed, I’ll need to protect it. If I fail, someone is going to share, even if it’s at gunpoint.
• 4: Food and water. Duh, I just said that.
• 5: Clothing/shelter. If it’s cold, I need to secure blankets and clothing. Either way, I need shoes. I’m not walking around the disaster flick barefoot.
• 6: Knowledge. Someone’s going to have to know how to plant a garden. Someone has to understand basic mechanical physics. In the two dozen half-started, half-written stories I’ve set in a disaster world, at least a quarter of them have a protagonist who insists on raiding a bookstore.
• 7: Other people. It sounds calloused to have them fall so far down the list. Maybe they can go 6th instead of the books. But saving other people will serve more good than bad. They may have skills I don’t. There will be a larger group scavenging for food/materials. There will be more people to help with the work load. However, more people means more egos, more fighting. This is why people rate below books. I’ll leave these bastards behind when they organize a revolution.
• 8: A vehicle. Escape from the inevitable marauders. Or, the revolutionaries. They will come. They will destroy my beautiful garden.

That’s about it. Cash is meaningless. Money is for civilizations. In a disaster world, I wouldn’t sell you a turnip for a million dollars. Burn your pile of cash for warmth, use it to stuff the linings of your clothes. Now that’s an attractive thought huh? Homeless people with dollar bills falling out of their sleeves? We’re back to earning your keep. Work in the fields for a day, turn the millstone a few hours, now you get fed. Lots of people are going to die from laziness.

…

Why is it that Steve Vai’s guitar sounding like a computer is cool but a computerized vocal track is lame to my ears? I think it’s because I’m a cranky old cuss and the use of Auto-Tune seems like a cheat to me. I’m just an old man living in what they are calling a “post-Gaga” world. Marilyn Manson perfected the look, Madonna perfected the music, Lady Gaga put the chocolate in the peanut butter and now the pop music scene is measuring time as if she were the Christ child. My tastes are obsolete and my opinions are irrelevant.

…

Speaking of getting old:

Not too long ago (in my mind anyway) when you went to the grocery store you paid by check or cash. Everything ran smooth until some idiot in front of you wanted to pay by credit card. The line ground to a halt as the cashier called for manager assistance… it sucked. Now, everyone is using debit/credit cards and we all sigh when some asshole breaks out with good old-fashioned cash. “Cash!? Goddamnit we’re gonna be here all day now!” And I swear if some fucker breaks out a checkbook I’m putting an axe in his skull. Times change and swiping your debit card has gotten faster than cash. I’ll swipe my debit card for a single bottle of pop. I barely carry cash at all anymore.

…

I got tired of listening to the same old arguments about religion. I’ve heard most of them a thousand times, I’m becoming bored with the whole thing. I’m still very passionate about it but I am getting tired of the ever-mutating excuses. Like a deadly virus, they keep adapting to our immunity hoping to one day find a way to infect us all. Truth and consistency be damned, the domination of humanity is the chore at hand! (Why the fuck did I just rhyme that? I knew where I was going and I chose to write that? Ugh, sickening dude…)

Anyway, incensed at how easy it is for them to change tactics, change rules, change entire systems of dogma all while claiming to be “the real” religion, I decided to make one up on my own. I started doodling little rules, dicking around with circular reasoning, threw in a few self-confirming, self-affirming prophecies, claimed to be unfalsifiable and demanded the burden of proof be placed on the unbeliever and not the extraordinary claim… When all of this was done, I knew L. Ron Hubbard was a genius. An acid-tripped sci-fi genius. It’s so damn easy to create your own religion! Just think of how lucrative of a business it is and to never have to actually prove anything? Wow. It’s like selling air-guitar lessons! I’m amazed that he got it off the ground without military or government backing but wow, what an exercise in creative thinking…

…

I’m not much for arbitrary dates and celebrations. As the year closes I do think back on the previous trip around the star. I won’t set up new rules for next year but I like to see where I was last year. About this time I was in the middle of a meltdown (pick a week, I’m always warding off meltdowns…) and eventually decided to focus on my writing. In the last year I’ve gone from a “one day I’ll be” writer to an “I am in the process” writer. I forced myself to finish several stories, I’ve submitted three pieces (one rejected at the slush pile, one passed on to an editor and one “no-response”) I took that step and I liked the water. It’s freezing cold and scary but it’s where I want to swim. So now I need to jump in with both feet. A year ago I was afraid to fail. Now I’m aware I’m going to fail and doing it anyway. There is some growth there I think.

 …

So have a great year whether you measure it from January, April, or any day next week.  Tomorrow is just another day, be happy it’s there at all.

Teresa has been in a near-constant twenty year battle with me and my packratting skills. If it’s got any life left in it, I hang on to it or make sure someone else will use it. I am by no means a hoarder (anymore) but I do have a lot of junk that will probably never get used. A lot of my crap could should be thrown away…

However, there are the shining moments when I need something, (or even better, Teresa needs something) and I pull a solution out of the garage. It’s Sunday night, the stores are closed and you need a picture hanging clip? I’ve got a few of them out here.

This week the magic garage was put to the test and it passed with flying colours! I’ve been slowly organizing the crap into a nice system where I should know where most everything is.

It came time to put up the Christmas lights. I knew right where the bin of lights was. The extension ladder was hung from the garage ceiling and the tywraps were right where they were supposed to be. The cords were hung up, no knots, no twisted loops. When I needed a way to extend the lights to the other side of the front door, the magic garage provided a 2×4, a length of wire, romex staples and a plug. Thank you magic garage for your bountiful gifts.

We downsized Christmas this year, finally getting that small artificial tree I’ve always wanted. So in an effort to “clean up” my junk, after I put up the house/yard lights, I got rid of all the half-working and repaired strings of lights. Two days before Christmas when my sister surprised us with a live tree, we decided to put it up as a decoration in the yard. The magic garage provided emergency reserve Christmas lights, lots of ornaments, a tree stand and spikes to drive into the ground to hold it steady in case of wind. The tree looks awesome in the yard thanks to the generosity of my sister and to the near-infinite powers of the magic garage.

Teresa’s home daycare business gets full during the holidays because she watches a few of the older siblings when school’s out. A few of them brought their bikes last week. But oh no… they needed air in the tires! “Fear not little one, for in the magic garage, there is a compressor. You will be riding on adequately inflated tires in no time!” And they were. Need that football inflated? No problem, the magic garage also holds a small hand pump for such an occasion.

Oh crap, the minor tear in the back porch screen has turned into a full-blown rip up the middle. (Thank you dogs) Family will be here in a few days and the screen is flapping in the wind and making us look more white-trash than normal! Isn’t there anything we can do to stop this!? Why yes, yes there is. In the garage I have a small screen repair kit. When the rip proved to be more than a match for it, the magic garage summoned up some lattice, self tapping screws, nuts and bolts to keep the dogs from jumping through as well as some heavy-duty string to sew up the large rip. Thank you magic garage!

Becca got a video camera for Christmas. When she went to plug it into her computer, she got concerned because it was a direct plug and she was afraid it was too heavy to hang off the side of her laptop. I dramatically rise and shout, “To the magic garage!” and dash through the kitchen into the wondrous cavern of plenty. I return with a short USB extension cable. Problem: solved!

(I know I’m being cute and all with the dramatic presentation but this is not a joke, I actually pulled a “to the batcave” kind of moment on Christmas morning. Teresa and Becca were underwhelmed. I live a sad life of fantasy…)

I moved the X-Box and big TV downstairs for Christmas because it has become a regular thing for the family to play RockBand and Lips after Christmas dinner. (Don’t ask me how this got started, I don’t know… but it’s fun!) When I moved it I realized this was the first year I had the X-Box, every other year my brother brought his X-Box over. Most everything in the house is wireless so I didn’t install an Ethernet outlet downstairs. You don’t need to be online to play but Teresa has become obsessed with scoring and achievements in the games, specifically, beating Jeff and Trisha’s vocal scores. Afraid of losing an opportunity to score well, the magic garage gave us 100’ of CAT5 and two RJ45 connectors. I crimped them on, tested the cable and ran it out the window up to the router in my den. The magic garage provides…

As we played the game, we started to hear a buzz every time the bass drum was hit. It quickly got worse and very soon, it was unbearable. The problem turned out to be a cracked subwoofer. There were cries of, “just unplug it” and “we can live without it” but I jump up and say to the restless mob, “NO!  I can repair this!” Once again I dash out into the magic garage and I return with… a spare subwoofer! It was waiting in the garage for me to buy a decent receiver for upstairs. In seconds the new speaker is hooked up and the gaming resumes.

Legend says there are two of everything in the magic garage…