Bagpirates

At some point last night, it was decided that, if I were a pirate, I would have a monkey and teach it to play the bagpipes. Matt felt that this wasn't in keeping with the dignity and solemnity of piracy, but what could possibly be more evil than a bagpipe-playing monkey?

Avast! Arr! Prepare for both buckling and swashing!

New Zeitgeist poll:
What was it that Meatloaf refused to do for love? Were monkeys involved in any way?

Malapropisms & Spoonerisms

I was reading Neil Gaiman's blog this morning at work, which I really shouldn't have been doing. I'm in a cubicle now, and anyone walking by can see whatever is on my monitor, and the odds of that page being interpreted as work are fairly slim.

To make up for this, I attempted to read quickly.

People write in to Neil, and he posts random questions and comments. The problem, of course, in writing to a well-known person that you've never met, is how to address him. As we've passed out of the Victorian era, 'my dear sir' is really no longer appropriate. Neil's letter-writers tend to skip the greeting all together, but some opt for a more unconventional approach.

Like this guy:

Hey Wordsmith,
Your interview is up on http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue385/interview.html
And aren't you the dashing young fellow?
Regards,
Rick

Remember how I was skimming, in case any wandering bosses came along? I read it as 'Hey Wordsworth.'

And I thought to myself, how odd. Why would you compare Neil Gaiman to Wordsworth? If you wanted to cast him as a Romantic poet, I could certainly see Shelly, Byron, or even Coleridge before Wordsworth. Does Rick, perhaps, mean to say that he enjoys Wordsworth a great deal, and wishes to express equal admiration for Gaiman? (Here you see my slavish devotion to parallel structure; I can't continue to refer to him as "Neil" when placing him in direct apposition to "Wordsworth.")

I pondered that this morning, whilst I worked (or at least tried to look like I was working). And then at lunch I went back to follow a few links, and lo and behold, our dear Rick had made no mention of Wordsworth at all.

I felt better about this, since I really don't care for Wordsworth, and like Gaiman quite a bit.

But I got to wondering: is there a name for that sort of misreading? It's not a Spoonerism or a Malapropism, and I couldn't think of any similar concepts, so I turned to Google.

'Misreading' got me far too many options to sort through, but combined with 'Spoonerism,' it gave me this, which, while not answering my initial question, was fascinating reading and spawned a new train of thought (I may be over-caffeinated today):

A lot of these sound like names. Wouldn't it be fun to write some sort of grammatical satire with all of these guys as characters? Anna Coluthon. Auntie Frasis and her son, Perry. Al Gorey. Cat Akresis. Bill Dungsroman. Roman A Clef. Cyn Ektokee.

Then it occurred to me that I probably wasn't the first to notice this.

Further Googling turned up the fact that both Anna Coluthon and Bill Dungsroman routinely post to several discussion lists, but I found no biting wit nor skewering of the Clan of Dullness. Perhaps it is, after all, up to me to share their exploits with the world.

I'm envisioning something along the lines of a modern Dunciad, hold the rhyming couplets. I suspect it will involve internet chat rooms and unrepentant users of 1337.

Evil Randomness

There's always that one song, isn't there?

The one that came on the CD full of songs you love. The CD is brilliant, and you bought it the moment it came out, and with just a hint of disturbing hunger in your eyes, you unwrapped the celophane and popped it in to rip it to your computer. (We are, after all, children of the modern era. This is what we do.)

And it was so great. It was everything you'd hoped.

Until a few days later, when you find the song. You've listened to it before, of course. You devoured the whole album and put it on repeat for fifteen hours straight until your eyes turned into hypno-swirls and you babbled of green fields with drum kits in the middle. But suddenly you realize that it just isn't as mind-bogglingly wonderful as the rest of them. In fact, when you really listen to the lyrics, you discover that it's a bit creepy, honestly.

It becomes, in your mind, the antithesis of all that is good and pure, and it sends shivers down your spine whenever it comes on. You start skipping over it, and you feel disloyal to the artist, because you love her, dammit, and how could she subject you to this, I mean, I'm sorry, I tried, I really did.

Soon enough, this existential crisis fades away, and you find a new album to love and cherish and drool over and place lovingly undr your pillow. It happens. Plenty of fish in the sea.

But that first album, it's still sitting on your hard drive. Some of its songs have made it into your daily play list. A girl's gotta have a soundtrack at work, you know? Not the song, of course, but you've forgotten about that one by now.

And then comes the day that you don't go directly to that hand-selected play list. You just throw the whole damn thing on random and wonder what will come up.

And what's the first damned song you hear? Tori Amos's '97 Bonnie & Clyde.

It's like it knows, somehow.