Scrap Book

Hello World,

Happy Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. weekend! I hope that in the spirit of the late and lamented civil rights leader, your weekend was appropriately civil, right as rain, and leading the way in good times, relaxation and all of your dreams coming true. Speaking of dreams coming true, the big news around here would be the Giants beating Green Bay in their playoff game, not only in decisive fashion, but on the Packers' home turf besides. This unexpected turn of events has made the beleaguered fans of Big Blue positively giddy, when scant weeks ago, their lovable losers were being written off as hapless patsies and also-rans in their division. But the Giants surprised everybody by turning it on at the tail-end of the season, winning three in a row, and then running roughshod over the Falcons in the Wild Card Game last week. Now even the vaunted Pack has been sent packing, and the hometown faithful could be forgiven for wondering if this might really be their year after all, and a return to the glory days of 2007 all over again. The road to Indianapolis goes through San Francisco for the pride of the Meadowlands, where the local fans hope that their beloved Giants will not be leaving their hearts, I can tell you that.

Meanwhile at work, because of the holiday weekend, the Payroll minions requested that all departments get their time cards in early, and since I was taking off Friday as well, I had to make sure to get them finished on Thursday rather than Friday as usual. Then it occurred to me that since all of the time cards were already submitted to Payroll on Thursday morning, I could cancel the afternoon alarm in my Palm that reminds me to punch out on time. However, when I went to the calendar program to cancel the alarm, this was the first I noticed that rather than saying "PUNCH OUT" on Thursday afternoon, what it actually said was "OYBCG IYT" instead, and thanks so very much not. Obviously I have no one else to blame for this but myself, since I'm the person who sets up the alarms in my Palm, but I think it goes without saying that there's plenty of room for improvement in this system, and I ought to know.

It seems that I'm not the only person with this problem, as our friend good old Bob T. Yokl from the Savings Beyond Price newsletter is another prime example of fickle fingers on the keys. He started out by describing the federal government's efforts to "reduce our U.S. budget deficient" (and we all know that the spell-checker won't help you replace a perfectly good word like "deficient" when what you mean is "deficit" instead) and then presented "a few ideas to get your saving machine oiled, fined tuned and humming" - which in the old days of editors, they would have fined you for "fined tuned" rather than just letting it go out like that. Not resting on his yokels - er, I mean laurels - he summed up by saying that "more and more healthcare organizations are scrapping the bottom of the proverbial barrel to find new savings." My favorite part of this is that it was underlined for emphasis, so we would be sure not to miss it. Well, my personal feeling is that people are going to be scrapping this local yokel instead, at least until he figures out the difference between scrapping and scraping.

Having the same problem with the right word in the wrong context, we have this review of "Color Splash" in the Best Bets section of the TV listings from our local newspaper -

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David Bromstad generates an Old World,

customary game room above a garage

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Here I'm thinking that they mean "custom" rather than "customary," because otherwise, I have no idea what they're trying to say, and once again, the spell-checker's never going to help you with that. This next one for "Allen Gregory" should be even more obvious to anyone, except perhaps the horoscope computer -

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Allen helps out his popular friend

whose sick at home

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Ah, so close and yet so far, when you have to wonder whose who is whose, or worse, whose who's whose in the zoo. Also having homophone trouble was this review of "The Walking Dead" -

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Darryl is forced to take on

a hoard of walkers

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I suppose that someone may have indeed hoarded those walkers, but more likely, the word they were groping for was "horde" instead. Meanwhile, the spell-checker obviously looked the other way when the horoscope computer came up with this tidbit about "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" -

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The gang stubbles upon a gold mine

in the world of child pageants

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Stubbles? What the heck kind of verb is stubbles? That may be a real word in actuality, but it's certainly not the one that they were aiming for, I'm pretty sure. They did no better with this note about "American Dad" -

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Francine cramps Stan's ability to flirt

with coworkers, but retaliatory flirting

leaves to all-out war

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Heck, "leaves" doesn't even sound like "leads," so we can't blame the homophone trolls for that one, that's for sure. Even worse is this shipwreck of a synopsis for "Hot in Cleveland" -

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Victoria's prison pen pal is

way to pay her a visit

====================

Way what, for heaven's sake? Way back? Way out? Way ahead of its time? Honestly, you'd think it would be obvious to anyone that they need to go back and fix that sentence, and not just let it go like that. We actually saw that episode, so we know that the pen pal in question was "on his way" to see her, but the poor over-burdened spell-checker can't help fill in the words that were just plain left out in the first place.

This last one is actually my favorite, and from the front page of the newspaper, where you would think that professional journalists would know better, and not have to rely on modern technology to bail them out, which it apparently couldn't, when they threw this half-baked gibberish at it -

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In Westchester County, 75 cents out of every dollar

collected pays for programs that the state requires

it to provide: Medicaid, pensions, pre-kindergarten,

early childhood prevention and probation, among other costs.

======================

Actually, I think that early childhood prevention would be fairly simple to accomplish, but frankly, the connotations are extremely disturbing on many levels. In any event, these are obviously not banner days in print media of all types, with enough strikes against the literary community that the Grammar Umpires would give them a punch out at home plate, or perhaps that would be a "oybcg iyt" instead, and no hoard of stubbles would be able to rescue them, before it leaves to all-out war. Personally, I would send it all back to the drawing board to be fined tuned, but that would be scrapping the bottom of the proverbial barrel, and I ought to know, or my name isn't -

Bob T. Yokl