Stalked by Office Products!

Yes, in the same way that creepy characters in nightmares suddenly reappear next to you, I've figuratively turned around to detect flexible office supplies suddenly close at hand.

On February 21, 2019, I was walking back to my car at the Post Office when I noticed ...

... a perfectly good eraser ...

... sitting just outside my driver-side door.

And only a few days later, as I approached my car at home ... ANOTHER ONE!

What else could I do?  I bought another car!  I went from a 2006 gold HHR to an Aegean Blue Civic.  But was I safe?

EVIDENTLY NOT!  When returning to the same post office six months later, the erasers had morphed into rubber bands ... and I surrendered to the gods of office supplies.

Since then I haven't chewed a pencil tip or folded, spindled, or mutilated any paper forms.  I seem to be safe, for now!

See ya Monday, unless I get swallowed by a big pot of glue!

  

I Hate Word Mix-Ups!

The above gem is from the March 5, 1991 Oklahoman.  I think it's pretty self evident that limiting  ANY kind of intake would prevent putting on pounds.

However ...

Most of the word mix-ups I encounter in my voluminous reading are words which are homonyms but not synonyms.  They sound alike, but don’t mean alike.

             When someone is trying to say that a plan is coming together, or an idea is taking shape, then things are not beginning to “gel.”  Gel is a noun, referring to something like jelly.  If things are aligning, then they are beginning to jell.  http://grammarist.com/homophones/gel-vs-jell/

             When you’re studying documents, you are not “pouring” over them.  You are poring.  To pore is to examine intently.  To pour is to decant.  https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/usage/pour-or-pore

            Of course, our skin has pores, but it’s another word that’s spelt the same, “Late Middle English: from Old French, via Latin from Greek poros ‘passage, pore’.”

             If two things go together or correspond, they do not “jive.”  They “jibe.”  Jibe means “to agree with.”  Jive is a word which can apply to music (or jive dancing) or it can mean “fake, inauthentic,” as in our college slang of calling somebody a “jive turkey.”  https://www.thoughtco.com/gibe-jibe-and-jive-1689398

             For me, the original of all word mix-ups was innocence itself.  By the second grade I was reading fifth-grade and higher material.  This led to a lot of words entering my vocabulary through reading only.  I’d never heard those terms spoken aloud.  And I figured out their meanings from their context.

            So, when I read that somebody was misled, I came up with a verb, “misle.”  This word was pronounced like the name of the Saudi King Faisal.  In my mind, this word meant confused or unsure about something.  If you said somebody was misled, then they misunderstood something.  They were MY-zuld.

            I also knew the word “misled,” as in being led astray.  That word was pronounced miss-LEDD.  An entirely different word!

             I was somewhere in my twenties when I reconciled the two words in my mind. Ahh, memories of precocious youth!

      I'll leave you with more unintentional silliness, this time from the June 8, 1983 Buyer's Guide distributed hereabouts in the OKC area.

Note the CANDY BARS blurb.  Don't you want a "huge ass" from candy bars?

See ya Thursday.