Making Fun of Typos, and the Packbawky Palace

Typo observed on another Internet journal: "I felt awfully decedent, buying for myself." (Decedent (n) - a person who is deceased. That is to say, dead. Defunct. Lifeless. Dearly departed. One who has bitten the dust, crossed the Styx, gone the way of the dodo, and what have you.)

"Yes," I told my monitor--"yes, I feel rather decedent, myself, after a long day's shopping. Or even after a short day's shopping, or a day with no shopping at all. Further inspection, however, tends to reveal that I'm merely asleep. Hey, remember those Decadent Cookies you used to get, the President's Choice ones? Imagine they'd made the same typo--and imagine no-one had noticed till the supermarkets were full of 'em! Oh, I can see it now: shelf upon shelf, groaning with delicious dead-people cookies. Bone-chips instead of chocolate chips, what? Bonemeal instead of flour. And one shudders to think what the packaging's made of. Eeeeew!"

"Hey, I'm just a typo," said the typo--"don't look at me."

Typo discovered in a "Little Prince" calendar purchased by my sister:

For some reason, I thought of Katamari Damacy. Two men standing at the urinals: one is an ordinary man--your dad, for example--and the other is the King of All Cosmos, whose enormous package caused quite a stir, last year, amongst the videogaming set. Your dad can't help but glance over at the King. His Majesty's unusually loud outfit does tend to command attention. There's that gem-studded hat, the bright blue yukata, and who can forget those tight purple stockings, lovingly stretched over His Majesty's other massively prominent feature? Your dad's eyes go all wide and glazey...and just like that, he can't go. He's been inhibited by the King. Dun-dun-dun--another one bites the dust!

The new birdcage (referred to, henceforth, as the Packbawky Palace) arrived this afternoon. It's a great clunker of a thing, thirty inches by eighteen by sixty-one. I understood, when I placed the order, that I was getting a big cage, but I didn't realise just how big till I was manhandling the forty-one-inch cage onto the twenty-inch stand. I just about died! Every time I had the cage in place, the stand squirted out and went rolling off down the hall--did I mention the damn thing's on wheels? I poked myself in the eye, broke two fingernails, and lost the same screw under the couch four times. I was also bitten by all three birds. Caw--the beaks on them!

After all that bother, what do you reckon the birds are doing? Why, they're all bunched together in one corner, of course, peeping and pecking each other. They keep cocking their heads in a perplexed sort of way: "Eh? What do we do now?" Earth to birds: there's a reason it's called a flight cage. Spread those lazy wings! Ah, well. I dare say they'll catch on eventually. It'll be nice for them, getting a spot of exercise--especially Miss Blue, who's looking a bit portly round the middle.

Mr. Snagglebeak goes in tomorrow for his second mite treatment. After that, it's just sixteen more days before he can rejoin his cronies. Bloody good thing, too--half my living room's taken up with cages. I've got the rats in one corner, one set of birds in another, and Mr. Snagglebeak by the TV. Me, I've been shoved off to one side, couch and all.

At any rate, things are beginning to shape up, on the packbawky front. Just under a fortnight ago, four very sad birds arrived on my doorstep. Now, I've got three happy squawkers, and one on the mend. All in all, I've not done so badly, though I say it myself.