Sunday, August 26, 2012

Newspaper corrections faux your approval

From time to time every newspaper prints corrections for mistakes which have appeared in the paper. Today I am catching up on some of my own:

In my column about the Olympics, I erroneously referred to the mayor of London as a "nit." A nit, it turns out, is a type of head lice. What I had meant to write was "git" ("a completely ignorant, childlike person with no manners.") I apologize to head lice for the mistake.

In my column about frolicking at a water park, I suggested that a churro vendor should deposit his product in a bodily region not in keeping with good Christian anatomy. I regret the outburst and my description of churros as "the devil's hornpipe." Let me just say here for the record that in a civilized society there is room for all types of confectionery.

In my column about the tourist town of Big Bear, I wrote that there were so many carved wooden bear statues, the ratio of humans to bear statues was 1:1. This was inaccurate. There are actually five times as many bear statues as there are people in Big Bear. I want to apologize to Bear Carvers Local 114, the fine folks at Bears R Us, as well as Smitty's Chain Saw Masterpieces. Carve on, my brothers.

In my column about the new "Transformers" ride at Universal Studios, my suggestion that a 90 minute wait was "totally not worth it" was incorrect, according to a knowledgeable source I like to call the "Universal Legal Department." The ULD reminds me that a "wait" of any duration, however lengthy, is a prime opportunity to "get to know your family better" and to "shut the heck up about wait times." Point taken, ULD. Point taken.

In my recent column about "the Cloud," I used the phrase "agile, scalable infrastructure." I do not know what those words mean, nor does anybody at the paper. I copied them from an Internet article. In fact, I have my suspicions that they are not even real words. Going forward, I promise to fact-check my computery columns with a teenager before publication.

Finally, in writing about Venus' recent "transit" of the sun, the auto-complete function of my word processor unfortunately replaced it with the word "transvestite." As far as I know, astronomers have not found any transvestites in space, and not for lack of trying. I sincerely regret the error, and, frankly, for getting your hopes up.



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