Monday, June 21, 2004

My office moved a week ago, so I'm now walking distance from the gym I joined a year ago and have gone to irregularly at best. As I now have no real excuse for not going to the gym, and have been trying to go at lunch.

Today I was there (yay, me), orbiting away on one of the elliptical machines, and trying to read the closed captioning on the various TVs. I discovered that if you look carefully, the typos in closed captioning can actually be quite philosophical, or at least amusing. For example:

"The best laid plans are mice, and men often go awry." Just beautiful in its simplicity, isn't it? And, President Clinton apparently lost his battle with temptation (in the form of a certain White House intern) at least partially because of all the "fresh ears" he was under. I'm not exactly sure what that means, but it sounds interesting and significantly more fun than being under pressure!

So, I'm now collecting funny closed captioning mondegreens. When I find them, I'll post them here, and maybe if I get enough I'll stick them on their own page somewhere (yes, I know, I have no life). So, if you see any, email me!

Oh, yeah, a mondegreen is a phrase that is mis-heard, frequently, but not always, in a song lyric. For example, "'Scuse me while I kiss this guy" is a Mondegreen for the line from Purple Haze "'Scuse me while I kiss the sky". It comes from a traditional folk song with the line "They have killed the Earl of Murray and laid him on the green" which was mis-heard as "They have killed the Earl of Murray and Lady Mondegreen". Just a little factoid so your trip here hasn't been utterly wasted.

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