Spells From the Dark Side

There's a place I know where bloopers roam free. They also go there to die, I think. Before they die, however, they do provide some entertainment. These bloopers are from the depths of my dusty archives. Since they are so potent, be warned: they're best taken in small doses. We don't want any OD emergencies, so we'll dole out another small dose at a later date.

What happened was, these clowns were spotted by the Guys in White Hats over in their territory, Apocalexicon, the Land That Dictionaries Forgot (or maybe Forsook), the dark and arid land every thesaurus fears to tread. Even Guys in White Hats like to have a little fun every now and then, so they brought a few prime specimens back to their own land, Spellcheckoslavakia. They erected a podium in the Town Square and had their captives speak, inviting citizens to interpret what they were trying to say. Here are a few of those exchanges.

Captive: Dreams really canb come true!

Citizen: Canb. Hmmm. This is difficult to translate, but I believe this person is subconsciously slipping into Mushmouthian, possibly the result of addiction to The Cosby Kids as a youth.

Captive: They were casting dispersions.

Citizen #1: If I had to guess, I'd say this has something to do with a particular cast of characters saying stuff which causes people to flee the room.

Citizen #2: I disagree. I believe casting dispersions is what Cecil B. DeMille did to find extras for his Biblical extravaganzas. "Dis Persion go here, Dis Persion go dere - now it's the Persions vs. The Hebrews - Action!"

Captive: (Place name withheld to protect the guilty) is a great environment that brings you in as a magnet and doest not let go as an Electron In Magnetic Field.

Citizen: This means that he doth think he understands physics but has a brain the size of an electron. The truth is that (that place) is like a vacuum...it sucks.

Captive: He has some good diatributes.

Citizen: To diatribute is to make something more and more appealing by arguing vehemently against it.

Captive: I'm focused on promoting my writting carrier.

Citizen #1: This is a wonderful opportunity to serve your country on the high seas while getting an all expense paid writting workshop. The writting carrier instructors will drill you, order you around, see that you are fed lousy food, and make you sleep in a steel rack between two other steel racks 18 inches above and below you. They don't actually teach you any writing but if you keep a journal, you've got a real good start on a novel when the writting carrier deployment is over.

Citizen #2: After extensive (imaginary) research, I discovered (made up) the fact (total fabrication) that the writting carrier was a pigeon that not only took messages to their home roost but had dark saliva so you could use their beaks as a pen to write the messages. This was a very long time ago when the spelling of words was very different so 'writting' was an acceptable spelling of 'writing.'

Captive: Proper punturation is very important.

Citizen: I know! I know that one! Punturation is the time it takes to figure out how to correctly punctuate a sentence but that nobody but grammar fiends ever seem to have when they are on the writting carrier.

Captive: Thank you for toturing me with all the descriptions of the stipid food.

Citizen: Obviously, this is the present progressive form of the verb TOTUR, pronounced 'TOE-tour'. It is a rather literal formation, meaning to take a walk. It comes from the famous last words of an Ebazonian queen, who, when told that the peasants had no food, said, "Then let them order take-out. Their fingers can do the walking and their toes can do the touring." She was killed in the revolution not long after, though it seems the unrest came less from unhappiness with her callous stipidity, than from the fact that she'd published her memoirs and then put out an edict that every subject must buy a copy. Hence, totur means to tell someone who wants food to take a walk.

Citizen #2: That Ebazonian queen, was she the one whose head got cut off in one of those farm machines?

Citizen #3: Yes, the queen did, in fact, have a run-in with a baling machine, which was the basis for the folk song 'Queenie and the Baler', which was one of the inspirations for the Police's 'Ghost in the Machine', outlawed in Ebazonia.