One Little Letter Makes It Worse…or Better

My work-from-home gig, aside from this lovely blog (not exactly a money-making venture, despite all those damned “make money blogging, click here” links) involves me providing transcription services. I receive an audio file, type every freaking word that’s uttered – which sometimes includes some bonus profanities (I’ve learned a few new ones, hard as that is to believe for anyone who’s actually met HRH Princess Pottymouth) – then proofread the resulting document and return it to the client within the specified deadline. Yup, *yawn* because the work ranges from a wee bit boring to soul-suckingly mindless, with the occasional coma-inducing file thrown in to improve my mood.

With that said, I don’t really believe I meant to liven things up while typing a file for a public library, nor do I believe it was a Freudian slip – it was more an “I’m up typing waaayyyy too late because I’m also Princess Procrastinator” kind of an error. Yes, it was an itty-bitty typo, but it was a doozy; just one little letter left out of the word “public” gave that document an entirely new meaning. Heh. I kinda doubt Mom wants to take the kiddies to the pubic library for story time, but I’m betting Dad just might sign on. And oh, what that same typo would’ve done for the US Constitution – the right to peaceful pubic assembly. (I am so juvenile at times…OK, pretty much all the time.) I ran a quick search & replace to make pubic public (snicker…sorry) and scribbled myself a Post-It note reminder to check the remainder of my public library files for this oopsie. (Remember, kiddies: spell check misses contextual errors.)

My bored, smutty li’l mind then ferreted around, finding other interesting word pairs where an omitted letter or a switcheroo would make for some very interesting reading. Generous wench that I am, I’m sharing my results.



Let’s begin with bustard/bastard. Make one little mistake with that first vowel and you’re no longer talking about an ugly-ass bird – you’re talking about an individual whose parents were premarital-sex-having heathens and *gasp* unwed at the time the stork delivered. Which I guess means that technically, every bustard is a bastard, given that I’ve never even heard of bird nuptials, ugly-ass or otherwise.

Now let’s take a gander at gander/gender. I find this one ironically amusing, because gander is a term that denotes gender of the male goose. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander….yeah, OK, this is not quite as entertaining as the bastard bustard, but I’m just getting warmed up.

And I'm getting tired of fowl – back to the gutter.

How about topples/topless? This is a bit more complex a finger flub, with the extra S and a single P versus the double. This is actually a probable pairing, if you link it to the soap opera that is today’s political public (pubic? smirk) relations nightmare: topless girl topples a politico’s career. Oh yeah, it could happen – hell, I’m sure it has happened, we just didn’t get the full (frontal?) story with illustrations. And getting to the bottom of things, let’s not forget public figures who like to text pics of their naughty bits to the object(s) of their affections – filthy li’l sexter-fiends. To be honest, I think it takes a fairly secure man to sext a pic of his junk – even on my relatively large smart(ass)phone screen, Big Boy would look mighty puny.

Sticking with the nekkers theme, I give you morning/mooning. I’ve done this one – the typo, not the bum show, although I might consider it once I firm up my backside to the point I’m ready to rock that Undie Bomber TNT thong. This would be about the time hell freezes over or someone develops an ass-shrinking dietary supplement, whichever comes first.

I’ve about run out of steam here, but I don’t want to leave you with that scary mental picture. So in closing, I give you the omission of the highly significant F in shift, such that shift work becomes, you got it, shit work – which is kinda what I was doing when I had this little brain cramp. So...

Back to the salt mines for me, but I promise y'all I am all over this pubic library concept. It has incredible potential to lure the masses away from internet porn, right? (Yeah, it was rhetorical; don’t bother.)