Faux Island Paradise
Somerville, MA
Just a short one tonight, as I’m busy with the final round of packing for the trip. I would like to invite you back in time to the weekend, when I happened to be in CVS, unprepared for serious typo-seeking and yet unable to turn off the natural sensor in my brain. Thus it is only in poor camera-phone quality that I present to you the following typo:
This was not a full-scale tropical hut, of course, but a miniature piece of lawn ornamentation, or… something. It should be no surprise, regardless, that this little slice of tribalist fantasy was on the discount rack of a drugstore. No serious masked bartender could survive in this economy for long slinging pina coladas for a dollar. In any case, I needed to wipe out that unwelcome apostrophe but was, as I mentioned, unprepared and without my handy bottle of white-out. So I liberated a small corner of the label of a nearby bottle of mouthwash.
Now that particular product is safe for purchase, though the guy in the mask still looks pretty pissed.
All right, when next I write you, I shall be (hopefully) in the greater New York area, imposing on friends in Hoboken. Now that the website has made its official debut, some of you may actually be reading this and the older entries. Let me know if you’re curious about who’s behind all that fantastic Flash-work.
Totals
Typos Found: 4
Typos Corrected: 2
March 5th, 2008 at 2:20 am
I’m pretty sure I know the woman behind the digital curtain
Safe journeys, Captain TEAL! May the grammar gods be with ye!
March 5th, 2008 at 9:37 am
Brilliant! That masked man does look quite pissed, I have to say. You should have a belt w/ a TEAL belt buckle- complete with a pouch for your handy whiteout! I see if i can work on that…
March 5th, 2008 at 9:40 am
Nice site Jeff. Love the layout and the over all look.
Can you please send me an address you will be at in the future to send you a little something? You’ve got the trip all planned out so don’t even try to tell me you can’t send me an address.
March 5th, 2008 at 9:57 am
ps. you should include some kind of membership card in this whole grand scheme. then, when you meet people or even when you make a correction, you can pass out or tape up the card. This could generate more traffic to your site, more typos eradicated. if you tape up cards when you fix something, it serves as either a big “Fuck You Idiots” or “TEAL WAS HERE.” Either way, coolness.
March 5th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Bone Voyages, Jef! Im fassinated bye you’re riting, An wil bee folowing you’re progres thruout hte tripp! TEAL FORE EVER!
March 5th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
Love the idea! Thanks for making the world less dangerous. Keep us updated.
March 5th, 2008 at 8:55 pm
This is wonderful! Good luck, I’ll miss you, and I will faithfully follow your progress.
Love,
Mom
March 6th, 2008 at 11:05 am
Is there a Spanish branch of TEAL (El TEAL, perhaps?) that could do something about the missing tilde over the “n” in “Pina”? Los grammar gods watch over all languages.
March 6th, 2008 at 11:09 am
Thanks so much for doing this! I can’t believe you’re giving yourself only a month down the east coast and into the South. Really, this trip should take a whole year. My pet peeve is using ‘less’ when it should be ‘fewer.’ But my biggest pet is when a radio announcer (I usually hear this on NPR) says ‘thank you’ and the interviewee says ‘thank you’ back, instead of ‘your welcome,’ or ‘my pleasure,’ or (Brit.) ‘pleshuh.’ That’s not really grammar related, is it? I guess it’s more Miss Manners’ arena. But maybe this is an area (audio typos) you want to explore?
March 6th, 2008 at 6:12 pm
Kudos to Ryan. Piña instead of Pina.
March 7th, 2008 at 12:58 pm
TEAL-
have you been to any schools? there a few that could learn a lot from you!
my husband is all over the typos, the best proofreader i know. he teaches at a school on the north side of st. louis, mo. are you thinking of stopping in the lou? have you thought of speaking at schools? they typically have food to share and we could find a place for you all to stay…
if you are going to hit “the gateway to the mid-west”- let us know.
safe travels-
ra p*
March 7th, 2008 at 7:17 pm
Unfortunately Missouri isn’t on the itinerary… too far north for the trip out to the West Coast and too far south for the trip back. There’s a bunch of states in the middle that’ll be left out; couldn’t quite cover the whole map!
March 13th, 2008 at 9:21 am
Will you be distinguishing between intentional misspellings?
There was a taco place in my town that, for years had a sign which read, “TRY ARE WET BURRITO.”
They left it that way on purpose.
March 29th, 2008 at 9:15 am
This is so fantastic. When you return to Eastern Mass, I assume you will pass the sign on Rt 84 (just as you get near the Mass Pike) that until recently read,
Take a break
Stay awake
For safety sake
It’s since been corrected, but there have been many ocassions over the past decade where I have nearly crashed the car while my brain short-circuited trying to interpret that last line.
Also close to home my wife and I recently received a letter from a well-known Boston-area private school to which our daughter was applying that opened with the salutation, “Dear perspective parents…” I knew then and there I didn’t want to spend $20K a year for that school.
March 30th, 2008 at 8:24 pm
Hi,
I read your article in the Boston Globe and was so intrigued. I am a 3rd grade teacher who is always explaining to my students the importance of punctuation. I am going to show them all your great travels and experiences! This is great! Thanks!!!
April 2nd, 2008 at 12:06 pm
Y’know, I could argue that that one’s not horribly incorrect. “(A) piña colada is $1.00″
That said, having just come to your quest yesterday, I wish you continued success in your mission.
JB
Somerville, MA
April 4th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
I hope by now someone has told you that the correct spelling is Piña Colada.
April 7th, 2008 at 8:24 am
I don’t think I can explain just how amused I am by the typos in the replies here.
Come on, people! You’re complimenting the guy on what he’s doing, yet you’re saying “there a few” and “your welcome”.
April 8th, 2008 at 6:23 am
Pity you missed my favorite misspelling, the “Specails” counter in the Faulkner Hospital Cafeteria. The misspelling lasted through one cafeteria renovation that I know of, until I saw the new sign and couldn’t bear it any longer. The poor cafeteria manager blushed to the roots of her hair when I pointed out the gaffe, while my husband hissed at me to mind my own business.
Within five minutes, there was a copy-paper correction of the sign. A new sign was in place the next time we visited the hospital, and I still hear people commenting that “they finally noticed,” two years later.
Enjoy your trip and should you head back this way, there’s a guest room waiting for you. BTW, its wicked funny that theirs all kinds of grammer errors in comments section.
May 28th, 2008 at 3:08 am
Kathy - now you’re just tempting us all to say that you made some errors, too, but I’ll wager they were deliberate.