« FEAR THIS | November | SCOTRUN » « Dick Ebersol, Chairman of NBC ... | Questions | SCOTRUN »

Comments

Dan • 11/04/03 • 6:46 PM:

Since when is “scrotum” an obscene word? What, are you in 4th grade or something?

I think “scotrun” is easier to misread in all lowercase.

I think that instead of creating scotrun’s own post so that nobody ever sees it again you should add it to these comments and then delete your more-pointless-than-my-post post.

Also, stop being in 4th grade and write what you read the word as. You are implying nothing when you simply write the word. Don’t expect everybody else to misread it, in effect assuming everybody is as stupid are you are.

David • 11/05/03 • 10:41 PM:

Apparently Dan has some (stupidity) issues and feels dumb for not including ‘scotrun’ in his post. It’s okay Dan, you don’t have to cry about it. Try being a little more appropriate next time.

Patrick • 11/06/03 • 9:31 AM:

Doug Pinnick tells the tale of the time when some of his friends convinced him that the song “My Sharona” was really “My Sca-rotum.” He was so naive that he didn’t know that word (_scrotum_, not sca-rotum), and so he sang it that way on stage. We’re talking Sneak Preview time, not King’s X.

By the way, you’re both immature idiots.

Dan • 11/06/03 • 11:17 AM:

Ah, yes, my stupidity issue that has plagued me my entire life has resurfaced in my maddenation comment.

Dave simply believes that “scotrun” merits its own post. I don’t. It is an addition to my post. Just put it in the comments. I just don’t believe scotrun looking like scrotum is the greatest thing since sliced bread.

Yes, I also feel dumb for not including “scotrun” in my post. What? Congratulations on completely confusing the crap out of Dan. Newsbreak…Dan has never misread “scotrun”. He was too young when the joke was hot (or too stupid, perhaps the origin of my stupidity issue) and until you posted your post (which still does not exist in these comments) I had no idea. So, you should be calling me dumb because I’ve never misread it. Wait, no.

Next stupidity issue: Don’t expect everybody else to misread it, in effect assuming everybody is as stupid are you are. Here I am being facetious. Because it took me a couple tries to figure out what Dave was implying “scotrun” could read as (I was looking for obscenity), I figured I’d issue a statement to avoid more confusion. What I mean in this sentence (which I believe was misinterpreted by Dave, judging on spoken word from last night) is that he who misreads a word is, in (facetious) effect, being stupid. When you don’t write what you misread it as you are assuming that everybody else will read it like you read it, at least after some brainracking. Well, don’t assume that. That’s all. Dave, I don’t think you’re stupid or dumb. I don’t think the effect would be the same if I just wrote, “Every time I see the word “coworker” I see “coworker”. Get it?! Har!

Which brings me to another thought. You’re a very suave crybaby. Intimating that your own brother, who you live with, has (some?) stupidity issues because you misinterpret his written words. Well, if he knew you’d bitch about it (OMG! did I just swear?) he wouldn’t have written it.

Things I’ve learned from living with Dave: He uses the words “issues” and “inappropriate” all the time. Someone who constantly tells people (not just me, here) that they have “issues” might want to start listening to the song “Man in the Mirror” by Michael Jackson.

And about being inappropriate: What? Scrotum? Can I not write that? What about fart? Or are you pissy about me calling you stupid? Well, smart man, get over it. See a few paragraphs up where I reveal that I don’t actually think you’re stupid.

And, finally, Dave, your comment made me do one of the biggest WHAT?s of all time. This is my interpretation, however.

Dan • 11/18/03 • 9:57 PM:

This is odd. Our roommate, Loud Pat, just told me that whenever he sees the word “rockford,” he starts humming the theme song from The Rockford Files. “I find myself humming it at work, and I CAN’T STOP! Believe it.

Kathleen • 11/20/03 • 1:38 AM:

All I can say is you fellas crack me up. Why didn’t Dave’s famous “Concept-a” come up?

I can’t think of any specifics, but I misread things every day. And, unfortunately, I usually don’t have the wherewithall to think the word before blurting it out, so I look…you guessed it, stupid. I wish I could think of an example. Next time.

Patrick • 11/20/03 • 12:31 PM:

Whenever I see an “entrance,” I automatically think “en-trance,” meaning to put a spell on, to cast into a trance.

Dan • 12/03/03 • 3:30 PM:

I was searching Semaphore’s song network (iTunes, baby) and came across Leaders of the New School. If that weren’t cool enough (they used to be a feature rap group on YO! MTV Raps back in the day, complete with Busta Rhymes back when he was cooler and less famous), they had a song called “Zearocks.” I thought that was great spelling for “Xerox.” Clever. I listened to the song. Basically, it’s a minute and a half of sampled Chuck D (Public Enemy) saying, “Comin’ from the school of hard knocks! Hook up the new school rap game.”

What’s my point? This: Watch out for the spirit-snipers, trying to steal your life. —Flavor Flav

AJ • 12/13/03 • 12:24 AM:

Issues with issues and words in words that look different than the words they are.
(WARNING: THIS IS AN ESSAY)

I can’t think of any words that I read wrong right now, but plenty that I pronounce wrong. I can think of a word that I can’t imagine sounding like it’s supposed to and it’s “queue.” That word is supposed to be pronounced ‘q’? Are you kidding me? Try ‘kway-way’ or something.

I see words as combinations of letters and other words all the time, but I think usually as an act of observation not as a mistake reading. I’ve experimented a lot with purposely saying words wrong too (probably because of Dan), and come up with ‘en-trance’ as well at some point. I hear things as sounds sometimes too, and assemble different words that sound alike. This is definitely used by Dan and I in the homonym game. For example “my wife just said to be at LAX 15 minutes later, because she needed to get her baggage. I heard “bag edge,” and recommended she bring home the entire bag.

Like that example, I sometimes say sentences with words that sound sort of like what I would say if I wanted to speak normal English, just to see if someone will figure out the relation between what I’m actually saying and what I should say.

This usually results in people thinking I’m really annoying and wishing I would just pronounce the word(s) right. These are the same people, however, who will likely misspell a word or say something incorrectly and then blurt, “you know what I mean,” when corrected. Well, yeah, I can usually figure out what they mean, but that doesn’t mean everyone can or, more importantly, should be expected to. It’s no surprise to me that frequently when you say something but mean something else, the something you say has its own meaning and can easily be interpreted to mean exactly what you said instead of what you meant to say. ( _yes, I like to use a lot of words to explain something obvious _) Sometimes it even means the opposite of what you are trying to say.

Anyway, that’s mostly a tangent for the thought I haven’t written down yet, which of course follows. I hate when people use words like _issues _ to explain some vague behavior pattern or anything for that matter. I’m not sure whether “you’ve got _issues _” is supposed to mean, “you need psychological help because you’re crazy,” or “you’ve got problems that you need to solve before you move onto this topic,” or “you’ve got stuff to pass out”, or “you’ve got topics,” or “you’ve got an outline of things to address,” or “you’ve got some outlets,” or “you’ve got complaints,” or “you’ve got a sweet magazine collection.” It seems to me that it’s some kind of ‘buzz-word’ meant to describe any number of those meanings, which is, of course, my point. Make an effort to explain what the heck you’re talking about rather than relying on some popular vague descriptor to cover up the fact that you don’t really know what it is about the person’s _issue _ that you have _issues _ with.

I’m sure it’s most often intended to be used in the most informal of it’s definitions—-“emotional problems,” but the informal meaning is usually the poorest for communication. This is especially so when used in an argument where the opposition will often try to pick apart any inconsistency or possible extra meanings in your statements. Consequently, I think it’s probably a good idea to come up with some synonyms though for the following reasons:

1. It’s annoying to people like Dan and me to hear the same word over and over, especially if used in various contexts. Even though the differences between these contexts may be subtle, it’s in your best interest to communicate that you understand the differences. Use a different word.

2. You end up classifying yourself as a person who uses these vague words. You might as well start saying, “dope” to mean radically awesome, or “phat,” or “late” instead of “later,” or “peace out,” or “outie,” or “whack” as far as I’m concerned. ( _note: This argument is not very good. _)

3. It will more clearly reflect the true meaning of your communicated thought. This problem of words having several meanings depending on tone, context, or even pronunciation is one of the things that make English so complicated. The flexibility it provides gives those with a certain level of fluency the ability to communicate very complex ideas and express them in artistic, creative fashion. Unfortunately, it also creates a serious problem in simple communication. Any seemingly simple variation of speech, spelling, context, tone or sometimes even word order creates a sentence of entirely different meaning.

I notice that use of these types of words seems to prevail in teenagers and the schools they attend, which may be why I often find the teachers often using similar vague references. A possible result of osmosis? (disclaimer—-this is not directed at any specific teachers that may or may not read this, so put down your “world’s greatest teacher” award or whatever else you were thinking about throwing at my head) Anyway, I feel schools harbor the use of ‘buzzwords’ because using vague non-descriptive words is the way of life in schools. Stereotyping and social classification runs rampid in high schools. “Conform or be cast out.” As the famous (to me anyway) Joseph Quanaim (somehow pronounced kwi-num) once said, the social structure in public high schools is horrible because it crushes any inkling of independent thought. Being different in high/elementary school most often means being ridiculed not praised.

I can’t say much for private schools having no personal experience, but I can’t imagine them being much different. From some of the stories I’ve heard about Catholic schools (the only private schools I’ve heard talked about) independent thinking probably earned you all sorts of black and blue rewards on your hands. Then again, I’m beginning to suspect that the nuns these people talk about were really SS troopers in habits.

Don’t get me wrong, I love stereotypes. Since basically everything is an estimation, stereotypes and assumptions are essential to being able to make most decisions and is crucial to scientific analysis. Consequently, I think the saying “when you assume you make an ass out of you and me,” is foolish. All of us engineers know problem solving is all about know what to assume and what to calculate from those assumptions.

As a related side-note, I hate when people use _lingo _ or acronyms or that people who aren’t familiar with your subject may not understand without going through the trouble of explaining what they mean. For instance, if I say, “I was playing backgammon the other day and I Bobby behind a 5 point prime, but he was up 20 pips, had a great anchor on the 4 point, and was threatening to blitz my back checkers,” it’s not likely you’ll have any idea what I’m talking about unless you’ve read up on backgammon strategy. Of course, you can (and why not?) use _lingo _ if you define it, and thus add to my vocabulary and understanding of your topic. In this way, next time we will be able to communicate in a more mutually understandable means.

Acronyms are another common culprit of miscommunication. When I ask about her work at school, I often find Kat’ will say things like “I had to do an IPT and the family didn’t have their QRC’s to XYZ and so we all started laughing…hahahaha.” (OK, I made those acronyms up, but the point is still in there somewhere.) Meanwhile I’m thinking _am I supposed to know what these abbreviations mean, does she expect me to ask or am I supposed to know what these abbreviations mean, and about Homer saying, “Well, son that’s BTO, they’re playing TCOB FYI. That’s the way we had to talk in the 70’s—-no time for words,” and _am I supposed to know what these abbreviations mean _ all at the same time.

Mispronounced and misused cliches are a favorite of mine. Surely they are one of the biggest culprits of creating meanings for words that don’t really exist. For instance, if I think a cliche is using a particular word, and I know the general meaning of the cliché, I will associate that word with that meaning. If, however, the _word _ that I think is being used is really a phrase or combination of other words which when pronounced sound similar to said _word _ than I will have made up a definition for said _word _ based on a cliche that in reality doesn’t even use said _word _. This applies to song lyrics probably too, but since most lyrics have ambiguous meaning anyway it’s not really going to change your understanding of the language is much as it will make you look stupid in front of people who really know the lyrics. (Feeling stupid about music reminds me of the time I asked Dan if the Bing Crosby he was downloading was the same as the Crosby in Crosby, Stills, & Nash. He told me he was going to tell his brothers that I asked that. I didn’t know who Bing Crosby was. Go ahead and sue me.)

I realize that this writing is probably contradictory, since its purpose at first seemed to be clarification. Regardless, I got caught up in trying to write sentences that make perfect sense, but are really confusing to read because of excessive use of pronouns and repetition of words to describe other words. On the other hand, this sort of makes the point that it is better to communicate something clearly rather than in any way that can be misconstrued. If we all did that, than I probably would have a written a much clearer essay.

After finishing, I wanted to subtitle my article, “An experiment in explanation and an exercise in excessive explanation in an attempt to explain how explicit explanations are an excellent way to expedite and elucidate communication.” Nevertheless, the beginning of the article and the post it was written for both reflect that this wasn’t the original intent of the writing. Indeed, the subtitle was created as a result of observing my explanation technique in several of my paragraphs. I found that when I was writing several sentences, the thought I was attempting to write was incomplete, and as the sentence evolved I followed a course that felt natural, but wasn’t necessarily consistent with the original intent of the sentence. This resulted in sentences that made logical sense and because of their structure and word choice were humorous to read, and so, considering a good laugh among a sentence’s highest honors, I kept the sentence despite the fact that the meaning was sometimes different than the sentence should have had within the thought cluster (paragraph). Funny how when writing about how thoughts should be communicated clearly, I find it difficult to clearly express why these thoughts should be clearly expressed. There I go again. I’m unable to resist the urge to repeat words to complete a thought. It’s at odds with the rule “never use a word in a definition.”

Circular references are often logical errors, but then in computer programming a recursive function (e.g. the factorial function) calls on itself. In this circumstance circular references can be used logically. I wonder where this can go…

Oh, and one last thing. I didn’t intend for this essay to be posted on Maddenation. For one thing, it’s WAY too long, which by my estimation means the chance of David reading every word of it in one try is pretty close to the limit of 1/x as it approaches infinity. Also, it’s never really covers the topic of the post. Regardless, I emailed a rough draft of this to Dan and he forwarded it to Pat. After reading it they both said I could post it, at penalty of who knows what, so I was obligated. If you don’t like anything written here, feel free to take it out on Dan and Pat 3.

Zang!

AJ • 12/13/03 • 12:46 AM:

Oh, and SCOTRUN doesn’t look like anything to me. Honestly, when I first browsed over dan’s discussion of scotrun, I thought it was some inside joke involving some guy named scott the maddens know. It took a lot of research (getting around this site is awkward right now - maybe it’s between stages)for me to figure out where it all came from.

As far as the site, who in the world decided it would be intuitive to make the link to the entry the time? I think I figured that out by accident. Until I just now rolled my cursor over it to see it say “link to entry” I thought I had figured out an accidental link to the entry. Little did I know it’s intended to be that way. Why not make the title the link?

Boy, italics don’t look that great on this so maybe I’ll stop using them.

AJ • 12/13/03 • 12:50 AM:

Daniel, maybe “ow” words stand out in your head.

Dad • 12/13/03 • 10:16 AM:

I just read AJ’s comments and now I have to go take a nap before I can do anything else. Before I lay down, I just want to say that I read Patrick’s Ohio licence plate as having “COW” in it. I think it is actually “CDW” but it kind of looks like COW, and I like that because it fits in with the fact that he lives in a somewhat rural part of Ohio.

Dan • 12/16/03 • 3:16 PM:

AJ, wasn’t it “enqueue” (as in, “queueing” an mp3 for WinAmp) that always confused you? I remember that you used to pronounce it “enkway” and then I told you that I think it’s pronounced like the letters “N-Q.”

Anyway, one of the great on-purpose-mispronunciations is “The Deftones.” The Deftones are a metallish band, and they pronounce their name “DEF-tones”. One day, driving home from Exxon/Clinton, the Deftones were on the radio and I asked Pat if the band on the radio was the “Deft Ones.” He loved it. I did too. It was especially good because that name would certainly be a silly name for a band that sounds the way they do.

Dan • 01/03/04 • 6:17 PM:

One of my favorite misread phrases is the McDonald’s hamburger, the “Big n’ Tasty,” which I misread every time I see it as “Big Nasty.”

Dad • 02/15/05 • 11:33 AM:

And in today’s followup segment, I need to describe the “theme” of the crossword puzzle I did today (well, almost did). Three of the long clues reminded me of this posting (which I found by searching for “scot run.” The first one was “canine social reformers?” and the answer was dogdogooders, which almost forces you to think “dog dog ooders.” (By the way, question marks in crossword clues mean some sort of play on words.) Another clue was “bovine officemates?” The answer, of course, was cowcoworkers. (I once had a summer job as a cow orker in Wisconsin.) Finally, another clue was “formic collectors of short literary works.” Patrick will immediately know that the answer is antanthologists. Just though you’d like to know.

Patrick • 02/15/05 • 5:56 PM:

And I will immediately know that because, of course, I once discovered the word formication in the dictionary (and wrote about it somewhere, but apparently not here on Maddenation), which means “the feeling that ants are crawling all over your skin” or, more colloquially “ants in your pants.” But what a word, eh?

Post a comment