Cheesecake Bay Oysters and Violent Smoke Alarms
I don't know if there is a name for this phenomenon: I frequently misread signs, headlines, ads, etc., at first glance, with bizarre and even disturbing results. Sometimes it's due to unreadable typefaces; more often, I think, just an apparent misfire in the old neurons. Either way, I have to wonder what makes my brain process perfectly innocuous input into such strange possibilities. Here are a few of my recent misreadings.
- A store ad appeared to be offering Butterfly Premium Jeans. The mundane reality was Buttonfly Premium Jeans.
- An oceanfront apartment (condo?) complex I passed on one of my lunchtime walks was named, I thought, Holy Dunes. A bit odd, perhaps, but there was a church nearby, so I didn't think about it too hard. A second pass-by a couple of weeks later and I realized it was actually Holly Dunes. (This one was a typeface snafu. Someone got artsy-fartsy with the text.)
- The Cheesecake Bay oysters advertised in a local supermarket ad sounded quite decadent. Alas, they were really just ordinary Chesapeake Bay oysters. Good, no doubt, but not cheesecake.
- Now, why would anyone be interested in the "Best Sinus Headaches Now" touted in a Google ad I spotted on some blog? IMHO, "best" and "sinus headache" just don't go in the same sentence. Oh, wait, they're actually inviting me to "Beat Sinus Headaches Now." That's more like it.
- An ominous ad on HGTV.com promised a Violent Smoke Alarm. I think I'd prefer the Vigilant Smoke Alarm that it turned out to be.
- But perhaps the best indication to date that I need psychoanalysis and/or new bifocals was the slip of paper that fell out of my Cingular cell phone bill the other day, exhorting me to "Sign up for cingular autopsy -- and relax." Imagine my relief to discover that they only wanted me to sign up for cingular autopay -- which I'm already signed up for, thanks.
2 comments:
I think everyone has some degree of visual signals not translating properly to words.
A couple blocks from my house is a salon with tanning beds or something it advertises outside "STA-TAN SALON". Which even to this day, I occasionally read as "SA-TAN SALON" and wonder why they are hyphenating the salon of the devil.
I do this all the time. heck, i even misread your cheesecake bay as cheasapeake bay and had to read it twice to see what was different.
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