#465 Dots Okay

So English is a funny language. No really. Take my wife. Please. The reason jokes like that can work is it only takes a hint of an inflection or a shift of perception to change meaning and intent. The other day I was driving by some low-income apartments. There was a sign out front that apparently Comcast was behind putting up. You know, like electricians, carpenters and plumbers put up their signs when they’re on a construction site. This sign was meant to tell all and sundry that Comcast was on the job providing high-speed cable services to this rundown apartment complex. Now first off let me clarify that low income does not necessarily mean run down, nor does it necessarily mean drug problem. But with the nature of this particular place both of those were fair assumptions. So given the prevalence of Thurston County meth labs in similar locales it seemed like a marketing blunder for Comcast to have a sign out front that said “this complex wired for speed by Comcast.” I mean, what with “wired” and “speed” being associated with that whole meth thing. Just an observation. I saw another sign in the same area. It was at a gas station. You know, where everyone goes for gourmet food. This sign was advertising a triple cheese burger. Sounded good. I was tempted to pull in, top off my tank, get gas on my knuckles, then go in and pile on the condiments. Somehow the combined fragrance of microwaved burger, American cheese, onions, relish, and fresh gasoline just send me to connoisseur heaven. What stopped me though was that I couldn’t figure out from the picture whether it was a triple cheese burger or a triple burger cheese. I mean, were there three slices of cheese, making it a triple cheese burger? Or three patties of burger, making it, more accurately, a triple burger cheese? I figured I didn’t need a huff of gasoline to further my confusion. But that’s just me. I sometimes dyslexify an entire sentence or phrase. Like that old song, “she wore an itsy bitsy, teeny weenie, yellow polka dot bikini. I follow it as far as the first two adjectives. Itsy bitsy and teeny weenie. It’s kind of cool talking baby talk every now and then and “itsy bitsy” and “teeny weenie” are a lot more fun than “small.” But I have never been able to figure out if the polka dots were yellow or the bikini was yellow. If the polka dots were yellow then there’s a fair case that they were also itsy bitsy and teeny weenie and that all the adjectives piled up in the early part of the sentence were modifying polka dots and not bikinis. So the girl in the song could have been quite prim and wearing something very modest and we’ve got the whole skimpy-clad beach bunny slutty image wrong all these years. Poor girl. And another thing. Polka dots. Why? What distinguishes a regular dot from a polka dot? And what do these particular types of dots have to do with polish dances?
America, ya gotta love it