#290 Mall Content

One of the sad things about our society is the erosion of meaning in our language, or at least accuracy in the use thereof. I blame a lot of it on spellcheck. I used to be a pretty good speller. I could tell at a glance if a word was spelled wrong. Now I always feel like I need to refer to spellcheck first. Call up Word and type in a word and see if I get a squiggly line. The other day I was at Capitol Lake and felt that sense of de-check-vu. I was at the Dragon Boat races, an annual event that promotes international understanding and the spirit of Pacific Rim competition by pitting crews of rowers against one another in stylized Asian boats. I only saw one race but I remember the boats as having two rows of rowers each with a paddle that they swept to their side Indian fashion as opposed to the long sculls that the ivy league establishment favors with a rower in the center, two oars jutting out either side, and numerous highly machined oarlocks and seat mechanisms. The dragonboat paddlers had to hunker down on either side of their boats and paddle furiously to the timing of a real live honest to goodness drummer. The boat with the best drummer appeared to win. Seriously, the boat that did win was sponsored by a local restaurant, the Emperors Palace. Unfortunately, whoever had fashioned the sign to put on the front of the boat, which dashed to a lead in front of its competition, the bow and the name sticking out wondrously in a perfect advertising opportunity, had not had all their oars in the water because they had done the name in all caps. And they must have used a Microsoft Word program to spellcheck it because unless you enable Word to specifically do so, its default setting is not to spellcheck words done in all capitals. I guess the sign maker figured hey, boat race at Capitol Lake, I’ll use all capitals on the boat. Which meant that when they spelled the word emperor they didn’t see any squiggly line so it got pasted on the boat e-m-p-O-r-o-r instead of e-m-p-E-r-o-r. Is there one or two O’s in oops?
As for erosion of meaning, I was walking through the mall and I spotted an empty store. I wasn’t worried. A new store would soon pop up in its place, featuring cellphones, cellphone accessories, or diaphanous tops, short t-shirts and low-in-the-back tight jeans. Maybe even all four and a buttcrack tattoo place as well. They ought to put henna removable tattoo places next to hairstyling salons so the girls that are dumping a couple hundred bucks on single use prom night hairstyles could get temp tattoos for their plunging backlines too. Anyhow, I wasn’t worried about the vacant store, malls were the original environmentalists because they recycle their empties, but I was concerned about the sign in the window. “Storefront for Lease” it said. So, I thought, is the back still being used?
America, ya gotta love it.