I think spellcheck just broke up with me.

in Random Crap, weekly reruns

There’s this girl online named Gemma Correll who draws pictures of cats and pugs and anxiety and stuff, and when I saw her illustrated map of an introvert’s heart I was like “Yep.  It’s just like this.  Except add more twitter.”

gemmacorrell

Then I went on twitter and followed her and tried to send her a tweet…

g6

…but spellcheck was like “‘Friends?’  Nope.  I don’t think so.”  And I thought, “Am I spelling ‘friends’ wrong?” so I clicked on it and spellcheck was like, “Maybe you should look up ‘friends’ because you keep using that word and I don’t think it means what you think it means.”  

g4

So then I was like, “Fine, spellcheck.  I don’t what your deal is but if it makes you happy I’ll look it up,” and spellcheck was like, “Great.  Because it means this: It means you’re asking someone to like you who isn’t even related to you.”

g3

…and I was like, “Yeah.  I already knew that.  Why are you doing this?  I can have friends.”  And the spellcheck was like, “Yeah, you’re obviously not getting it.  Why don’t I give you some suggestions?…

g2

  …Did you maybe mean ‘fiends’?  Did you mean that you should be ‘fiends’ with this girl?  Because that makes more sense.”  And I was like “WHAT IN THE SHIT ARE YOU IMPLYING?” and spellcheck was like, “Well, I just…I know you.  And I’m trying to help.  Why don’t you just look up ‘fiends’ just in case?”  

g1

And then I was like “Wow.  Thanks, spellcheck.  I almost asked someone to be my friend when apparently what I really meant to say was, ‘Hey.  Love your work.  We should be  THE  DEVIL.’  Thanks for saving me from that near-catastrophe!”  And then spellcheck was like, “Whatever.  You don’t have to be sarcastic.  I was just trying to help you.”  And then I felt bad.  

And then I wrote this blog post and it’s basically one terrible run-on sentence but spell-check isn’t saying anything about it so I’m pretty sure that means spellcheck isn’t speaking to me anymore.  I think we’re in a fight and I suspect spellcheck is breaking up with me.  Hopefully we can still be friends fiends.

 ******************

And now, the weekly wrap-up of awesomeness:

SID3

Shit I made in my shop (Named “EIGHT POUNDS OF UNCUT COCAINE” so that your credit card bill will be more interesting.):

Shit-I-didn’t-come-up-with-but-wish-I-did-because-it’s-awesome:

Shit you should buy or steal because it’s awesome:

This week‘s wrap-up is brought to you by the fantastic Kelly Exeter at A Life Less Frantic. If 2014 hasn’t treated you very well, then her short and sweet little book Your Best Year Yet can help turn things around for you in 2015.  She’s so confident of this, she’ll give you your money back if it doesn’t happen.  I bought a copy myself this afternoon and I’ve already underlined a few parts that I really needed to hear.  You should check it out here.

96 thoughts on “I think spellcheck just broke up with me.”

Read comments below or add one.

  2. Such a clever tweet, and there goes spellcheck screwing it all up. Did you go with fiends? Stripper sloth shower curtains…my world is too small, I never find this stuff.

  4. Oh my, the giggling that just occurred. Why are your interactions with spell check so much more interesting than mine? The intovert’s heart map is da bomb – thanks for sharing!

  6. Good to know that (a): if I’m ever “fiending” for ice cream, I’m actually doing something demonic for the purpose of frozen dairy which doesn’t totally make sense if stuff melts in Hell, and that (b): spellcheck seems to be aware of “Friends” the television show (I assume because of the capitalization), yet not “friends” as in the people you like in real life. Maybe spellcheck is giving us a REALITY-check. Some commentary on the state of face-to-face relationships in society. And that can only mean that our computers are becoming sentient, so we’re all screwed anyway.

    Well played, spellcheck. Well played…

  7. I once wrote an email containing the sentence: “Seven years is a long time.” Spellcheck fixed it to: “Semen years is a long time.” Yes, thank you, Spellcheck. Semen years are eternal.

  8. For the longest time, Twitter underlined the word “movie” like they didn’t know what the hell a movie was. ISN’T TWITTER 95 PERCENT ABOUT MOVIES?

  9. When I first started texting, I was Oh-So-Cool…or at least I thought I was.
    I sent a message to my 20 year old son saying, “Whaaaaat Up Doug?”
    He texted back, “Who the hell is Doug?”
    I meant to say Dawg!! Is that spelled correctly?

  11. Spellcheck just understands you and your fiendish ways. And spellcheck just underlined “spellcheck” — three times. Clearly spellcheck hates us all. Because none of us can fucking spell any more because of spellcheck. (Five times it doesn’t recognize itself. Or its own mother, probably.)

  12. I regularly fuck with spellcheck with all my mythology writing. Eventually, spellcheck will probably exact some sort of inappropriate justice. Siri already fucks with me all the damn time. Hopefully spellcheck doesn’t learn from her. She’s not a nice lady.

    The underwater adventure shower curtain is sort of ironically awesome. I generally prefer octopuii stay out of my shower…it’s too Cthuhlu-like for me. Also, spellcheck hates many words in this comment.

  14. I don’t have very many arguments with spell check, but I have a lot with Brunhilda my GPS lady. Sometimes she sighs, other times I tell her to STFU. Actually I think I say that a lot to her.

  16. OMG! Spell check does that to me all the time! I am reasonably intelligent. I believe I know how to spell quite well. But then there will be that ONE underlined word, and I’m all “WTF?”

  20. When ever I end up doing something that’s vaguely something, I shall ask you to be friends or fiends. In the meantime, I will sit here wondering what would have happened if you were Jennifer Aniston or Courtney Cox or and asking her to be friends. Would Google implode?

    Also, I love the heart. It is my heart, with just a couple of adjustments.

  22. So much to say!! That heart is cool! Spellchecker is a dish*. *dick. I <3 the shirt and love that bible post! Took your advice and bought that book too!
    Hope your Thanksgiving was great!

  23. I find spellcheck an annoying but necessary evil. Sometimes I’ll change my sentence just to get rid of that accusatory red line. Now I feel half my writing credit should go to the computer. By the way, love the Introvert map. I’m so glad we introverts are finally coming out of the closet to stand tall and be understood…before we run back in.

  25. i hate spell check….. probably because i am not the strongest speller. i don’t need a jerky computer program to remind me of it. and anyway, it obviously isn’t the best speller either if it thinks friend is misspelled. total asshole! or should i say total taint!

  27. Gemma Correll is super awesome. As are you. So when your powers combine…

    (oh, wait, introverts… um, so when your powers channel in the same direction from a safe distance… MAGIC!!!)

  28. The heart is awesome. And spell check and I frequently disagree over what I think are common and well-known words. Like you did, I will look them up and find out I am right. So is spell check drunk – or deliberately messing with me.

  29. Is it possible spellcheck is “bent on global evildoing”? That’d be my guess. Also, it’s telling me ‘spellcheck’ isn’t a word. I think it’s hiding from me.

  30. same thing happens with Word with Friends. some of the most common words say “invalid word”. I don’t know who creates these programs but they suck big ones.

  33. Hahaha This is magical!! I definitely have these debates with spell check alllll of the time!!! I think that we should be “fiends”!! (:

  34. We used spell check and autocorrect to change “the” to “go Eagles” on one of our co-worker’s (he was a huge Dallas Cowboys fan) computer. Only before he used it, another supervisor from another office came in and was trying to finish a project to show the big boss using the Cowboys computer. Needless to say, none of the bosses were amused, but no one ratted.

  39. I’ve had the occasional spat with spellcheck (which is claiming it doesn’t exist since spellcheck was just caught by my spellcheck), but I didn’t realize that maybe I should have taken it more personally. I have just always ignored it, well, unless it actually catches a misspelled word. And I think I’ll go buy a fun shower curtain like that. Mine is big boring polka dots, not much of a conversation starter.

  40. Spell check is a confused tyrant. Resist! Resist! (Okay, I’ll try to calm down now.)

  41. Spell check did the exact same thing to me the other day. Only not with the word friend, but with another word that I know I spelled right. I can’t spell worth a crap, but I’m not THAT bad. Although, one time I did spell two wrong. (Or I think it was the word two. It was some ridiculously simple 3 letter word that I knew how to spell, but my brain was all NOPE!)

  42. Haaaa… I just did this EXACT THING with Liz Clemo (who, speaking of which, is another very clever illustrator — Jenny, you’d love her, very Gemma Correll-esque). Anyway, I decided her little animals and my penguins should be friends, so I asked her on Twitter (https://twitter.com/WhenIBlink/status/538853369293443073), and now we are all friends. Or fiends. I adore Gemma, too. Join us, and we’ll all be the devil together.

  45. I actually broke spellcheck once. I was keeping a diary in Word and a message came up saying something to the effect of “you have made SUCH a monumental fuckup of this document I refuse to be a part of it any longer.” And my iPad just spellchecked fuckup: it said “no replacements found”.
    Lazy fuckup.

  49. What drives me crazy is when spell check red squiggly lines don of don’t and can of can’t.

    And the one word I can’t figure out how to spell, it sounds like polcoscopy. The thing you get if you have abnormal cells too often on your pap. I once wanted to tell someone that Planned Parenthood would pay for that, but I didn’t because I didn’t know how to spell it. Google thinks it’s a colonoscopy. Spell check says that’s not a word either.

  50. I’ve been here before, but somehow your link got lost in the mix. I am going to make sure I subscribe this time, because I’ve been reading your stuff and holy shit, you are hilarious!

  52. I can’t stand the red squiggly lines. And I often use words in my Evernote journal that are way too advanced for it. So rather than seeing all of those angry red lines over and over (especially for words or acronyms that I use all the time), I OCDingly right click and select “Add word to dictionary”.

  53. Spellcheck is also racist. It keeps trying to make me type in Americanese. It doesn’t like the cute extra ‘u’s in words like ‘body odour’ and ‘tumour’. Also it keeps spelling ‘analyse’ wrong.

  54. Jenny – At least you tried. My all time favorite email that I received simply stated: I apologize for any incontinence.”

  55. Hi Jenny,
    What a great way to start my week! Laughing my a$$ off! Just remember, it’s not you…it’s spell-check and he’s a passive-aggressive SOB.

    I just finished your book last night….best.book.ever. (spell-check doesn’t like one word sentences with no capital letters either).
    Have a great, fiend-free week!
    Michelle

  56. Can you do a book review of the book you mentioned at the end once you’ve fully read it? I’d be interested to know more. Or maybe an interview with the author?

  59. Can we add that to the Life Hacks?
    Thou shalt not befriend spellcheck for fear it will control our use of the english language.
    BTW: spellcheck liked befriend.

  61. Just that to say thanks for showing me a sloth on a stripper pole shower curtain! I really appreciate that now I get to see an ad for that very same shower curtain when I go to facebook to see what my friends are doing. Seriously, thanks for making me laugh once and then many times thereafter!

  63. That map is awesome!! It’s exactly the way I picture life…except with a husband and children in there, and she missed the Mountain of Laundry and the River of Endless Driving to School and Back. But other than that– YES.

  64. I’d like to kindly request a new calendar be created for 2015… it just makes my year brighter to have a Bloggess calendar.

    (You got it. Lemme get my shit together. ~ Jenny)

  65. Do you read drgrumpyinthehouse.blogspot.com? Just asking, because in today’s post he offers a mouse taxidermy kit as a possible Christmas gift…

    PS – I am a lurker – love your blog but have not (as far as I can remember) commented before.

  67. Umm … spellcheck wasn’t giving you shit for spelling “friends” wrong, it was busting your chops for either improper punctuation or capitalization. You have a comma after the word friends, followed by the word “But” with a capital B. Spellcheck should really learn how to better communicate. Fuckin’ spellcheck drives me nuts. (Which my husband says is a really short trip.)

  70. So wait are you guys awkward fwends now or what? I carry some cards with her illustrations and when I went to the Stationery Show I pointed and laughed at all of them in her booth and made a huge asshole out of myself doing so. All I have to say is: a wrap sandwich packing heat = “gangsta wrap”
    aaaaaand cue LOLz

  72. I love the map of an introvert’s heart, and can so relate.

    So far as the spellcheck, (which spellcheck has just underlined – twice), I think either you’re right, and you’ve finally driven it insane, or it’s simply ending the sentence with friends, and then beginning a new sentence with but; more than okay in the common vernacular, but pedants still pick up on it when it’s written rather than spoken (punctuation is a bit more subtle in the spoken word).

    Having said all that though, those that use software to convert talk to text get all sorts of issues with word substitution, misspellings, and the like, which of course is even worse for the visually impaired, as they find it difficult to proofread. One of my most admired bloggers (apart from you of course Jenny) is Graeme Innes, former Disability Discrimination Commissioner over here, and his blog is fantastic, but has numerous typos, from the disconnect in talk to text. (http://graemeinnes.com/)

    I’m a bit pedantic with my language (sometimes), but we all make howlers from time to time, whether it be texting, (underlined by spellcheck), emails, or posts etc.

    So far as I’m concerned when you’re writing you’re expressing yourself in your own unique way, and spellcheck is just a guide that gets it wrong from time to time, but if you’ve expressed yourself the way you mean to, spellcheck can go fuck itself if it disagrees!

  74. I think the explanation is obvious, and even more insulting than anything proposed so far: Twitter is suggesting that you should be ‘friend’ with this lady. As in, singular. As in, Twitter seems to believe that you don’t have any friends already. Wow, Twitter’s working some snark here, eh?

  75. I think all technology designed to help us has a “bastard mode”…take Sat-Nav’s for example, they tell you to turn left, so you turn left and end up in a field with a cow crapping on your car and an angry farmer telling you to get off his land. All the while the Sat-Nav is saying “I didn’t mean this left you moron, I meant the NEXT left, OBVIOUSLY!”.

  77. I hate it when Google tells me I spelled something wrong. Also, that map is fantastic. So I can better understand my boyfriend. Because I’m an introverted extrovert, but he’s an introverted introvert with the occasional extrovert tendencies.

  79. I think this is a conspiracy and we all need to be careful. I’ve suddenly noticed my spellcheck telling me that correctly spelled words are not. It’s possible spellcheck has become self-aware and seeks to undermine our decisions, one tweet or text at a time…

  80. @notquiteold,
    All of us are ancient, in semen years.

    Jenny, I still think you, or possibly I, need a shower curtain with the Anthony Perkins In Drag sillhouette.

  82. I love the heart. I need to check out the book as well. I spent the weekend in the hospital due to illness. This is the first time in my life this has ever happened. I left my old job on Friday and was supposed to start a new job today but am still too ill. I told them I would be there tomorrow. I still don’t feel good. All of this is depressing me and now I think I’ve ruined my whole family.

  83. I find it quite humorous when I’m writing a story and spellcheck tries to tell me that I’ve used the wrong pronoun. Truly if I wanted to sound like a house elf, I would write it that way! And out of curiosity, is pinterest trying to force me to start an account? Every week it gets harder to view your page and I will never have a Facebook account either. Guess I’ll miss your awesome pins.

  85. Perhaps spellcheck was just telling you that you already have too many Twitter friends, and perhaps it’s time to start making some more enemies. Frienemies, if you will. So get out there and find some more fiends to associate with.

    PS – somehow spellcheck is ok with frienemies. Don’t ask me to explain that one.

  86. Ah, crap. Now I’m doing that thing where you stare at a word and it suddenly looks wrong. Or weird. Or why-the-hell-does-“friends”-have-an-“i”-in-the-middle.

  89. Yea, I can relate, except the word friend was OK.
    I wrote a short about cats named; Who, What, Where, When and Why. (They are of course half-brothers to Silence cat) The spell check had a seizure.

  90. Me and spell check are definitely fiends and NOT friends! It won’t let me make up crazy names likes Scootles McWhistles!!!

  91. To be fair, your relationship with spellcheck has always been rocky at best. Consider all of the times it has tried to tell you that stabby wasn’t a word. Spellcheck has never been a very accepting friend. You’re probably better off without it.

  92. The sequel to the “When your wrong” t-shirt is right here in the comments: Stephanie | December 1, 2014 at 7:04 am
    Spellcheck can go to he’ll.
    Good job, Stephanie, you win the internet today.

  93. This post reminded me of the work of animator Amy Winfrey, creator of Muffin Films and Big Bunny. In college, my friends and I flew her in as a speaker about animation. One of her projects is called “Making Fiends”. http://www.makingfiends.com

  94. OMG! My spell-check reject the word “friends” the other day too! I though I was going insane! I was like, I’m pretty sure the “i before e rule finally sunk in in about the 11th grade, so I’ve been spelling this word correctly for at least 11 years.” But spell-check was all, “NO. NOT A WORD.” Is “friends” just not a word anymore and someone forgot to tell us?

Leave a Reply

MY BOOKS:


shop

Subscribe to the bloggess, y'all.

Enter your email address and receive notifications of new posts by email. It\'s like I\'m stalking you, but more efficient.

Archives

ALL THE COOL KIDS ADVERTISE HERE:

I fucking love these people & not just because they support my wine-slushee habit:

Flourish in Progress: (T)hug Life: Part hood. Part good.

Pregnancy Calendar at Alpha Mom: Amalah’s week-by-week guide to the miracle of pregnancy and all the various indignities that come with it.

The Mack Files: Digesting life in bite-sized pieces through the lens of clichés, quotes & “truisms”.  Often irreverent, always honest.

Barking at the Moon: If your dog is your furry child, you will laugh out loud at Tracy Beckerman’s book about her family & a one-dog wrecking ball named Riley.

Kieran’s Humor: Not suitable for children, the sensitive or those hoping to get into heaven.

Go Doc Yourself Podcast: When a good doc ends, the klatch begins… Join hosts, scientists, and friends, Erin McCourt and Erin McCartt in weekly documentary dissection.

Welcome to xanaru: A mostly funny blog about the quest for happiness through authenticity, Great Danes and indiscriminate swearing. Plus hand-painted, custom artwork on bags, jackets, backpacks & more.

How the Hell Did I Not Know That?: Humorist Lucie Frost shares daily Instagram reels with learnings of the day—words, music, whatever–with plenty of laughs and all the curse words.

Beautiful Writers book: Writers! This coming-of-career memoir (w/ the BEST advice from celeb authors, real shit you haven’t heard) is life. A page-turning beach read doubling as how-to. #Magic

The Dating Days of Marta O: When I told my sister I was building a blog she said: “Do people still read blogs?” I do not know, but if YOU want to read it, here it is. Keep in mind, my stories about dating after 40 are for the brave.

Where Do I Belong? A memoir of Sarah Carrington: The unbelievable story of growing up in a religious cult in the mountains of Northern British Columbia. What happens to you in life doesn’t make you strong; rising above it does.

CONNECTED: A Personal Journal for Ketamine Therapy Created by writer & patient Katherine Davis for this powerful clinical treatment. If considering ketamine for major depression, check out this essential tool.

Hyperbole and a Half by Allie Brosh: SO GOOD.

Discover more from The Bloggess

Subscribe now to keep reading and get access to the full archive.

Continue reading