Did You Remember Your Towel, Butt-bleep?

The title of this post actually has nothing to do with the subject of the post at all. But, if you stare at it cross-eyed while standing on your head, you just might see the tiniest, itsy-bitsiest connection. It also helps to be either extremely exhausted or inebriated at the time. Since I am neither at the moment, I suppose I really have no excuse.

Anyway, I went to the Kansas Cosmosphere this weekend with my parents. It's been a long time since we've gone on any sort of family vacation or outing of the kind, but it actually went quite well, and the Cosmosphere was much more interesting than I remembered it being. I didn't realize just how much official NASA stuff we have stored here in Kansas. We have a bunch of the original parts from the Apollo 13 mission, which is why the creators of the movie actually came to people at the cosmosphere for help designing the movie props. And we have a whole bunch of various relics from the Russian space program as well, including Sputnik. It's crazy-weird to me.

What is also crazy-weird to me is the fact that I found half a dozen typos and mistakes in the signs posted around objects in the museum. You know, the ones that go into detail describing the objects historical significance or usage. I couldn't believe it. Our guide, who took us on a behind the scenes tour, told us how quickly they get an exhibit up and running; clearly they do it so quickly that they don't have time to even edit their copy. Beyond that though, I couldn't believe that I actually caught the mistakes. There was a time when I wouldn't have even seen them. Now, it's like I've developed an extra sense/superpower that allows me to see mistakes in signs/posters/newsletters/brochures/etc. It's a blessing and a curse. It's good because it allows me to catch most of my own mistakes in my work (this blog does not count, because it's not work and simply because I'm talking about how I catch mistakes there are probably at least a half dozen mistakes in this post alone), but it's a curse because you can't turn it off very easily (unless I'm working on a blog entry). It's like I have a mistake magnet in my brain and once you see mistakes, I can't not see them. And it drives me crazy.

My editing superpowers are still developing, so I'm not able to always catch mistakes—especially my own—but they've still developed more than I realized. It's weird to suddenly find one day that a task you found difficult for a long time is suddenly far easier than it used to be, and that the change seemed to happen over night. It actually didn't happen overnight—it actually took a long freakin' time—but it feels like that for some reason because you don't notice it happening. It feels like wearing glasses all your life and waking up to find you don't need them, or that you see things with them you could never see before.

Well, enough of my graphic design silliness. The last thing I wanted to mention here is the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. We listened to the book on audio cd—read by the original author, Douglas Adams—on our trip down to Huchinson, and I got totally hooked. I'd heard a lot about it through the years, but never got around to reading the books until now. I love the style of Adams' writing. It's very conversational and stream of consciousness, rambling off on various tangents from time to time. It's also very funny.

Ironically, I just finished the first book on Sunday and then I got a call from one of my friends asking if I wanted to see the movie. It was perfect timing. I enjoyed the movie. Though I normally get frustrated when a movie based on a book fails to be true to the book (cough, LOtR, cough), I didn't mind that the Hitchhiker's Guide movie changed a number of things from the book because the book was not the original version of the story, from what my friend, the Math Buddha, told me. Also, the movie captured the spirit of the book in its random humor. I especially liked the part when they turned into string. So, it's a good movie. Just don't get scared off by the singing dolphins in the beginning.

"Goodbye, and thanks for all the fish!"

PS Dolphins used to be my favorite animal.

PPS Butt-bleep is a quote from the Apprentice. In the term "butthole" you would think the half that would get bleeped for television, if anything got bleeped at all, would be the "butt" half. But no, they bleeped "hole." I don't get it. But it's fun to say.