I Proof You
Posted: May 11, 2010 Filed under: favorites, Foolishness | Tags: bizarre, business, comedy, dumb, dunce, honeysuckle rose, humor, literacy, observations, tattoo, willie nelson, words 29 Comments »I have a franchise business plan that will make me obscenely wealthy. Even if it only makes me fabulously well off, it will pay off in enough laughs to make it worth while.
People who wear this hat need our help.
My new business will be a proofreading service for dumb people. Why? Because dumb people insist on using words.
Every day dumb people get tattoos, make signs and deliver messages with words that they are wholly unqualified to use. By putting a proofreader in places where dumb people might use words, I will be in a position to help protect them from themselves (and rake in the bucks).
IPY
Here is how the business, called I Proof You (IPY) will work. Let’s imagine that there is an I Proof You franchise in a tattoo shop. A young man comes in to get some ink. Let’s say he is the young man I ran across the other day. The IPY representative would offer to proofread the text of his design for spelling errors, double meanings and other mistakes which could lead to permanent embarrassment for him.
Because you are a bright person, you might ask “if he is dumb, why would he be smart enough to pay for someone to proofread his tattoo before he gets it?” The answer is simple, IPY’s slogan “Pay us now, or we will work for free later.” What that will come to mean to the potential IPY customer is that, if he chooses not to pay for our service, we will tell him as he leaves the shop what his tattoo really means to people who are literate.
Let’s go further with the example of the young man I recently met. He enters the tattoo shop and is offered a form on which to write the words he plans to have permanently emblazoned on his arm. He is gets a chance to pay $50 to have the words proofed. He refuses and gets himself tattooed with the words “No one can’t judge me.” On his way out, IPY works for free, telling him the wording of his new tattoo actually means that everyone is able to judge him. He leaves, knowing he will forever deliver an unintended and opposite message. When he returns for some new ink, he will spend the extra money on IPY.
Signs, Signs…
Sign shops are equally dangerous. I occasionally drive past a video rental shop. Like most good business persons, the owners of the shop had a sign made to let people know where the business is. According to the sign, the name of this shop is Video Bizarre. You and I know that the owners were probably envisioning a bazaar. Bizarre has a completely different meaning. We both can see where IPY could have helped in this unfortunate situation.
My last example of how I Proof You could save someone from a life of embarrassment is in the area of vehicular adornment. I saw a woman recently driving a 1980′s model SUV. It had a plastic bug screen on the front of the hood. She had spent her hard-earned money to have some words painted on that screen. She really needed IPY’s help.
Honey, Suckle Rose
Perhaps she was a fan of Willie Nelson and enjoyed the movie he was in back in 1980 called Honeysuckle Rose. It could be that she liked the old jazz standard, also called Honeysuckle Rose. Whichever of those it was that she wanted to show her love of, she delivered a different message. She had paid to have someone very neatly paint on her bug screen the words “Honey Suckle Rose”.
IPY would have been able to tell her that the act of separating the compound word honeysuckle into the two words that compose it changed her message completely. Instead of driving around with a tribute to Willie Nelson’s acting (a strange thing to do) this woman unwittingly displays a three word instructional phrase that had nothing to do with Willie and everything to do with an act between two people named Honey and Rose.
Yeah, the money and the laughs will come. Franchise opportunities now available.
Those are hilarious examples and some keen observations.
If I reviewed your post I’d probably say this: Its well writing. Your really on a role their.
Yep. Your and you’re. Two different things. Probably one of biggest proofing errors of all time. Followed closely, perhaps, by its and it’s. And of course there and their.
Honey Suckle Rose is one of my favorite movies of all time. I never knew, however, that such a dirty movie could actually be loosely based on a such clean song! Har.
Your post reminds me. I really want to fit in. To that end I’m going to name my car and then put that name in giant letters in my car’s rear window. If I’m going to go to that level of effort and exhibitionism it has to be something truly epic. How about “Fandango Wagon?” Or I could forgo IPY services and call it “Fand Ango Wag On.” Yes. I like it!
Love the car naming thing. once you name them do they come to you when you call them?
i could have used IPY in college when i wrote a review of a who concert and referred to one of their songs as “love rain over me” as opposed to reign. and my motherfucking editor didn’t even fix it either.
WHAT!?! That is no editor! Did that person go to jail for the rest of their life? that is the only reasonable solution.
Great write! My local area abounds with such examples these grammatical foop ahs. For a quick smarmy chuckle, one need only open the classifieds where the link between the sorry fellow selling his beefed up Ford and a perfect ad is an underpaid, partially literate copy writer.
But the best examples come in the form of hand lettered signs. Two of my favorites:
Fore Sale
Fir Wud (Fire wood)
Ever seen those real estate sales magazines where they advertise a home with a large deck?
Let me know when one of your franchises is available in my area.
I might want to bye wun.
I will have a special sail on the franchise fee for people like you who get in on the ground floor.
Dude! Brilliant . . . I wanna franchise ratcheer in wichatitty city!
Can’t nobody judge your investment decisions.
Couldn’t notta said it any better myself.
I want one two.
Twelve? Excellent!
Eye two wood like a Francesize!
You are the master! The cool thing is that now the company is a multinational before it even opens.
Cownt mee inn!
Yoooo get a store and yoo get a store and yoo…
So…wait a minute…I want to know what was the misspelled tattoo ? Did I miss a paragraph?
The tattoo was “No one can’t judge me”. I met someone with that on his arm. I went on and judged him, y’know, since his tattoo went and gave me permission.
Yes, I definitely would have corrected that one. It should be “Nobody can’t judge me nohow.”
See how stupid people are? Sheesh.
See…triple negative. There’s no denying the correctness there!
One der full!
The newspapers could use your services. Their proofreaders have poor grammar!
Hmm…OK, but that’s going to run more than $50.
People are stupid. There. I said it.
That is another reason they should be handing over their money. They can’t spend it as well as brighter folks.
No. Peepel are stoopid. Their eye sed it. Eye shud be on dat franchyse. Eye hav nuffink two loose.
How baazar!
Throw a franchise opportunity my way. I’m all over this shizz. (And yes, that is the proper spelling of shizz.)
Maybe I could work on wedding stuff. My mom recently showed me a wedding program that had some sort of movie star theme — as in, people in the wedding were stars of the show. Only instead of printing “starring” everywhere, the program read “staring.” And just a few minutes ago I was looking at wedding photos on Facebook. The favors had tags on them featuring the whole its/it’s debacle. *sigh*
Kate, how good would it feel to know you saved “the biggest day of their life” at $50 an item? Once they realize their mistake they will be staring at it for the rest of their lives.