And getting inside our heads. Am I the only one who keeps not just misreading, but actually SEEING things that aren't as written? Example (pre-watershed aged readers, avert eyes now): In ASDA, poultry section, the sign clearly read 'Chicken thighs and breasts.' So why did I read it as: 'OPEN thighs' etc? Okay, so it's an easy mistake for a single girl desperately fighting off her 50th birthday to make, but it's been happening a lot just lately, in all sorts of places - but always in my head. Stupid things, like: Drivers don't heed signal (a headline in my local paper) turning into 'Diverse knock-kneed turtle.' Just for a moment. Honest.
Am I going mad? Or is there a more logical explanation - i.e. the baddies in BW using our current infatuation with Dr Who to infiltrate our minds with some dead fuel new immersion of the Mispelin Walrus.
I flavour the batter, which is why I came here before heading for a flock store.

Somewhere on the Times website (www.timesonline.co.uk, I think) is a map of skeletons in London so you can find out just how many people are buried beneath your feet. One of the most bizarre finds was exhumed from a churchyard -- it was a walrus. I think it would be easy to explain if it had been found in a university town, but London...?

I'm having the same prolem lately, and came to the conclusion that I am of the age now where I can no longer avoid getting glasses...

Too old to drink from the bottle?

Straws could come in handy.

Er, I get dyslexic moments from long periods of stress- could you be having the same thing?

Could be. I follow a local big band who do a lot of charity gigs. The leader's quite an effervescent character, and I keep getting this image in my mind: 'Okay people, let's give it up for the National Dyslexia Society. A-two, a-one, a-four two one three ...'

I have had similar experiences, but none come to mind now, but they parallel audio misinterpreteations such as the last phrase of 'La Donna E Mobile" as being heard in English as 'elephant ears'. And Simon and Garfunkel sang of a London area in that song that goes 'I'd rather be a hammer than a nail, yes I would, I Chorley Wood...' and Cilla Black sang of '.. a power saw divine..' in 'Your my World'.

Nissan Pulsars become 'little green ulcers', and so on. Add others to the thread if you like.

PS: The children who wanted the song about a sleepy lion. When asked how it went it was:'Three little children, a lion in bed,...'

It's the same with newspaper headlines - especially if they are above a picture linked to a completely different article. I won't tell you what my mind did with that picture of Camilla at Wimbers. I actually own a 1930's book called: The Art of Cottaging. Open it, and it's full of twee country gardens, and articles on how to breed chickens. Funny thing is, books like that NEVER play mind tricks. Guess the work's already been done.

It could be sleep deprivation or malnutrition-
have you tried eating the carrot?

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There is a motel near our place that has been there for at least 40 years. It is called 'Scotty's' and has a large image of a piper (band style, not Billie) on the front.

Myy wife, who has lived her for all her 50 years, recently said as we passed the motel that she read it as 'Snotty's Motel'

Maybe it is a condition that afflicts/entertains 50 yo females.

There's a burger joint in Pasadena with a big sign that says "Super Burquer" but no one really notices...except us, that is. You ever heard a carfull of idiots yelling "I want a burquer" at the top of their lungs?

Considering what a 'berk' is in English slang (Berkshire Hunt is the origin) it really causes the imagination to make up scenarios, which it does many, many times.

Just had a sort of reverse 'seeing things'.

I've just re-read 'Childhood's End' in the 1966 4th reprint Pan paperback. Now I've read this particular book countless times but today I found a printer's error on p174 where the last line of paragraph 3 the word 'atmospheric' is misspelled.

42 years to see an error.

Maybe I could get a job with the Grauniad when I return to the UK.

That is an amazing story. One of my favourites.

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'We're all mad here. I'm mad, you're mad." [said the Cat.]
"How do you know I'm mad?" said Alice.
"You must be," said the Cat, "Or you wouldn't have come here."
- Lewis Carroll, Alice's Adventures In Wonderland