You've no doubt heard of the legendary American frontiersman, Davy Crockett, who, according to the popular ballad, “kilt him a b'ar when he was only three” (a b'ar, of course, being a bear with a Tennessee accent). There are however many who believe that the unfortunate Mr Crockett was in fact “killed in a bar when he was only three”.
To be fair, a toddler meeting his doom in a tavern brawl is, sadly, rather more believable than said infant managing to despatch a 2,000-pound grizzly. Let's be honest: most three-year-olds couldn't even wrestle a placid medium-sized goat to the ground. God help us if there's a war. Especially if it’s with the bears.
There are thousands of such misheard lyrics floating around: we all have a few, usually without even knowing it. I always thought Don Henley was singing "I can see you, your bra strap shining in the sun" in his wearisome 1980s dirge "The Boys Of Summer", for example. But why do we find humour in such errors? Maybe because, as the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein put it, "Language is the harmony between thought and reality". Hence our amusement when language accidentally subverts or distorts itself: it's like reality has changed in some absurd and unexpected way.
Nowadays we have many new tools to help us mangle and pervert our words: spellcheckers on computers, for instance. My boss recently sent an email to several company fat-cats which concluded by apologising "for the incontinence". A minor typo while spelling "inconvenience" had been erroneously corrected by his PC's dictionary-robot; far be it from me to cast asparagus, but you really need to antipasto problems like that. At least he didn’t sign off with “manly thanks”.
I myself was once invited to a job interview with the tantalising enticement that "it could be the best love you'll ever make." I did not, in the end, make that particular move. Nor have I ever seen the band Assylum play - but I have seen their advertising. Just last weekend, I noticed a poster for an imminent amateur dramatic production: top billing goes to someone called "Staring Tommy Magee". Sounds a bit creepy. Don't think I'll bring the kids to that.
The funniest of these carry the bracing shock of hidden truth, though. There's a book lying around at home somewhere that, at a glance, seems to deal with "Your Child's Development: From Birth to Obsolescence." Similarly, my attempt at upbeat cheer in a recent text message was transmuted to something rather more nihilist when "How's tricks?" became "How's trials?" And what is life, indeed, if not a series of trials?
Well, that’s the massage for this week. It’s back to bushiness as usual next time, with features on underfloor hating and onanic farming, a great recipe for friend chicken, a free Scared Heart of Jesus poster and a special “Animals of Farting Wood” comic for younger readers.