Mishaps and more!

I'm beginning to suspect Dragon of playing a very long con. Maybe it secretly wants us to systematically underestimate its intelligence, to its own shady ends. In any case, its many bewildering mishearings continue to go to air.

Pretty cunning, don't you think?

American military pundits have been a staple of my news diet in the past week. We were told by a slightly folksy analyst that northern Iraq was "more complicated than folks realise." Or as Dragon put it, "Morkel placated Ben Foakes realise". Not to worry, thought I, I shall put in a double dash and quickly redo it. Out came "more combat-ready Ben Foakes". Apparently English right-handed batsman and wicket-keeper Ben Foakes is showing some alarming signs indeed.

More combat-ready Ben Foakes

A discussion of "coordination" of international efforts came out as "cod nation". I can't really see what a republic of fish could offer, but I guess Obama really is open to suggestions right now. The situation, after all, certainly is "Coppola catered" (something might have been Lost In Translation there). Dragon reported regarding IS prisoners that "guards eat them often". Incorrect, but tragically plausible. "Massacres" came out as "Mass occurs", which sort of sounds like the Catholic version of "shit happens", or a blasé attitude to the Higgs boson. Finally, a colleague found that cities being defended by "the Peshmerga" were unexpectedly defended by "Depeche Mode", which - I don't know - maybe English '80s alt-pop will be the key to defeating extremism?

Some tactical keytar, presumably with American air support.

Staying on all things poignant, I was far from the only one among my colleagues to refer to the town of "Ferguson, misery". Police efforts to subdue pro-democracy rioters in Pakistan also made the news - apparently "demonstrators want more Joyce". Unexpected, but Ulysses would certainly keep them all busy. In covering the story, a colleague had the splendid unintentional synecdoche that "thousands of nipple took to Twitter." One can only assume Dragon follows Amanda Palmer. Speaking of police, we heard this week from the "chief comfortable" in charge of finding the missing young English man in Spain. Sounds like a decidedly cushy job.

The weather always offers plenty of giggles, this time "our overall high" came out as "hour of rawhide", which sounds like a rather nightmarish YouTube fan-loop.

Sad to hear of the death of Sir Richard Attenborough, but rather surprised to hear of his memorable role in "drastic park".

What new horror have we wrought?

There's been a bit of talk about Western Australian mining recently, unfortunately two analysts in a row had their intros misconstrued. Firstly, our correspondent joined us "live from birth", and for more in-depth analysis, we cut to the "cheap economist" of a mining investment firm. I suppose economising on economists makes sense as the mining boom shifts. NHS food has been in the spotlight in the UK. We have heard how nurses test the food, but Dragon made it altogether more Millennial by declaring "nurses text the food".

Seriously though, food is awesome and
photographing the best part of your day isn't weird.

Delights too in the sport. First off in cricket, Sri Lanka has been problematical before - this time it popped out as "true languor". And I was captioning tennis, and they suddenly rattled off the half-dozen or so career Grand Slam winners. All went swimmingly until Rod Laver became "Rudd Labor". Not sure he can boast a career Grand Slam per se.

Finally a couple of offline ones. "Little parcels of pasta perfection" sound very appetising. "Little parcels of pastor affection"...do not. On a related note, I just googled "priest pasta" for inspiration and found that there's a type of pasta called "strozzapreti" which translates as "priest strangler". How weird is that? Guess that's one way to achieve pastor affection. And a dog called "Zorro" came out as "the sorrow", which sounds like what pet naming might look like for a very committed emo who is maintaining the rage. "Here, The Sorrow. Come on, boy."

But sometimes when Dragon doesn't know something, it just makes you despair of state of the Dragon education system. Usually Dragon knows the names of movie stars, but I was captioning the film review and my Dragon didn't know Stacy Keach. I now feel this overwhelming desire to invite Dragon over for a video night and teach it a thing or two about character acting.

Here beginneth the lesson.

Before I go, a shout out to a truly amazing Tumblr from a fellow captioner, who happens to do a lot of Judge Judy. http://therulingsarefinal.tumblr.com/ Read and giggle, dear reader. And a bit of industry news - ACMA in Australia have just made an adverse finding against Channel Nine over the caption quality during their cricket coverage. http://www.mediaaccess.org.au/latest_news/news/acma-finds-nine-cricket-coverage-breached-caption-quality-rules Interesting business.