Yesterday demonstrated to me that sometimes what seems like a good idea is really just a idea in disguise. Over the past few months my office has got increasingly messy and with recent staff moves and other stuff happening, it needed to be reorganised and tidied up. Fair enough, I thought, I’ll do it. See where the “bad idea” thing comes in? Six hours later the office was tidier, better organised and now had enough room to allow us to do our thing in comfort, and the only price I had to pay was muscles screaming out in agony and eyes like angry red tomatoes because an officeload of dust had gotten into them. Cheap at half the price.
On one of my frequent runs to the bin with rubbish (we had a lot of crap stored away that we were never going to use again) I ran into two colleagues, one of whom was talking about the new fur coat she had bought herself. Somewhat shocked that anyone today would buy fur I mentioned that I was surprised that it was still in fashion. “Oh yeah,” said the other colleague, “It’s just fox fur.”
This moved me from “shocked” to “outraged” in less time than it takes to say it. “Foxes?” I cried. “They killed foxes to make your coat? Is that even legal?”
Long story short, after a bit of coming and going, turns out she meant faux fur, not fox fur. She just thought you pronounced it “fox”. I thought it best to advise her on the correct pronunciation because that’s really one that you want to get right first time when you’re talking to people.
Strangely enough what I did right after that was to download the newest version of FireFox…and now I think about it, I hope I’ve been pronouncing that right all this time.
December 1st, 2005 at 9:17 pm
Heh heh, nice. When I was younger I thought “psuedo” was pronounded “suede-oh”. Thankfully Mom caught me at it before I embarrassed myself publicly.
Though while I’m at it, what is specially wrong with using foxes for fur coats? I mean, are you generally against killing and skinning animals for their pelts, or do you have a particular problem with it being done to foxes? (Says the girl who thinks sheared beaver pelt is divinely soft, and has no compunction about buying products made from said pelt on account of how those dratted beavers made meals of many a tree in our yard growing up.)
December 3rd, 2005 at 10:42 pm
If I typed out the list of words I have mispronounced in my time, I think I would crash Blogger’s servers! :-D
As for the fur coat thing, I think I would fall into the “generally against” column: I’m not standing up to specifically defend the rights of foxes to their skins! ;-)
I’ve not got a problem with people liking warm coats, or soft stuff: I have been known to like them myself! I just think there are alternatives: if you want warm, soft and furry there is now no need to use actual fur. In my own humble opinion, of course! :-D