Thursday, February 28, 2008
The Perils of “Replace All”
Commenter Aidan Kehoe at Languagehat pointed out this story at Bluegrass World.
Important safety tip: Always reread your story after doing a search and replace and before hitting the big, red Publish button.
Sample:
While many fans of Bluegrbutt music date the genre back to 1939, when Monroe formed his first Blue Grbutt Boys band, most believe that the clbuttic bluegrbutt sound came of age in 1946, shortly after Earl Scruggs joined the band. Equally influential in the clbuttic 1946 line-up of the Blue Grbutt Boys were Lester Flatt on guitar and lead vocals, Chubby Wise on fiddle and Howard Watts on the doghouse bbutt.
Obligatory snark: It’s a good thing they have editors (unlike hoi polloi).
Comments & Trackbacks
But, damn, the story is so freakin’ fun that way.
I had to reread to get it.
The Languagehat thread has cites to similar replacements for “entities”, “embarrassment”, and a variety of other, shall we say, codewords? Some of them are almost as good as this one.
Kinda makes me wonder if there was a subtext I was missing back when I used to play in bluegrbutt jams.
All you have to do is put a space before “ass” and you’ll replace them properly, I buttume.
Actually, at least two of the editors I use have a “search for complete words” option just to prevent this sort of thing.
Ye gods, but the foolishness is running thick this week.
At least Butthead is still safe from this. Unless, of course, someone realizes that “butt” is still a halfway vulgar term and changes it to Gluthead.
...
What an awful glutsumption.
Clbuttic .... at least they weren’t buttociating with buttbuttins.
In 1955, Don Reno paired up with Arthur “Guitar Boogie” Smith and recorded “Feuding Banjos”, a tune later used without their permission in the 1972 movie Deliverance (rebreastled “Dueling Banjos"). Reno and Smith sued the film company for rights infringement and won. IMHO, I think most people would consider “Fueding Banjos” to be one of the clbuttic Bluegrbutt instrumental tunes.
I’d groan, but it would only encourage them.