misheard
jane i've found that stone replaces noise. 091001
...
unhinged he was not objective. alcohol quickened his temper, he was more sensitive. he got so bent over something he thought he heard, which was not at all what i said. and then he wondered why i couldn't talk to him anymore, why i broke up with him in text messages. i am sensitive too; and avoidant. funny the things we choose to hear, perceive. 091002
...
jane she was left behind, and sighed
and she wrote to me when he died 		091208
...
epitome of incomprehensibility On the radio. I'm sure it wasn't "jobs will be lost as machines become cuter and more sophisticated." 131103
...
raze "i walked around salivating all day."

there's no way that was what she said. i don't think his reaction to an admission of day-long drool-walking would have been a gentle nod of, "yes, tell me more." but that was what it sounded like she said. 		131123
...
e_o_i As a child:

"the computer train"

"old-timer's disease" (neat combination of morbid and cute, 'tis, but I'm not making this up)

And I thought it was rather rude of The Beatles to address someone "Hey Jew." 		131126
...
e_o_i ...and speaking of songs, I thought in my teenagehood that Kraftwerk's

"Wir fahren fahren fahren auf der Autobahn"

was English, specifically, "We're far far far off the Autobahn."

Why would they name a song "Autobahn" and then sing about being far far far off it? Logic, e_o_i - had any? 		131126
...
raze i thought he said "bear cave". and i thought, why would anyone build a bear cave at the side of the road? how would that help with gusts of snow-wind?

what he really said was "barricade". 		140119
...
raze i was kind of half-watching television when a condom commercial came on, and while the guy doing the voice-over bit was going on about bearskin condoms, i was thinking, "WHAT? WHY? WHO WOULD DO THAT TO A BEAR? AND WHO WOULD SHEATH THEIR PENIS WITH THAT?!"

i thought it in all caps.

then it came up on the screen as "bareskin condoms", and i realized there was no bear. 		140210
...
raze hey, look at that. two misheard bears, separated only by a few weeks. 140210
...
raze "a hundred and twenty six years old, and he's playing the best tennis of his career."

now that's impressive stuff. if i lived to be that age, i'd be amazed if i could still stand up and chew things, never mind play tennis. 		140326
...
e_o_i From the twilight world of motion-activated light fixtures and follicle fetishes, I bring you:

"Shut the lights off in the a-a-ir
I wanna make love to your ha-a-ir"

My first impression of some pop song on a fuzzy sound system. The chorus I think was about fire, and I think the world "shut" was actually "shine." But anyway. 		140402
...
raze "shut the lights off in the air / i wanna make love to your hair" needs to be a real lyric in a song. it must be done! the hilarity! the wonder! the exclamation marks! 140402
...
raze she said, "i love you." he said, "i love you too." but what she heard him say was, "why do i love you?" leaving her to wonder why he would wonder why he loved her back. 140412
...
e_o_i (I'm giving you the lyrics if you want! No context I can think of does them justice.) 140412
...
raze someone's last name sounded like a sentence that described the kind of person they were, but it was just wishful thinking. and then they were gone, and i still didn't know what their last name was. 140417
...
raze "the hostilities are endless."

he said "possibilities", but i have to say i liked the sound of what i heard in its place. 		140508
...
e_o_i "They're coming out of the lingerie in the shale rock" - background drone of the radio. 140523
...
raze i kept hearing, "what did he think?" when she was asking, "what's his name?" so my answer the first time or two must not have made any sense. i blame the wind. there was a lot of it that day. 140524
...
raze "you're deflecting."
"no, i'm not dyslexic." 		140610
...
e_o_i "I don't usually close that information." 140704
...
e_o_i Silly radio in the other room, saying things that sounded like:

"Society would be horrified if they found illiterate kittens" and something about the Iceland volcano spewing "semen ash." I'm sure. 		140823
...
e_o_i This song seemed to say, "You are a kitten... because New York is love." Fair enough. And I was only listening to it because YouTube seems to think it's something like Kraftwerk or Supreme Beings of Leisure (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MryKvY9ceOM) 140827
...
e_o_i Two kittens! They multiply like misheard bears. 140827
...
unhinged excuse me...did i hear you right? did you really tell me that im not enough like your ex? three months later i still feel like i didnt hear that right 140828
...
e_o_i Another song from the other room, classical music in Latin, sounded to me like, "Should we switch places? We're chained to the wall." 140829
...
e_o_i Now Gaelic, and it sounds like, "As soon as she pushed me, her father was shot again." Brother's music + my mind = strange things. And I only had half a glass of wine at the poetry thing. 140829
...
flux back in the mid 90s i thought the refrain from tool's "sober" started w/ "jesus wants his fucking whistle..." 140830
...
raze another commercial:

"i lost forty thousand pounds, and i kept it off for good!"

that's ... uh ... quite the accomplishment. 		150109
...
raze i used to think the opening line of the INXS song "need you tonight" was, "only god has his moments." always thought that was an interesting lyric, until i found out michael hutchence was really singing, "all we've got is this moment."

i forgot all about that for years and years, until this morning, when i caught the music video on tv for the first time in more than half my life and learned i still sing the opening line in my head the way i misheard it way back when. 		150122
...
raze more misheard lyrics i forgot about and was recently reminded of:

"and i miss you
like the deserts miss the rain"

from the song "missing" by everything but the girl. that song was everywhere in the mid-90s, and each time i heard it on the radio, what i heard was:

"and i miss you
like the desert's mystery"

i still think i like it my way better. 		150209
...
e_o_i My brother's Celtic music is fun for this:

"Love is too bright
with a hydraulic sieve"

...as I've always suspected. 		150211
...
e_o_i Two students talking about a class; I thought one said, "Your opponent to my tank - that's part of what the text is asking." 150504
...
raze always with the music for me. in the middle of the first verse of mark morrison's "return of the mack", i hear:

"as they said a story do
baby now i got the flu"

which is not at all what he's singing. but i can't un-hear it, and it makes me laugh every time. 		150523
...
e_o_i Traffic report on the radio: "There's a stalled duck truck..."

I presume it's a pick-up truck, but I like duck truck better. 		150714
...
fishawk Depending on where you live... it could well be a duck truck, the ones that drive on land and boat in water and give tours with quaking sounds... 150715
...
flux when i was young, when reciting the abc's i recall singing "cow le men oh pee" at a crucial juncture 150919
...
e_o_i Oh the radio: "...the Conservative hell ridings."

Hell ridings? Biker gangs like Hell's Angels? Or is it just that some parts of Canada are also parts of hell? And they vote Conservative? Hmmm... 		151012
...
jane go your way, Aquaman 151016
...
e_o_i Donald Trump is stained with the blood of $200,000. (That's what happens when you kill money. It isn't pretty.) 160921
...
e_o_i ...and overheard, at the metro:

"That gumhair spit in my eye."

I'm not sure if that was a full sentence or only a phrase. It depends on whether "gumhair" is a noun or an adjective. 		161027
...
e_o_i "Your boots are in the front," my father said.

I thought he'd said, "Your boots are Donald Trump" and I was like, "No, not quite." 		170205
...
e_o_i "If you have less booze, it will be easier to drink a table."

A chemistry lesson in the class next door, so probably not what was actually said. 		170216
...
e_o_i She said "instant gratification"; at first I heard "Instagrammification." 170312
...
e_o_i "Specifically, the echinacea pectin bacteria?

Mom was on the phone asking my brother about a meal he had. It was probably not echinacea pectin bacteria. 		170319
...
e_o_i (Darn the missed quotation mark. Darn it to heck!) 170319
...
e_o_i At choir. My mind first interpreted "My voice isn't at its best tonight" as "My voice isn't at asbestos tonight" because that makes sense.

In the office, overhearing in a tutoring session in the adjoining classroom, "Give me a report about the modernist era." This might make sense, but the subject was practical economics, so... 		170414
...
raze all my life, i heard sting sing this at the beginning of the second verse of "roxanne":

"i know this is a new year"

when what he was really singing was:

"i've loved you since i knew you"

(that makes a little more sense in the context of the song, doesn't it?) 		170424
...
raze was listening to "drive-in saturday" and heard:

"his name was always funny
and his shrunken ass the same"

when bowie's really singing:

"his name was always buddy
and he shrugged and asked to stay"

because sometimes ears have a warped sense of humour.

also, gives me great joy to know that somewhere in the world there must be someone who once heard a group of people talking about how much they like lorde and assumed they were all big fans of god. 		170611
...
e_o_i I heard a commercial tell me about a machine that can turn fruits into vegetables... until I realized it was saying that it can turn fruits AND vegetables into strips.

But I bet it can't turn fruits and vegetables into strippers. 		171113
...
e_o_i TV in the other room: for a second I thought it said, "The legalization of packages."

(The actual word was cannabis.) 		181021
...
nr he misheard the lyrics "revved up like a deuce" (from Blinded by the Light) as "wrapped up like a douche," and now i will forever sing it like this. 181022
...
e_o_i Meeting in the other room: "We can't accommodate the devil or a plastic rabbit." 181106
...
e_o_i TV. I thought I heard, "He's a caretaker for his alien wife," until I realized the word must be "ailing."

But for that second or two, it was sweet of him to tend to his beloved while she was adjusting to earth's heavier gravitational field and unfamiliar atmosphere.

I just want to know whether she survived and how they met in the first place. 		191120
...
e_o_i "We hope this collie isn't losing his battle with Bolshevism."

(It was botulism, maybe? Can collies get that? Mom's watching a TV show about veterinary clinic in Australia.) 		200331
...
e_o_i A veterinary clinic, I mean.

The show is called Bondi Vet.

(New Special Episode: Collies vs. Commies) 		200331
...
e_o_i CBC Kids has "6 hours of cow-free programming."

But, but, what's if you WANT cows? 		200417
...
e_o_i (I looked this over from the beginning. I think Grandpa called Alzheimer's disease "old-timer's disease" as a joke.) 200420
...
e_o_i "But what is God?"

...Why this was probably misheard: it was a TV show ALL about buying fancy houses in the UK. Mom was wasting her time watching this while I was wasting time on the Internet in the next room. 		200604
...
epitome of incomprehensibility "The slate is mainly used for roof sex."

(A show about houses that my mom was watching in the other room; there was something about slate as a material. And roofs. But probably not sex on roofs.) 		200909
...
e_o_i Oh. Same show about houses both times. Do I mishear things more easily if they're said in a British accent?

anyway I am e_o_i now

lowercase

small 		200909
...
e_o_i "I'm seeing the gloves come off
the old familiar sex jam"

The radio tells me this is a song called "Feels Good" by Royal canoe, so here's what the lyrics actually are:

"Shake the dust up, off your old familiar self"

Same difference? 		210715
...
raze mallet percussion, polyrhythms, and a voice singing about "salvation of the soul", but all i can hear even after i know i'm hearing it wrong is "starvation of the soul".

we hear what we want to hear sometimes. 		210724
...
raze the modern pop edition, genital style:

when alessia cara's "wild things" was all over the place, i thought she was singing, "and we believe the impotence of those who say we can't sit there."

what she was really singing: "and we will leave the empty chairs to those who say we can't sit there".

i was a little disappointed to learn there was no impotence involved, but not half as disappointed as i was when i found out katy perry wasn't really singing, "so you wanna play with my dick," in "dark horse". because how brilliant a subversion of gender roles would it have been to sneak *that* into a pop song and past all the censors? 		210827
...
e_o_i I was JUST listening to a parody of "Dark Horse" today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wvYRQ-sFMJw

One of Key of Awesome's better ones, in my opinion: a glowing sphinx helps the guest rapper teach "Katy Perry" horse-related metaphors. 		210827
...
e_o_i Speaking of song parodies, I used to think that Weird Al's "White and Nerdy" went

"do I like her
or do I like the card?"

when it was

"do I like Kirk
or do I like Picard?"

which makes more sense, at least if you aren't woefully unfamiliar with Star Trek like SOME people here (cough, cough, me). 		210827
...
e_o_i "To be completely ominous..."

She'd said, "To be completely honest..." 		210910
...
e_o_i "The giant river of love can fan out, leading to even more destruction."

It was lava (from a volcano). Not love. 		210923
...
raze there's some poppy song i'm not really feeling, and the singer is singing what sounds like, "i have an erection." but no. it's, "it has no direction."

if only those two lines followed each other. then there'd be some real truthiness in this song. 		210928
...
raze i should have prefaced that with, "the modern pop edition, genital style (part ii)". 210928
...
raze i always forget there's another word for this that's a whole poem in just ten letters: mondegreen. 211022
...
e_o_i In a song on the radio this morning: "Trees don't exist."

Thought that was an odd claim to make, but with repetition the words revealed themselves to be "Please don't insist." 		211029
...
e_o_i On the way to the library, someone was telling two others about her class: "There's the rise and fall of chicken mail..." 211104
...
e_o_i Overheard_in_conversation, on the bus:

You want to see this? I’ll screech out it for you.

(I was trying to figure out why he said “screech out it” instead of “screech it out” until I realized he’d said “screenshot it.”) 		211120
...
e_o_i "I'm trying to push past my limits" became "I'm trying to push past 9/11" (what would that even mean???) 220210
...
past toddlers repeating misheard phrases from low battery talking toys brings a spark of whimsy to any day. 220211
...
e_o_i "triage or dare"

An odd game or a dark joke. I couldn't tell what it really was, but the actual sound was from serious TV news, so it probably wasn't that. 		220318
...
e_o_i Nature documentary in other room: "If you enter, you will code with nuclear bats."

Yes, that's who I want to do programming with: radioactive flying mammals. 		220326
...
raze a tennis commentator: "that's why she's so good. she doesn't aim for stupid targets."

i don't know what the woman actually said about the player she was describing ... but i'm pretty sure it wasn't *that*. 		220412
...
e_o_i "It's too soon to say gay or nay to the idea." 220413
...
raze two women who looked about sixty were talking. i heard one of them say, "blather is watching."

i almost fell over.

i caught another sentence or two in passing, and i figured out it was someone's father she was talking about. not blather.

she had me going for about five seconds there, though. 		220421
...
e_o_i "[Twitter] is a niche, one where a lot of stinkers hang out." 220425
...
raze he said, "how are you doing?" but what i heard was, "how are you driving?"

and i almost said, "i'm not. because i can't." 		220524
...
e_o_i "We called him Doctor Antigen. He gave literal advice." 220602
...
raze i was listening to the radio. i heard the dj say:

"once you start indulging in hungarian pork cocks..."

i knew she said "hocks". not "cocks".

i still laughed. 		220606
...
raze in the middle of a polka song, i heard: "some kill samurai, some just stab the sun."

i'm going to pretend that's what the guy was really singing about. 		220611
...
raze i could have sworn i heard him say, "i think from now on i'm gonna start taking a hammer to me." but he was talking about tenderizing meat. not self-harm. 220628
...
tender_square my boss was talking to a new employee and said, "we could be a little more consistent..." what i heard was "we could be a lisa loeb consistent." i have no idea how. 220719
...
raze "how you feeling?"

"a little tired, but that's my fault."

"how is it your fault?"

"i didn't say it was my fault. i said, 'that's normal.'"

"oh. that makes sense." 		220730
...
raze what i heard him say: "they found that the client who testified against him was incredible."

and i thought, "that was kind of them."

what he actually said was that the man's former client *wasn't* credible. 		220731
...
raze what she said: "be glad it's a tennis ball, not a hockey puck."

what i heard: "god is a tennis ball, not a hockey puck."

i've said it before, and i'll say it again. i like it my way better. 		220924
...
raze on_the_radio, a call-and-response punk song of sorts. the response part went: "selfish, spoiled."

i bet you can guess what i decided to hear in its place.

"selfish squirrels." 		221001
...
e_o_i "I was dreaming of spark plugs! Of the Chinese!"

(from an episode of Call the Midwife my mom was watching in the other room) 		221117
...
raze "did you just say, 'it's nice not to piss your pants?'"

"no. i said it's nice not to have any christmas plans." 		221225
...
raze "a blackhead's allowed for a shedding of tears."

there's no way that's what a woman whose name i'll never know was really singing. but damned if there isn't some truth in there. 		230101
...
e_o_i "Create simple content for your talking ferns!"

(from a commercial) 		230102
...
raze "he spoke to his ancestors" somehow became "he smoked his ancestors".

and i thought, "well, there are stranger ways to get high." 		230122
...
raze i first heard the latest bit of radio_wisdom as, "you can't always pee on the mark in this life." 230212
...
tender_square i thought i heard an electrician in my house say "pussy ass deep" with regards to where a wire should go but i know they said something else (their accent softened vowels). i also heard what i thought was a woman screaming in orgasmic delight outside the grocery store, but it turns out it was someone using an electric saw on their driveway. guess my mind is in the gutter on valentines_day. 230214
...
e_o_i On the train. Someone younger than me, maybe a college student, said this - what I thought was this - to her friend:

"She said to me, 'I thought you'd end up with an Asian guy because you like to be teased so much.' It was embarrassing."

But then I teased out that "to be teased" was actually "Japanese." 		230309
...
e_o_i From the group of three walking ahead of me through the Concordia tunnel to the metro station. One said, or so I thought, "I have friends who are eight feet tall, friends who are religious, and friends in between."

By the time I'd parsed the whole sentence, I realized "eight feet tall" had really been "atheist" or the like. But it made me smile, wondering what would be between eight feet tall and religious. 		230317
...
raze i'm still not sure how, but "great minds think alike" turned into "great minds sink psoriasis". 230322
...
raze from a blues song on the radio:

"said you hate red lipstick
you said it looked so cheap
just like hitler, baby
you like it when i'm deep"

i almost choked on what i wasn't drinking. those last two lines have to be wrong. but there's no official documentation of the lyrics anywhere online. so i'm left with ... that.

pray for me. 		230330
...
raze what i heard: "i named the rock after jesus."

what he actually said: "we might have to rock after pizza." 		230413
...
e_o_i I was listening to a rock cover of Taylor Swift's "You Belong With Me" and I haven't heard the original in ages.

I thought I heard
"She doesn't think you're human
like I do"

while the line really was
"She doesn't get your humour
like I do"

(I guess the former would be a better reason to break up with someone, though?) 		230422
...
raze "he has to come up on thursday because he took his soul away."

this is another situation where i don't know what the person actually said, but i'm pretty sure what came out of her mouth and what i heard were two very different things. 		230423
...
raze "i think someone's squawking over there."

"what was that?"

"i said i think someone's squawking over there."

"you know what that sounded like to me? i thought you said you had a kielbasa."

"well, that's true too." 		230507
...
raze the modern pop edition, genital style (part iii):

in "what a girl wants", christina aguilera sings:

"what a girl wants
what a girl needs
whatever makes me happy
sets you free"

i always heard it as, "whatever makes me happy sexually."

(which is also important. you know, with her being a genie in a bottle and all.) 		230519
...
raze "my bun keeps getting in the way."

(i heard "bum". because of course i would.) 		230607
...
raze what i heard: "i'll piss on your doorknob."

what he said: "i'll put this on your doorknob." 		230610
...
tender_square what gordon downie sang: "when the appearance of conflict meets the appearance of force"

what i heard: "when the appearance of conflict meets the appearance of pork" 		230701
...
e_o_i From a commercial: "I still have men in my wallet." (A binder full of women, but I keep the men in my wallet.) 230702
...
tender_square one colleague called another colleague’s name aloud passing the admin office in greeting.

“did he just call you ‘barb-a-que’?” i asked her.

he did not. 		230804
...
raze "he's thinking of going to school to be a paralegal."

"a paramedic, eh?" 		231120
...
e_o_i On the metro: "Nobody noticed his thirty-seven dicks." 231218
...
raze a closing door sounded exactly like someone saying, "fuck." 240105
...
raze i heard her say, "a little bit of guilt, a little bit of beets."

she said "dill". not "guilt". 		240114
...
raze "how many love songs have died in vegas?" asked the chorus of the song i was half-listening to on the radio. my brain warped it into: "how many love songs have died as beggars?"

also a valid question, i feel. 		240303
what's it to you?
who go 		blather
from