"I could the degrees as I think."

[adelaidesean]

Hmm. What the hell does that mean?

I found this sentence in the first draft of "Cenotaxis", a novella that will slip between the first books of the Astropolis series (due out in standalone form late next year from MonkeyBrain).

What it's supposed to say is a complete mystery to me. Context doesn't help at all. It's like something reached into my head, scrambled up my neurons just long enough for me to write these words--words that look perfectly correct on their own but together, in that order, make no sense at all--then retreated so subtly I never noticed what happened.

I deleted the sentence rather than try to work out what it meant, then I reconsidered and kept it out of curiosity. Now it's here. Perhaps someone can tell me what I was trying to say.

Personally, I'm hoping it's a coded message from the collective unconscious designed to join with other such coded "errors" in order to reveal some deeply profound truth about the universe (cf. the "garbage" text in modern-day spam). That's much more interesting than the assumption that I'm just wearing out.

Comments

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

The typo theory was the first to occur to me, too, only it makes no sense at all in the context. Looking for missing words is a bit like an archaeologist reconstructing a village from a few walls and the odd hearth. I'm usually pretty good at it, but here I'm stumped.

Not that it matters, of course. It's only a minor mystery in the greater scheme of things. I've obviously been editing too long. :-)

[callistra.livejournal.com]

I like count, but court could be an option.
:-)

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

There are many variations on the mystery c-word that could fit, with varying degrees of inappropriateness. :-)

"I count the dungarees as I sink." That could work...

[callistra.livejournal.com]

See, that sounds much less cool.
I wouldn't believe you could write something uncool like that.
:-)

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

It's a challenge, now.

"I can't dangle eels in the sink"?
"I court the Debbies in the thick of it"?
"I couldn't degrease *and* think"?

Perhaps I'm better off doing something else. :-)

[shadowsandice.livejournal.com]

Then the missing word is, quite clearly, "pony".

[ladnews.livejournal.com]

Ha ha! Yes, of course! It's so obvious. I can't believe I didn't see it before now.