Proving that the world is a strange place indeed

I like to read the "blog" at nytimes.com devoted to style and grammar issues. Sometimes I learn something. Sometimes I find out that I was right all along (the apostrophe some people use when pluralizing abbreviations like "CD" drives me nuts and has driven me nuts forever). Sometimes I read it just to laugh at the funny/ridiculous/psycho comments people leave on a blog about grammar. (Also, it annoys me that newspapers have blogs. Newspapers have columns, and writers. Columnists. Journalists. Journalists are not necessarily bloggers, and bloggers are not necessarily journalists, or writers. The act of writing does not make you [or me] a "writer." There's a difference. I wonder what Katharine Graham would say about this?)

This comment in particular is a trip:

October 27, 2009
11:50 am

I typed “payed” recently and saw that it was underlined in red, indicating a misspelling. It took me a second to realize what was wrong. Never having misspelled “paid” before, it’s funny that this mistake should suddenly appear.

— Shaun

(The writer of the blog had pointed out that "payed" had slipped through as a typo somewhere in some random article. Shaun was responding to that.)

Here's my response to Shaun, who is so obviously from L.A. that all that was missing was the word "totally" in between the "I" and "typed" in the first sentence:

Shaun, it is a crazy world, full of strange coincidences that, taken by themselves, seem like nothing. However, if you add them all up - the song you were singing in the shower was the first song you heard when you turned on the radio; the streetlight above your home went out the second you pulled into the driveway; the pretty girl on the bus looks just like your 10th grade girlfriend - they add up to a magical list of... things that mean nothing. So come on, dumbass, pack up your dreamy fictions about coincidence and karma and get off the public library's computer. There's a line of people waiting for that PC and they're starting to get angry (and you do not want to get people who use public computers angry, belive me).

(And no, Shaun, the word wasn't underlined in red because you misspelled it [or did you? Are the words on the screen words you were thinking or perhaps you've had an episode of automatic writing?], it was underlined in red because Satan is talking to you through your keyboard. What other words were underlined? Are you hearing voices, too? Dude, call the nurse: it might be time for your medicine.)