Seems everything needed repairs this week. First there was an elderly but sturdy machine at work, which required my second-favorite set of instructions ever: the now-infamous page 36 from the vintage manual I keep in a nearby cupboard.
Raise your hand if you had to stifle a juvenile snicker when you read the title above. Raise both if you were unsuccessful. Very good. You get three points if you’re the first to spot the spelling error, and ten if you can identify the machine in question.
Page 36 also requires a trip to the following diagram, which I would argue makes their assurance that it’s only “7 easy steps” a giant lie. Like the photo above, click if you need more detail, but do so with care lest your brain explode.
Despite my near-uselessness when it comes to anything mechanical, I managed to muddle through and get the mystery machine up and running again — just in time to go home and spend another evening trying to fix my book. Alas, that task doesn’t come with an instruction manual.
Aren’t they pretty? Good thing I don’t use red ink, or these pages would look like they’d been murdered, and that would ruin the tone of the whole book.
Then, of all the luck, I needed repairs, too. Yes, the flu visited again, just a month and a half after it last stopped by. So much for my weekend plans. Instead of going into the mountains to take photos like the one below, which I snapped a few years ago…
…I got to photograph things around home. This is not nearly as exciting — or as pretty.
Unfortunately, alien creatures kept popping into the frame at the last minute. The blobby heads and tails were so big that even Photoshop couldn’t help me fix the results. Too bad. I do hate to leave things unrepaired.
I’m raising my hand. I snickered at friction stud!! Hope you’re feeling a little better. And wow you are quite the revisionist!
And not only is it a friction stud, it’s one that may shudder or squeek (sic). I’ll be laughing all day at this one.
I’m raising both hands. I’m terrible at reading manuals and following the directions so I avoid it at all cost. I hope the revising is going well!
I just love that qoute: “Good thing I don’t use red ink, or these pages would look like they’d been murdered.”
Thanks, Virginia! It was an accident, so I was rather surprised that it was kind of cute and not too out of focus.
Katie and Suzanne, check your email!
Yay, Joanne! Now I don’t feel so juvenile. 😀 As for the revisions, I am very, very picky. That’s why it takes me so long to revise.
Oh, Carrie, I hope so! I think one of the highest compliments someone can pay someone else is to tell them that they made you laugh — especially if it was on purpose.
Robin, I’ve gotten into too much trouble from not reading manuals, so I’ve (mostly) learned my lesson.
Thanks, Tendell! I was hoping it wouldn’t be too gruesome.
I can’t say I know what that’s a diagram of–should I be embarrassed to admit that??
And I hope you get over the flu soon! Twice in just a few weeks–how awful. I have to drag the kids (and myself) to get the shot next week. And then cross my fingers that we don’t get the beastly illness.
Love the cat and mountain pic.
Printer? 🙂
Not at all, Alyssa. In fact, there’s only been one correct guess. As for the diagram itself, its incomprehensible nature is what I love so much about it. And thanks — yes, I’m feeling much better.
Keri, good guess, but nope!
How boring it would be if your novel DID come with an instruction manual. Imagine sitting down to revise with the same bored sighs that accompany the repair of an overhead projector (?).
“Friction Stud”, well… you have to allow manual writers some outlet for their boredom, otherwise you end up with many more vertigo-inducing diagrams like the one you provided.
If only he/she could have kept the subtle metaphor going.