missing "e" complaint

It's raining.

Herman Cain is the Republican favorite.

Steve Jobs is dead.

What am I complaining about? (Warning: I am about to complain.)

I am complaining about a missing "e" in a comic.

I followed a link from deviantart to the amazon page for a comicker I didn't know - Andrew Dobson. His new series Formera has two volumes out, and in the first, the "look inside" sample has a misspelling on the third page included. (It's probably page 2, but I can't tell if the first is a title page, the cover, or page 1).

The error? Boy falls from sky into water. Reaction? "I can't breath!"

Come on. There are twenty words to a page in this comic. Six editors had to have looked at that. The text editor for blogger (TM) highlights misspelled words!

Fer cryin' out loud!

typoo

I am an editor who likes translated cartoons.

This is a form of self-torture. It's not only the translations that irk, but the ad copy as well.

Today I read this sentence as part of a series review on SF-based Crunchyroll (online licensee and distributor of Japanese anime):

Throughout the series he has sudden flashes of inspiration that take over his psyche at impromptu moments causing him to behave erratically. 

About a decade ago (okay, and counting, sheesh!), when I spent many happy hours grading undergraduate history papers at UCLA, I recognized this style of writing as pretense. (I was prepared, having practiced it earlier in life.)

The pretense is twofold: first, that the writer has something important to say, and therefore must use important words; and second, that the writer knows what the words mean.

I considered writing to Crunchyroll's newsletter editors about this. Taking time at work to find their email address yielded nothing useful, so I'll take a moment here to suggest the following:

1. It is unusual for a "flash of inspiration" to be anything contrary to sudden. 
2. If "psyche" stands for "mind," then "mind" is a better word. (A corollary: "Psyche" means "mind.")
3. "Impromptu" and "inopportune" share many letters but not a lot of meaning. 
4. This is the sort of writing that makes university teaching assistants think longingly about careers in sewer maintenance, but take the short cut of shredding students' hopes for graduating within four years.

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On another note, I devoured Hilari Bell's Flame last weekend, and I've been contentedly rubbing my psyche's belly ever since. I think I'll write about it soon, and look for the sequels.