Mondegreen

This is a bad one, and boy, am I ever embarrassed. It's hard to admit but if I do then maybe life can go on. This whole time I thought the song by the Cranberries "Zombie" had repeated lyrics "Tommy" as in British souldier and the song being about the futility of war, and it is.

I never put together the title on the CD and the song playing. And I never did see the title on the CD for the song that I thought was repeating Tommy.

So, whenever they say Zombie I say Tommy ever since the song came out.

Knowing the truth makes the song worse from my point of view. I like Tommy better than Zombie and now I need a sign for zombie and there isn't one. It's one of those signs that is pantomimed. I never had a need for the word. None of the dictionaries have it. But it's become a popular subject generally so the kids must have invented one. Turns out there are two ways to sign zombie. One is pantomime how a zombie moves similar to robot with thier arms extended forward rising up and down. The other is 4 hand configuration bent toward your own eyes and shifted back and forth as if mesmerizing yourself. And that is the sense of the word in the song Zombies, the same thing going through their heads over and over as zombies.

Looking for what the kids came up with I found the cutest site that purports to prepare you for the zombie apocalypse. The page is easy to find [zombie asl]. The interpreter puts on some pretty good zombie makeup and shows those kind of words, bite, blood, chainsaw, contageous, dead, disease, gross, hungry, infect, intestines, everything in the zombie world except the word "zombie" and the word "apocalypse."

Hey! Sick and disease are the same thing except disease is with Ds and "virus" begins with "sick," a ligature with the word "spread." And "victim" is the same thing as "vampire."

Commenters like it. One commenter is looking for "apocalypse" and still cannot find it. It's too long to fingerspell. Apparently he needs it. Don't you think "world destruction" will do? "[Destroy] is a fun sign too, it's like a credit card machine except it really does look like your fingers are being dragged to smithereens first backwards then flattened forward. It's a great sign.

Here's the interpreter at Zombie ASL is showing the sign for "rifle" another pantomime sign, now, I'm not much of a gun guy and I'll bet neither is he. Unless his rifle's a canon.