Fendering

As everyone knows, I'm sure, a fender bender is a colloquialism for a minor traffic accident, although when you put that phrase into Google Images you come up with a great number of shots of accidents that to me would hardly be classed as minor [see the image included here]. Considering how much excess there is to pay on any motor vehicle claim these days, and what it costs merely to replace a fender, some of these accidents must have cost around a $1000.

I put fender into Evernote to see what things would come up.  Interestingly enough there was a more than usually random set, though the number was small: just four. One of them was a photo of my grandparents' marriage certificate in which the name Charles, written in very 1901 handwriting, was mistaken for fender.  That was a bit of a surprise.

Two more photos had the same misreading problem, though not because of handwriting.  In one of them Evernote mistook the name Jenner for fender (admittedly the print is a little rounded on the page) and in the other the printed word render was picked up. Evernote does a very good job of picking up text from photos, but in these cases just didn't quite get there.

The last search response actually got the word fender, in the middle of this wonderful list from a delightful poem by Barbara Hamby called Ode to Hardware Stores: 

(garnet, production, wet or dry), hinges, wire nails, caulk, nuts,
     lag screws, pulleys, vise grips, hexbolts, fender washers
all in a primordial stew of laconic talk about football, baseball...

I'm not sure what a fender washer is, (nor a hexbolt, if it comes to that), but it's the only clipping I've got that actually contains the right word.

All of this by way of mentioning the Fender amplifier, made by the company, Fender, naturally. Fender are currently advertising an amplifier called the Vaporizer. I'm not sure if that means that if you sit in front of it you'll be vaporized, but it does sound a little ominous, even though the model in the picture looks innocuous enough.

We have an almost-vaporizing problem at our church: two sets of amps are seated on either side of the stage and though they face slightly inwards, if you sit at the right or left of the auditorium you get a full blast. One of the sound people said the best place to sit is right in the middle of the auditorium, in front of the sound desk. I might try it, but I suspect that if this is the best place to have the most moderate experience, then the sound people aren't actually hearing what most people in the place are hearing.  No wonder they don't take everyone else's complaints on board!


The fender bender photo courtesy of San Francisco Citizen