THE CORRECTIONS

We would like to correct a number of mistakes and innacuracies contained in last week’s issue.

In the profile ‘Steven Dorff: a Profile’ it was inferred that Mr Dorff has a tattoo of a unicorn on his upper left arm. In fact, the tattoo is on his right arm and is of a rat sitting on a birthday cake. We apologise to Mr Dorff, both of his arms and his tattooist for the error.

The comma in column 2, line 8, on page 7 should have been an eighth of an inch to the right. Our sincerest apologies to Lynne, Truss.

We spelled the name of this magazine incorrectly on the cover of last weeks issue. Apologies to readers who thought they were buying ‘Texas Fish & Game Hunter’. (Also there is an apostorphe missing from the word week’s in the previous sentence; further, we accidentally misspelled apostrophe earlier in this sentence. Both errors will be addressed in next week’s Corrections.)

Weather predictions for Antanarivo were wrong; it did not completely freeze over and become a barren icescape for a thousand years. Indeed it was rather mild. Also, the Libra horoscope prediction – “expect a visit from the Grim Reaper, and soon” – was alarmist and premature. We apologise to all Librans who are still with us.

A report in our financial section strongly suggested that sand was a good investment. Sand is, in fact, not a good investment. It is just sand.

Something about our Op-Ed assertion “everything will be fine in a few months, don’t worry about it. Besides, there are limits to the moral corruption, self-destructiveness and sheer stupidity of people” was a little off; we’re not sure exactly what the suspicious element is, but until further notice disregard the whole thing. We no longer stand by it.

The entire seven thousand word article on that shopkeeper in Kabul by reporter Tom Chapman was basically a lie. Via fax, apparently from Kabul, Mr Chapman sends his regrets, however these, too, may be somewhat mendacious. Our fact-checkers are, at this very moment, at work establishing Mr Chapman’s regrets’ sincerity. (As a side-line, a team of no fewer than six qualified grammaticians are working on the apostrophical placements relating to Mr Chapman and his regrets.)

A number of us on the editorial staff gave up smoking last week; this is beginning to look like a mistake, as well. A bad one.

Reviewing the book ‘A History of Cough Medicine’, Robert Hines tangentially mentioned that he felt Jonathan Franzen’s novel ‘The Corrections’ was “longer than God’s beard and about as tangled.” Obviously the length and tangledness of the Heavenly Father’s beard – if, indeed, He sports one – cannot be quantified and therefore should not be employed in the disparagement of books. Forgive us this trespass.

In our interview with Elliot Perlman we forgot the apparently obligatory references to his good looks. We regret the omission: for a writer, Mr Perlman is strikingly handsome.

The word Helsinki appeared several times in our travel section, most notably in the piece about Finland, and was correctly spelled on each occasion. However it’s our opinion that it should be spelled Helsinky and henceforth will appear that way in these pages. Do not try to stop us: we think it looks much better.

Page 26 was inadvertently listed as page 27. Accordingly, every page from 26 onward was one off. Our sincerest apologies to readers who scour every inch of the magazine looking for that kind of trouble.

The cryptic crossword was way too hard. Sorry. We claimed that Frank Sinatra was once King of England. We were wrong. Our suggestions that drinking a bottle of Starova vodka – and only Starova vodka – a day was good for you; and that Rove McManus would win another gold Logie “over our dead body” were both mistakes. It is not, and he will. On page 32 (actually page 33) our reporter wrote ‘as of this writing’ but in truth it was an hour later. He has been dismissed. A gossip item quoted an unnamed source saying that “Paris [Hilton] is so dumb she’d flunk a taste test.” Ms Hilton has since undertaken a rigorous taste test and passed.

Finally, our movie reviewer insinuated that Dustin Hoffman appeared in the film Star Wars. Not only is this incorrect, but the very idea is stolen from an episode of ‘Seinfeld’. If we had the funds and the guts, rest assured, we would sue ourselves – and we’d win. More next week.