An App You Should Buy.

If there was an app that reviewed ransom notes for context, I think that I would buy it. You know how Word gives you different colored squigglies depending on what is wrong? Red ones for misspelling and green ones if it thinks there’s some sort of grammar mistake. (Funny story, my Words has – I think – thrown its arms up in exhaustion and given up on even trying to correct me anymore. Given that my writing style tends to employ a lot of fragments. Like. A. Lot. And also because I have no problem starting sentences with “because” or “and” and “or”. This is not laziness of my part! It is my narrative voice! And stuff.)

Anywhoo, I think it would be fun if there was an app that would read those ransom notes you write all the time and give you squigglies if you’re giving away too much information. Like if you wrote, “It is dark in this basement where I am keeping your Pomeranian” then it would give you a squiggly and when you right click it would suggest, “It is dark where I am keeping your Pomeranian”. See, because the way you wrote it you would be – essentially – telling the people looking for you that you are in a basement.

Or if you wrote, “Bring the money in a green duffle bag to the bus station, which is where I live” then you would get a GIANT red squiggly and when you right click it would suggest simply, “Bring the money in a green duffle bag to the bus station.”

Or if you wrote, “How come your dog won’t eat this Panini I got from the Starbucks next door?” then it would suggest simply, “How come your dog won’t eat this Panini?”

But you would still have to employ some cognitive thought because if you wrote something like, “I’m not actually going to kill your Pomeranian if you don’t pay me, but I just really need the money for some more botox for my girlfriend Mysti - who dances at the Gilded Garter downtown - and to pay Phil the Bookie for all that money I lost on the Sea Hawks game last weekend” then the app might just say: no suggestion. Or it might suggest, “Just get out of the ransoming business.”

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