I could actually see both 1. and 2. as deliberate comments, one about a personality not susceptible to snubs, and one about how remarkably, um, unexpected Meathead's gratuitous graduation is. "Free reign" however, makes for a long-standing mental sigh, since it's so *almost* reasonable, but not quite; a free rein, and the consequences thereof, is much more concretely understandable, even if one has only a vague idea what a horse is.

There's perhaps more inaccurate-substitute-word comedy now, since spellcheck weeds out the not-a-word strings. Well, sometimes. By the time I've told spellcheck to skip proper names, SF terms, British idioms, non-English phrases, regionalisms and broken-word speech fragments, I'm surprised it bothers to catch any actual mis-spellings.

Then I think about how irregular and generally ridiculous English is, especially about spelling, and wonder why I'm attached to traditionally correct usage instead of progressively welcoming logical re-visioning of the language.