I’m used to people misspelling “phoenix” as “pheonix,” but this one is truly painful:
Author Archives: Kelson
I’ve got to avoid getting used to this
We’ve got some construction going on at the office, and for the duration, we’ve turned off the alarm on one of the emergency exits to make it easier for the contractors to get in and out of the area where they’re working. This exit happens to be right by my desk, making it very convenient anytime I need to leave, be it for the bathroom, for lunch, or to go home at the end of the day.
The problem is, I can just see myself forgetting after it’s all done and we turn the alarm back on. Go to lunch, set off the fire alarm. Not a good idea.
Don’t you people READ?
(If you couldn’t tell from the title, this is gonna be a rant.)
When I was in college, I was involved with a creative writing club / literary discussion group called the Literary Guild at UCI. I built a website to post club information and collect our writing projects, and we set up a listserv for online discussion and collaboration.
After a while we started getting complaints from people about how they never received their books, or they were sick of getting junk mail from us, etc. and it became pretty clear they were complaining about the Literary Guild Book Club, which at the time didn’t have a website.
Now think: You’ve signed up with a company that lets you order books from a catalog. The website you find is all about college students and weekly meetings on campus. No mention of catalogs, or ordering books, or even customer service (oops, I mean “customer care”). Don’t you think you might wonder if maybe, just maybe this wasn’t the same group of people?
So we put up a note on the home page stating “We are NOT affiliated with the book club!” Over time it became bold, and then red, and when we noticed the “other” Literary Guild had set up a home page we added a link, and occasionally people would still send us their complaints.
Fast forward to today. Continue reading
Maybe they can display it in the Justice Department?
… It seems like they could use a reference copy.
No Backpedaling Here
Now this is really unusual: Senate Minority Leader Tom Daschle is standing by his criticism of President Bush’s diplomacy.
Usually when a high-profile politician or activist says something unpopular they make some lame excuse about “well, what I meant was…”
You rarely hear someone say “I said something stupid,” and hardly ever do you hear them say “I said it, and I meant it.”
It reminds me of a story posted on This Is True a while back about a French politician who was spotted in the audience at a cabaret show that included male nudity. True editor Randy Cassingham summed up the response as “Yeah, so?”