{ 2008 04 10 }

Random Poop

The Carillon is the student paper at the University of Regina. In the back of the paper every week, they have a really fun “declassified ad” section also known as “5 lines free” for students and the university community. In the last few months the “declass” has been overrun by spammy ads for “Swiss product”, “700% growth”, doors, soup, and you name it. After I complained in a free ad of my own, an editor responded by saying that these spams were paying to appear.

Anyway, I figured I should plug a newly starting non-profit co-op in Regina, and 3 weeks ago I submitted the Regina Car Share Cooperative’s website address: reginacarshare.blogspot.com . The Carillon published it… wrong. Regina Car Share turned into Regina CARE Share. This type of mistake was nothing new to me. As a student years ago I used to submit my university web site address almost weekly, and of the about 20 times I tried to have it published, perhaps only 5 of them were completely successful. They spelled the URL wrong every other time, and it was NOT my printing that confused them (I have excellent printing, and I should know, I passed grade 2. Staff at the Carillon on the other hand…).

Still, maybe I shouldn’t pick on what is mostly a volunteer paper. These people are still learning the basics of journalism, like fact checking, spelling, and not repeatedly screwing up ads for your readers / contributors / potential paying sponsors. I could understand if it happened once. I could maybe even forgive twice. But more than a dozen times over the years? Good golly, that’s some poopy typing/reading/spelling on their part! It hasn’t always been the same person doing the data entry either. What’s the problem? I’ve honestly considered it’s a conspiracy against me, that’s how bad it is. What else could explain it?

Why am I ranting now when this happened weeks ago? Well, I tried to have it published correctly in the paper after the first typo was printed. I submitted it just before the deadline, and sat in the paper’s office, putting my bag on a table while I wrote out my cheeky second attempt. A Carillon contributor then carelessly tossed my bag off the table to make hurried room for some newly arrived pizza boxes, and didn’t look at me while I suggested he could have asked me to move my bag more carefully than he had. Maybe talking back is why they MISPRINTED THE URL AGAIN! They left out a letter in “blogspot”.

When I saw that I just started laughing. What else could I do? Oh, I know — submit it a 3rd time! The third time’s the charm, and that’s what I said right in my submission to the paper, with the URL, and a request to “please” not misspell it again. They didn’t misspell it the 3rd time. They just included a period right after the URL, so newbies to the web still won’t type it in properly if they do it literally. Ugh. Ugh. Sigh.

The Carillon tried to redeem itself (indirectly) by providing a funny insert called “The Gopher” (a poke at the free left wing Prairie Dog also distributed on campus). Yet the Prairie Dog has always spelled my URLs that I give them, properly. I wonder why that is…

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For those curious diners out there, don’t bother trying a tomato, lettuce, blue cheese sandwich, and drinking grape-cranberry juice with it. The sandwich is great because the salty cheese is just right for the tomato. But the salt and pungent taste goes very badly with the flavourful juice, and the combination ends up tasting like barf. And not this stuff either (but that must taste bad too).

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The Internet is “poop”.

–
Hat tip to Hugh Mcguire

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And we’ll close off this random poop with some pop music that is hard to get out of your head.

Posted by Saskboy on Thursday, April 10th, 2008, at 11:43 pm, and filed under Saskatchewan, humour, media, news, politics.

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