It’s one thing to misspell a word and have it fixed properly by calling in the professionals who made your sign, but it’s another to go to Home Depot and buy one giant M in the hopes that nobody would notice.

You know, just because it’s upper case, a lighter shade of blue, and hovering magically above the misspelled word.

WWJD?

(Note: I fall under the “recovering Catholic” category, meaning I left the church years ago)

Make mine a Diet Coke, please.

In the email, Carnival was offering generous discounts to California residents who had cruised with them in the past (as my wife and I did in 2006). The chart showed the “discount” as follows:

So let me see. The Regular Rate is $409, the Resident Rate is $579, why that’s a savings of –$170. Wait, I’ll be paying MORE if I’m a resident? Hey buddy, as if California doesn’t already have enough problems with its budget, the last thing residents need is to be dinged for higher vacation costs!

Well, Carnival recognized the error of their ways and came to the rescue by sending an updated and corrected email. It’s a good thing since it’s doubtful anybody would have gone for this kind of “discount.”

On January 18, 2012 from 6 am to 6 pm 6 am the following day, I will be joining sites such as Wikipedia, Google, Reddit and others in showing my opposition to SOPA.

During those 12 24 hours, all of my blogs (listed below) will be set to “private” in order to bring awareness to what SOPA really and truly is: censorship of the Internet. You will not be able to access anything on any of my blogs so that you get an idea of how things may unfold if Congress decides to pass the bill. Additionally, I will refrain from posting on any social media outlet. I will be silent and will also be enforcing the silence. Because I can.

When you try to visit any of my blogs, you will get nothing but a warning page stating that the blog has been set to “private” and cannot be viewed. This means that all of you readers who have come here in search of information regarding Virgin Mobile phones, weight loss, or simple laugh won’t get what you are looking for — by my choice.

Don’t let Congress have that kind of authority on the one thing they need to stay away from and haven’t screwed up yet.

Take action. Stand up to SOPA.

—

My affected blogs:

• Holographic Meatloaf
• 200by40
• Digital Resolution
• Pencilectomy

In the case of KTLA in Los Angeles, it was a really, really bad pun – but a technically accurate one.

How in the world could this even be possible? Here’s a screengrab of the article as it was posted:

As you can plainly see, the headline states that an arrest of an “attempted cereal killer” had been made. Naturally, as most grammarians might be inclined to think, the writer was out of their element and this error needed to be brought to their attention immediately.

But if you look closer, you’ll also see this:

“Yes, you read that correctly…”

In an attempt to perhaps take a shot at writing snappy one-liners for a sitcom, the writer of this article decided to go with a pun that they simply couldn’t resist.

And therein lies the problem.

KTLA, as storied as it may be, has one bad thing going for them: their Facebook articles leave a lot to be desired. It’s not uncommon for Facebook users to do the fact-checking and proofreading for the writers by posting their corrections in the Comments section for the article in question.

Here’s one example. When Nick Oliveri was arrested for domestic violence, the article stated that he was the former bassist for Queen of the Stone Age and not Queens of the Stone Age. One letter makes a huge difference to music fans. Many readers, including myself, posted the correction and the article was removed then posted again with the correct information.

Another headline was missing an em dash and when read as it appeared, gave readers the impression that reporter Rick Chambers was stabbed. I don’t know if that’s pure talent or latent stupidity.

The case of the “cereal killer” was accurate to a point. The man pictured in the screengrab was accused of attempting to poison his wife by pouring Goof Off into her bowl of Rice Krispies. For those who don’t know, Goof Off is a chemical agent used to remove sticky residue from surfaces. I know this because it’s what we used to remove the adhesive left behind from removed shelf labels when I was working at Target.

The full story of the “cereal killer” is here (click to enlarge):

What makes this pun even more unfunny is what’s stated in the first paragraph. A few days before the cereal killer was arrested, authorities in Orange County, CA were trying to track down a real serial killer of homeless men. Talk about bad timing.

But let’s get back to the Facebook revolt. Readers were so outraged at what they thought was the wrong word that the comments began to pour in, including mine which implied that the headline was indeed a pun and that readers should click the link to see that, despite the awful joke, the headline was right.

That wasn’t the case. More and more comments were posted, most of which seemed to indicate that KTLA should invest in a new writing staff. And to top it off, my initial comment about the pun was removed much to my chagrin.

The backlash eventually forced KTLA’s Facebook moderator to delete the article and unlike the Nick Oliveri story, it never returned.

I’ve seen discussions on their page about abortion, gay marriage, grocery strikes, Occupy, unions, or anything that gets peoples’ blood boiling, have more civil endings than this one – and never be removed. It seems like they couldn’t handle the insults readers were flinging at them for something they rightfully thought was incorrect.

Need more proof of that? Go back to the image above and read the second-to-last paragraph:

“The woman’s 17-year-old daughter reportedly smelled something funny in the cereal and realized it was s chemical that wasn’t supposed to be there.”

That’s right: “s chemical.”

Now I know I may be going on and on about how little care they seem to take in writing their articles and I’m sure that being a newswriter is a bit more stressful than being an idiot blogger. We’re all prone to a mistake now and then. But you have to wonder why they would even attempt to include a pun such as this when their readers are very aware of the writers’ tendencies to often misspell words or have incorrect information.

So who’s to blame? While I applaud the readers for promptly pointing out the “error” so quickly, they are just as much at fault for not reading beyond the headline or even clicking the link. Fool me once…

As for KTLA’s attempt to be funny in light of the recent capture of a real serial killer, they should stick to reporting the facts as they know them and leave the comedy writing to the professionals.

Of course, the word should have been public.

Can you imagine how embarrassing this would have been if it slipped through? We’re talking billboard-missing-phone-number-digits embarrassing.

I’m hyppy, hope you’re hyppy too.

But one of the things I do enjoy watching every year is the Rose Parade which takes place up the highway from me in Pasadena. The great thing is that since I don’t own a TiVo or any other kind of recording device, the parade is shown all day long and I can watch the broadcast again to see if there was anything I missed. You know, like officials falling off of scooters or on-screen spelling errors and whatnot.

Like a thing such as a spelling error would happen during the splendor, pomp and circumstance that is the Rose Parade.

Guess what? It did, as I managed to capture during the second broadcast of the parade:

This was the lower third for the float representing China Air, the unofficial ariline of the GRCGLA Rescue. (Why unofficial, by the way?)

Unless you are recording a particular broadcast, lower thirds are practically impossible to capture since they happen so fast and in the case of CNN, are usually corrected before the next go-around.

Fortunately, because the parade is repeated, I was able to grab this with my phone the second time around and it gives me a great amount of pleasure to share it with those who might have missed it and can now get a chuckle from it.

It’s bad enough the date is wrong but then they had to go and use that ugly Curlz font. Might as well have made the sign with a Magic Marker and cardboard.

Happy January Oneth!

In 2008, I was working as a proofreader for Learning Tree International in El Segundo, CA and what a fantastic gig it was: the pay was great, the building was across the street from Mattel’s Corporate HQ, and the Toyota Center was right behind us.

Additionally, I was able to take the MTA trains to work and had my monthly pass fee reimbursed. It was great. Well, up until the day they laid me off which also happened to be my son’s 5th birthday.

At any rate, I was on the train one morning and happened to look out the window at a brand new billboard for Rosarito Beach in Mexico. It appeared normal at first but upon further inspection, something was definitely amiss. I brought my camera with me the next day and zoomed in as close as I could to capture the violation:

The image is not as clear as I wish it could be but remember that I shot this from a moving train. Now take a look at the phone number.

1.800.BAJA

Go ahead and give it a call right now and see what happens. I’ll wait.

(“Girl from Ipamena” plays in background)

Ah, you’re back. And nothing happened, right? That’s because someone overlooked what could quite possibly be one of the largest (physical) errors I’ve seen in my life. Really, how does this one get by anybody? Good money was spent on this billboard and everything that went into the production of it and for what, to have it missing digits from the phone number?

This was probably why their call center wasn’t busy.

Feeling somewhat sorry for them for the money they invested and no doubt lost on this project, I went to Rosatiro.org and found an email address. I then explained this atrocity and attached the photo you see above. (I would have loved to have been around when this was pointed out at the office.) And I’m not kidding when I say that in less than a week, I saw this on my way to work:

Again, it’s blurry but the proof is there: 1.800.962.BAJA 

What kills me is that the correction — what looked like a piece of billboard with only 962.BAJA plopped over the existing BAJA — is so blatantly obvious as the text is way off-center.

I felt that since the correction was made, perhaps it would be in my best interest to ask for some kind of compensation. Heck, a t-shirt would have been fine with me. But I got a little more.

The kind folks at Rosarito sent me vouchers for a two-night stay for two as well as certificates for spa treatments. Not bad for pointing out something that should have been caught well in advance.

The certificates, however, went unused. I never had the vacation time and honestly, given the state of things in Mexico then and now, I was sort of chicken to head down there anyway.

So there’s the story. If you like it, then be sure to come back or subscribe via RSS or by clicking the Subscribe button on the right because this is the kind of stuff you will see here but with less of me blabbing about them.

Thanks for stopping by and reading the first official entry here at Pencilectomy. I hope you know what you’ve gotten yourself into, boy-o.