to my fellow editors

[aruan]

Have you ever read something that you knew, just KNEW, that you'd be the only one to have to suffer through, because your proofer would skim at best, and not even the people involved will bother with the hideously boringly written minutae of their lives?

Yeah, that'll be my night. By the end of it, I will know a combined 170 inches' worth on the Lake Wales charter school system, and everyone else will use the paper to line their pets' cages.

Uh, distraction please?

Comments

[flatword.livejournal.com]

DON'T DISTRACT HER!

She needs to get that shit DONE, yo.

You people keep your memes and fics to yourself and let a woman work!

[gjstruthseeker.livejournal.com]

That's a strange little icon you've got there - most of us don't tend to flaunt our corrections.

Also, my f'list is love, and I've not yet not gotten my section(s) done by deadline. So you, sir, ought to take your paranoia and not let it interfere with the One True Love of John and Rodney.

[flatword.livejournal.com]

Yes, well, few are threatened with legal action by a hip-hop star!

Oh, John and Rodney. They're so MFEO. (Did I do that right? Oh, how I hope I did!)

[gjstruthseeker.livejournal.com]

Yes, well, few are threatened with legal action by a hip-hop star!

Get in line, baby boy. Get in line.

And yes, you made excellent use of the acronym. Frankly, that should be the example sentence in Merriam-Webster's.

[flatword.livejournal.com]

While I've got this audience:

Text too small to read in icons is PERFECTLY FINE.

Icons themselves are there for design.

So what's wrong with the design having, you know, design?

Thank you. That is all.

[gjstruthseeker.livejournal.com]

See here.

Also, some of us use icons not purely as decoration, but to express moods, especially in comments when we don't have a handy pull-down menu for that.

And as I said about songs, it grinds my gears not to be able to understand artists who mumble or scream or otherwise make unintelligible their lyrics, because it's English and I'm supposed to be able to understand it.

[a-life-verbatim.livejournal.com]

oh yes. Yes. I know exactly what you mean. Sometimes you read just because you're curious if it'll get better. I fall into that terrible trap.

[gjstruthseeker.livejournal.com]

God, reading to see if it gets better NEVER WORKS. Does this stop any of us? Rarely. It's the lure of the ending! How will this madness wrap up?

Sadly, in my real life I'm paid to keep reading, no matter how hideous. Frankly, I'm surprised the writer managed to squeeze as much out of the topic as he did.

[flatword.livejournal.com]

"Squeezing it out" is exactly how he did it.

I will now read this story to spite you all

[paper-pusher.livejournal.com]

As a co-flunky repeatedly threatened with dismemberment by several would-be hip hop stars, I must remind you that your current love is a free-thinking woman who deserves much better than Lakeland (for that matter, you do too). So in that sense, you're both victims.

Yay!

170 inches. My sweet Dark Lord. (Or as Little Richard would say, either in response to me or George W., "MASHED POTATOES, GRAVY AND CRANBERRY SAUCE...WOOOOOOOOOO!")

End of overhyped cliche, onto Lake Wales, which is many ways itself an overhyped cliche.

Re: I will now read this story to spite you all

[gjstruthseeker.livejournal.com]

[heart] I miiiiiiiiiiiiiiiss you. On that note, if you could, be a dear and e-mail me some details about this travel magazine your dark enterprise is allegedly involved in?

Also, that Stephen Colbert skit was AWESOME TO THE NTH DEGREE. He makes coming home after reading Lake Wales drivel so much nicer.

Re: I will now read this story to spite you all UPDATE

[paper-pusher.livejournal.com]

So I got to the subhead "Survey: Parents happy" before my mind wandered. I like the way he begins the story; he didn't go straight narrative or cop out even more with an anecdote.

But there's no challenge in the story. He parrots FCAT scores and state school grades like they're established and proven methods of evaluating schools, then uses that as the standard for all the other sentiments in the piece. I would like to know things like, is the charter operator for- or non-profit? How much is being spent per student, and how does that compare to previous years? Has the charter operator submitted to outside review, and if not (in two years) why?

No originality whatsoever. I'm not surprised your paper would run the story, but it proves that "relevance" comes nowhere close to equaling "importance."

PS, please tell me you didn't write the headline "City Orders Troubled Motel Closed Its Guests Evicted." (Or you, Mr. Lesser Half.)

Also, I miss you back. We should definitely talk soon.

Re: I will now read this story to spite you all UPDATE

[gjstruthseeker.livejournal.com]

Aaw, but anecdotes aren't copping out! I [heart] me some anecdote lede. And no, there is no challenge, just as there is generally no challenge in the stories that come out of here. It's like reading The Gainesville Sun all over again, except this place has some competent copy editors.

Charter operation is nonprofit, though there's a school somewhere in the county that's for-profit and parents have had so much trouble with getting uniform orders filled and let-out times being changed, etc. We haven't heard nearly enough about that though.

This is Polk County, Mike. We're happy to have ANYTHING to run.

For the record, there is a comma where a comma belongs in that headline in the print version of the paper. No clue what happened with the Web stuff. But no, neither one of us wrote the original either.

We should go to Disney together! No, seriously, Brandon and I have a few days of vacation time coming up, which isn't on the weekends but maybe? SOMETHING PLZ.