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October 07, 2004
Rok and Rol
Artist Maria Alquilar misspelled 11 of the 175 words on a mural she created for a Livermore, CA public library. Ms. Alquilar, who was paid $40,000 to create the mural, lays the blame on city leaders for not catching her "oversights," which include misspelling the names of Van Gogh, Michelangelo and Einstein.
Fortunately, city officials have a solution to the problem: they're paying the "artest" another $6,000 (plus travel expenses, of course) to come back and fix her mistakes. The article doesn't include any comments from the actual CITIZENS of Livermore, but if I lived there, I might start making an awful lot of math errors on my tax returns. And then billing the city for the time spent to fix them.
The article also doesn't include the amount of time that Mary Aguilera spent on the mural, but it looks like she'll end up making somewhere between 150%-200% of my ANNUAL salary. While I might not be fired for a 6.3% error rate, I certainly wouldn't get a 15% bonus, either. Unless maybe I worked in California, but even then, it is doubtful. I may be no Einestine, but I sure wish someone would over-pay me for shoddy work and mispeling words.
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Tiger Woods hired Hootie and the Blowfish to play his wedding reception. I guess that's fine if he's a fan and everything, but Tiger is a very rich man, and I'm pretty sure Hootie is cheaper than the Lone Strangers these days. And crappier, too.
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Speaking of which, while driving home from work today, I heard a voice on the radio that brought back a flood of memories. But no, it couldn't be, could it? Richard Marx?? Yes, the man who soft-rocked me through my elementary school years with great tunes like Should Have Known Better, the eerily prescient Hazard, and of course the consummate power-ballads Hold on to The Nights and Right Here Waiting, is back, corrupting a new generation. The amazing thing is, 17 years later, it still sounds the same: crappy.
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On a happier (not crappier) note, Vertigo, the new U2 single, set a record for online sales with 37,000 digital copies in the first week it was available (last paragraph). In case anyone is wondering why iTunes is becoming so popular with labels, that translates to roughly $36,630 in pure profit - there are no production costs for CDs, so the money goes to Apple (about $17,926.54), the label (about $18,703.19), and the band (27 cents).
Posted by Pat at October 7, 2004 04:37 PM
Comments
um... the world is scary when you hear the news for the whole thing everyday.
Posted by: paul at October 7, 2004 09:07 PM
I think that U2 is way overated. (and no Pat, I do not wish a death sentence)
Posted by: greg at October 7, 2004 11:42 PM
Man, that artist who can't spell just proves to me why anyone with an art degree just ends up working at Starbucks (sorry Heather, its a joke). Anyway, its better to be a horrible speller and be an elementary school teacher, right?
Posted by: Amber at October 13, 2004 08:04 PM