Faking news
by Andy Behrendt
Well, folks, I'm back from another inexcusable blogging hiatus. I can only cite the midterm rush, a convergence of other responsibilities and, well, yes, the mourning over Favre's retirement for my absence. (Thanks, Brian, for being so prolific in my absence. With that, I forgive you for your blatant abuse of Copperplate font.)
I'd love to use this entry to describe what's going on at Luther Seminary, as has been my charge as a blogger, but that will have to wait for another post. Instead, since it's April Fools' Day, I'd like to give you a peek at what isn't going on at Luther Seminary. I had the honor of contributing to the long-awaited 2007-08 edition of the Noncord (Luther students' answer to The Onion), which was distributed today. Although I welcome you to read the entire publication here (particularly if you can appreciate inside jokes), I wanted to mark the special occasion of April 1 with a peek at one of my contrived contributions, a hard-hitting expose written under a anagrammatic pseudonym. Although the events depicted aren't real, the location is ... actually, it's kind of surreal.
LIBRARY TYPEWRITER USED
Room in book stacks has first occupant since early ‘90s
M.Div. middler Dan Drahmaier is shown using the typewriter in the Luther Seminary library’s typing room in this photo captured Monday morning by a fellow student’s cell phone.
By Teddy Henbarn
A Luther Seminary student on Monday used the typewriter in the library’s fourth-floor typing room for the first time in at least 15 years, according to library staff.
Staff and student witnesses say Dan Drahmaier, an M.Div. middler, had plugged in the Brother AX-350 and could be seen typing on a white piece of paper for several minutes on Monday morning before shutting himself inside the small, metal room.
M.A. junior Heather Cromwell said she was looking for Genesis commentaries in the book stacks around 10:20 a.m. when she heard a flurry of mechanical punching and beeping noises coming from the corner of the stacks.
“I had never heard those noises before—at first I thought something was wrong with the copier,” said Cromwell, 22. “But I followed the noise to this little closet with a placard that said, ‘typing.’ I peeked in there and saw a guy typing on what looked like a really old laptop, only without any screen.”
Cromwell reported the unusual activity to staff members working at the circulation desk, who alerted Library Services Director David Stewart. Stewart accompanied Cromwell to the typing room, where Drahmaier continued to type. Stewart attempted to greet the typist, and Cromwell snapped a photo of him with her cell phone just as a startled Drahmaier shut the harvest-gold-painted door. The typewriter noises then resumed, the witnesses said.
“This was really something,” Stewart said. “I talked to the entire library staff. We can’t recall from our entire careers here an instance of anyone else ever using this typewriter.”
There are two such typing rooms in the seminary book stacks, Stewart noted. The other, on the stacks’ third level, has been padlocked. Stewart said that room houses another typewriter, along with a mimeograph machine and an abacus.
“We have kept the typing room on the fourth level open just to make sure we’re catering to the full spectrum of library users—that includes users who still find themselves in the 20th century,” Stewart said. “We just didn’t want to leave anyone asking, ‘O Brother, where art thou?’”
Asked what sort of word-processing tasks might be better suited for a typewriter than for one of the seminary’s many computer stations, Stewart said, “Ransom notes, maybe.”
Drahmaier did not return several calls requesting comment. He nonetheless can be clearly identified as the student in the photo from Cromwell’s cell phone.
Results of an open records request made by the Noncord to Computer Services show that Drahmaier had ignored 30 days of warning messages advising him to change his password and was locked out of his LutherNet account on Sunday.
Professor Alan Padgett, instructor for Drahmaier’s Jesus the Savior and the Triune God course, said students in the class had a midterm paper due Monday afternoon. Padgett said Drahmaier’s paper featured Courier typeface, suffered from irregular spacing between lines of type and included several instances of the word eschatology spelled without an h.
I'd love to use this entry to describe what's going on at Luther Seminary, as has been my charge as a blogger, but that will have to wait for another post. Instead, since it's April Fools' Day, I'd like to give you a peek at what isn't going on at Luther Seminary. I had the honor of contributing to the long-awaited 2007-08 edition of the Noncord (Luther students' answer to The Onion), which was distributed today. Although I welcome you to read the entire publication here (particularly if you can appreciate inside jokes), I wanted to mark the special occasion of April 1 with a peek at one of my contrived contributions, a hard-hitting expose written under a anagrammatic pseudonym. Although the events depicted aren't real, the location is ... actually, it's kind of surreal.
LIBRARY TYPEWRITER USED
Room in book stacks has first occupant since early ‘90s
M.Div. middler Dan Drahmaier is shown using the typewriter in the Luther Seminary library’s typing room in this photo captured Monday morning by a fellow student’s cell phone.By Teddy Henbarn
A Luther Seminary student on Monday used the typewriter in the library’s fourth-floor typing room for the first time in at least 15 years, according to library staff.
Staff and student witnesses say Dan Drahmaier, an M.Div. middler, had plugged in the Brother AX-350 and could be seen typing on a white piece of paper for several minutes on Monday morning before shutting himself inside the small, metal room.
M.A. junior Heather Cromwell said she was looking for Genesis commentaries in the book stacks around 10:20 a.m. when she heard a flurry of mechanical punching and beeping noises coming from the corner of the stacks.
“I had never heard those noises before—at first I thought something was wrong with the copier,” said Cromwell, 22. “But I followed the noise to this little closet with a placard that said, ‘typing.’ I peeked in there and saw a guy typing on what looked like a really old laptop, only without any screen.”
Cromwell reported the unusual activity to staff members working at the circulation desk, who alerted Library Services Director David Stewart. Stewart accompanied Cromwell to the typing room, where Drahmaier continued to type. Stewart attempted to greet the typist, and Cromwell snapped a photo of him with her cell phone just as a startled Drahmaier shut the harvest-gold-painted door. The typewriter noises then resumed, the witnesses said.
“This was really something,” Stewart said. “I talked to the entire library staff. We can’t recall from our entire careers here an instance of anyone else ever using this typewriter.”
There are two such typing rooms in the seminary book stacks, Stewart noted. The other, on the stacks’ third level, has been padlocked. Stewart said that room houses another typewriter, along with a mimeograph machine and an abacus.
“We have kept the typing room on the fourth level open just to make sure we’re catering to the full spectrum of library users—that includes users who still find themselves in the 20th century,” Stewart said. “We just didn’t want to leave anyone asking, ‘O Brother, where art thou?’”
Asked what sort of word-processing tasks might be better suited for a typewriter than for one of the seminary’s many computer stations, Stewart said, “Ransom notes, maybe.”
Drahmaier did not return several calls requesting comment. He nonetheless can be clearly identified as the student in the photo from Cromwell’s cell phone.
Results of an open records request made by the Noncord to Computer Services show that Drahmaier had ignored 30 days of warning messages advising him to change his password and was locked out of his LutherNet account on Sunday.
Professor Alan Padgett, instructor for Drahmaier’s Jesus the Savior and the Triune God course, said students in the class had a midterm paper due Monday afternoon. Padgett said Drahmaier’s paper featured Courier typeface, suffered from irregular spacing between lines of type and included several instances of the word eschatology spelled without an h.
posted by Andy Behrendt at 2:41 PM
1 Comments:
oh, brother :oP
last sentence = brilliantly funny
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