#656 Venture Capital

The other day we received a press release from a local police department that shows the hazards of relying on spellcheck.
A really advanced form of spellcheck ought to be contextcheck, in which the program checks words not just for the correct letter order that makes them a certain word, but also whether they appear in the correct context to make it the appropriate word to fit in the sentence.
These mistakes are always so much more fun when they come from an official document.
This one involves the word which could be loan, l-o-a-n, as in loaning you money, or lone, l-o-n-e, as in lone ranger.
The press release from the police said the following: “A male suspect entered the bar after closing hours, contacted the loan bartender and demanded the money in the cash register.”
Of course the whole point of this is that in the press release, the, ahem, information officer got the spelling of lone wrong. He wrote loan, l-o-a-n, instead of lone, l-o-n-e.
Which, instead of portraying the perpetrator as demanding cash from an individual who was alone, makes it seem as if the bartender was a special type whose job it was to actually lend money.
As in, give people cash when they ask.
So again, when the press release describes the event—the suspect demanding the loan bartender give him money—it sounds more like a transaction at the bank.
It’s what, I assume, “loan” bartenders are supposed to do. Hand out cash right? It’s just a loan though. The suspect needs to remember to pay it back, with interest.
Hey, maybe the perp figured it was some new spin on the payday loan business. With offices right in a bar.
Yeah, that’s it, get a little venture capital...
I can hear his defense lawyer now.
“Your honor, my client neither planned nor committed a robbery. As this press release makes clear, he was only engaging the loan executive at the bar in a lending transaction.
Perhaps the real crime here is that the bartender in charge of the loan failed to document it properly.”
America, ya gotta love it