O Hell, It's The Old School Bell
2006-08-02, 12:59 p.m.

Well hello there! We�ve had back-to-back-to-back company the past couple of weeks. Add school starting tomorrow (insert angry children here) and I�ve been a tad busy.

One of the things on my get-ready-to-toss-the-kids-out-the-door-at-o�dark-thirty-on-August-3rd list was to look up the bus schedule. I followed the link from Daughter�s school website and was met with something most interesting.

Now, when someone is working on a big public website, one would think said person would disable that website to public access until completion. Not our intrepid district IT guru. Up popped the transportation website in the school colors of blood red and black, and this:

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Integer rutrum ligula et nunc. Integer malesuada. Fusce hendrerit, lorem et aliquet pellentesque, ante augue suscipit mauris, vitae sodales justo mauris eu elit. Sed posuere volutpat lorem. Maecenas ornare, tortor id feugiat commodo, nibh nunc hendrerit enim, vel gravida lacus nunc a erat. Nunc non metus sit amet justo interdum fringilla. Praesent eu erat nec purus mattis consequat. Ut eget nibh. Nam faucibus egestas magna. Aenean molestie orci sit amet turpis. In porta. Integer justo.

The HELL? No, wait, wrong choice of words, because this does sound like someone is busy conjuring something from the Netherworld. (It�s actually Lorem Ipsum, a mix of nonsense and Latin to act as a placeholder while making a web page.) But check out that next-to-last line: �Aenean molestie orci sit amet turpis.� �Molestie�? They�re going to do WHAT on that bus?

And next to it is

(I may have embellished slightly.)

At the bottom are links to the bus routes and rules for conduct. Clicking on them, however, took me instead to CNN...and a huge story about Middle East car bombers.

All that was missing was the popup welcome from Anton LeVey.

So I�m beginning to have doubts about my children riding the bus.

Best Friend Forever and her programmer hubby were here, so for kicks he ran the website through a Latin-to-English translator. The Lorem Ipsum changed to

Lorem itself pain he is amet consectetuer to come up to elit. Whole rutrum ligula and now. Whole malesuada. Fusce hendrerit lorem and some pellentesque , before augue to raise up mauris , life fellowship equity mauris good elit. But to lay volutpat lorem. Maecenas ornare tortor this feugiat to make fit nibh now hendrerit in fact , or pregnant a hollow now a was. Now not fear he is amet equity sometimes fringilla. With a ready good was and not spotless mattis according to reason. When eget nibh. For faucibus to extreme poverty magna. Eneus annoyance orci he is amet unseemly. Upon carry. Whole equity.

Yoda he is, websites he does. Except he�s still conjuring unseemly life fellowship equity with some pellentesque. That just doesn�t ring positive.

Then we noticed that a couple of lines of English had been rephrased as well.

�View the rules of conduct�... �Rules say bus to laugh at�. Well, this is going downhill fast.

And the best of all, on the side menu:

�Board of Administrators and Education� ... �To cry out of tutor and giving of help�. I suppose the school board really does feel that way. After all, they�re now putting our kids on the Bright Yellow Express To Hell.
Which is how most kids regard the school bus, in fact.

After much internal (or would that be infernal) debate, I�m going to let the kids ride the bus tomorrow morning. Just say an extra prayer for them, �k?

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