Bachelor Of Discoverability Studies (Metadata Major)

While walking outside in the rain to unlock our gate for a delivery, and after greeting a pair of ibises who were poking their long beaks into the lawn in search of worms or insects, I flashed back to when, roughly 25 years ago, a magazine article of mine was canned. It was titled "People Movers: The Dugongs Of The Road", and the other writers on the bench assured me it wasn't terrible. Even the editor seemed to find the piece amusing...but then he changed his mind and decided to pull it in case any of the car manufacturers referenced got the poops and withdrew their advertising from every publication across the company. It does happen.

An erstwhile colleague once made a casual joke in print about a brand of footwear. That firm immediately threatened to cancel its ads forever. To appease them, the bosses forced my old coworker to insert *repeated* positive mentions of the same footwear brand into stories where they'd otherwise never go. "Oh, and if you are heading off on a wine-tasting holiday to the Barossa, don't forget your [such-and-such shoes]!" I'm not sure how many plugs it took to satisfy the offended party (who, let's face it, probably use sweatshops). I do know my chum found the punishment galling long afterwards. So perhaps that cautious ed saved me a spacious interior full of grief.

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