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The most regrettable blunders of summer 2012

Aug 27, 2012

Ryan Bromsgrove
Editor-in-Chief

The re-renaming of Capital Ex to K-Days was a pretty big failure earlier this summer. You may recall the kerfuffle over changing the name of “Klondike Days” to “Capital Ex” in the first place. Out with the history and character, in with the soulless “hip” option.

I mean, anything with the “x” sound in it must be cool.

I’m sure the focus groups loved it, but after years of shitty ticket sales, someone somewhere finally decided to admit they made a mistake. But what to do? Come up with a better name? Admit defeat and revert to the old one? Nah, fuck it, let’s crowd source the problem, shortlist the predictable suggestion of the previous name and wait for the obvious to happen. And happen it did — it wasn’t even close. K-Days handily took 38,762 of 51,000 votes.

“It’s really a brilliant choice,” said Richard Andersen, president and CEO of Northlands. Yeah. You’re welcome.

Darcy Ropchan
Opinion Editor

This summer has been full of so many screw-ups it’s hard to choose the most monumental. But the one that takes the cake is 80-year-old Celia Gimenez and her accidental desecration of a priceless 19th century painting of Jesus Christ.

How does one ruin a 200-year-old painting? Well Gimenez was only trying to help. She noticed the painting had fallen into disrepair, and so she took it upon herself to touch it up a bit. But like most times when old people try to help, Gimenez just wound up making things even worse. What began as a little touch-up turned into a complete overhaul of the painting. After Gimenez completed her restorations, the painting was unrecognizable from its original form. Jesus went from looking like a heavenly diety, to more like a half-baked muppet.

I’m sure the old woman had the best of intentions when she tried to fix the picture, but come on Celia, did you really think you could improve upon the artwork? Did you really think you’re that special? Instead of fixing a painting you became the laughing stock of the world. I hope you’re happy Celia — you may have made the biggest fuck-up of the summer.

April Hudson
News Editor

North Korea was a pretty big failure this summer. It tried to launch a long-range rocket in the face of international warnings, which ended up falling apart a few minutes after launch.

A few hours later, they shamefacedly admitted to the failure. That probably wasn’t a good day to be a North Korean rocket scientist.

It wasn’t a good day to be Kim Jong-Un either, since the launch was supposed to mark 100 years since the birth of his grandfather, Kim Il-Sung, who founded North Korea. Talk about letting down the family name.
Not only was it anti-climactic, but it also marks more than a decade of failure for North Korean missiles, and definitely made an international statement — just not the one North Korea intended.

Instead of amping up its image as an aggressor nation, now it just looks like that poor kid who tries to be cool around his friends, except everybody knows he still wets the bed. You’re not fooling anyone North Korea.

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