In case you were anxiously waiting for a six-month update, it’s still hugely aggravating. And today I had the added pleasure of trying to find individual staff contact info at a particular newspaper that is generally praised for its otherwise admirable online efforts. Best I could find: An explanation of the e-mail address format used by the paper (firstname.lastname@annoyingnewspaperwebsite.com), but no staff list to which I could then apply that convention.

(I also learned, while wandering sections of the site that appear not to have been updated since 1997, that while they accept press releases via e-mail, one should always follow up with a phone call to confrim that the press release was received. Because that’s not annoying or superfluous.)

All I ask for: Street address somewhere obvious, perhaps even in the footer of the index page itself, and a “contact us” section that actually indiciates how I might go about, you know, contacting you.

More bad newspaper writing that makes my eyeballs hurt: The “Got _____?” lede. The original “got milk?” ad campaign is bad enough, but to see its udder-tainted influence afflicting the brains of newspaper reporters is worthy of an Official Hartnett Brand Writing Whinge™. Stupid, lazy, meaningless. Not much more to say about it.

Previous installments in this series of annoying writing habits include the “call it” lede, the cop-talk phrase “person of interest,” inappropriate use of “award-winning,” the very rarely accurate use of “in a wide-ranging interview” and that all-time king of writing fail, “to be sure.”

Just getting this on the record: I still personally hate anyone who has ever used a “Call it a/the case of …” lede (including, unless I’m very much mistaken, myself many years ago in a weak and foolish moment). Also, “person of interest” is a stupidly meaningless and especially annoying example of cop talk that should never be used again ever by anyone anywhere. Too, descriptions of anyone as “award-winning” without an explanation of which awards and their relevance to the story at hand are dumb and only a poopy-head would use them.

That is all.

Actually, this is all: I hate “to be sure” and “in a wide-ranging interview,” too.

Careful readers will know that I moan pretty much constantly about the age of Google’s coverage of my little corner of the world, to say nothing of the quality of their geocoder. Not only does it frustrate me personally because, among other things, my neighborhood is just a vast expanse of sand in Google Maps, it also is professionally frustrating over at Backyard Post.

Here, for example, is a neighborhood in which the developer started closing on condo units in November 2006. It, too, is just a bunch of sandy nothingness in Google Maps. Same deal here, here, here, here, here and so on. Thanks to the new imagery date feature in Google Earth, I can finally attach a date to my moan: Jan. 20, 2005. That’s when coastal Palm Beach County was shot. April 2006 for Martin County, and April 18, 2004 for much of St. Lucie County.

I fully intend to continue moaning about it, but at least now I’ll be better informed.

Seriously, has anyone else ever noticed and been incredibly annoyed by this? Or is this just yet another item on that long and growing list of things that I alone am bothered endlessly by?

Stupid Friday work day between Thanksgiving and the weekend …

It’s the very fact that the target of my rage was a fee of only $10 that rockets Wachovia past Volkswagen on my personal corporate hate list. All Volkswagen did was build me a particularly sour lemon of what for many other customers has been an outstanding car. Wachovia, on the other hand, is willing, for $10, to so antagonize long-standing customers that they threaten to take their business elsewhere.

I find it helpful in these situations to channel a coworker who I once heard make the following statement in a customer-service showdown with Home Depot: “I’m a very unreasonable man and I just need to be made happy.” On occasions such as this, and only on occasions such as this, I strive to be a very unreasonable man.

I’m with this guy: Wachovia sucks.

Legendary German engineering + 66,000 miles = poo.

• Call it a case of life imitating art. (A guy obsessed with street rods.)
• Call it a case of déjà vu. (Separate fires on consecutive days at the same apartment complex.)
• Just call it a case of too many Chiefs and not enough Lions. (A high school football game.)
• Call it the case of the mystery subpoena. (An attorney facing disciplinary action.)
• Call it the case of the disappearing hedge fund manager. (Um, a disappearing hedge fund manager.)
• Call it the case of the disgruntled Michael Vick fan. (Vick fan threatens to blow up local jails.)

Hey, I have an idea! Let’s not “call it” anything, let’s just get to the point of the stupid story already.