Putting from the fringe …

So I’m sitting here in my office trying to get some work done, and Bruce is bouncing off the walls with boredom. I eventually convince him to shut the feck up, so he seeks the refuge of Google.

The boy finds the website for The Zimbabwe Government Online. First thing that struck me, as a web designer of fair to middling talent, is how butt-ugly this website is. Really, static frames and bordered tables and animated gif of a waving flag?

Hey dude, 1998 called, they want their web-site back.

Anyway, so I couldn’t help noticing that the late Joseph Msika is still listed as Vice President. What, they don’t update this site? Oh, wait … “Last revised February 20,2009”. Surely they had a reason to come back for another revision? Surely?

Well, the real treasures are buried in the page source. If you look at the meta data, the keywords are, and I shit you not, as follows:

“mdc trail of violence,mdc campaign,mdc violence,zrp,zimbabwe elections,mugabe,Tsvangirai,Tendai Biti,electoral fraud activities,mdc alliance with NGOs,mdc and civic groups,pre-election period,post-election period,travel bans,expulsion of senior officials children,economic sanctions.stay way and boycotts,USA and UK companies,mdc sponsorship platform,mayo destruction,hamonised elections,NGO activities.restoration of order,Harvest House,Central Police Station,PGHQ,Police General Headqurters.”

Whoooooaaah! I won’t even start with the “mdc trail of violence”, or even why you’d want those particular search keywords to lead to this train-wreck of a website, but let’s move on to “expulsion of senior officials children”.

Someone must be pissed off about their kiddies, that’s for sure. So how about “stay way and boycotts”? What, we can’t spell? Was this written in a hurry? Anyone who knows anything about website development knows the value of meta keywords, so someone who fails to space-delimit and spells it “hamonised” should NOT be allowed near a computer.

And what the hell is “mayo destrction” anyway? Oh no, is the dastardly MDC clandestinely spiriting away all the mayonnaise in our glorious sovereign republic and destroying it? Is there some vast yellow sludge pit where all our wonderful mayo goes to die, suffering at the hands of those violent MDC  sell-outs?

Has it come to this, Morgan? What has mayo ever done to you? I call a jihad, in the name of that delicious condiment and staple of real potato salads everywhere, against the mayo-destroying bastards of the MDC.

Or as an alternative I could declare jihad against anyone who allows a Frontpage website (with frames. Frames!) to still exist on the internet.

We laugh to keep from crying.