Slug Misspells a Word (Illustrated)

In the illustration for the teleportation column on page 198 of Triumph of the Straight Dope, Slug apparently forgot the “except after C” sub-clause of the “I before E” rule, because the teleport receptor is labeled “RECIEVE”.

Which brings up another point. You “I-only-read-the-online-columns” people no doubt weren’t aware of this fact, because the online column doesn’t include the illustration. Well, I’ve got news for you – Cecil Adam’s columns are not fully realized until they are expertly edited and illustrated. A text-only version of a Cecil column is incomplete at best, and may in fact be dangerous, IMHO. If “a picture is worth a thousand words”, then a Slug Signorino illustration is worth an order-of-magnitude more words, thus arguably comprising the greater part of the Straight Dope experience.

Granted, the Straight Dope books aren’t free. Of course, “free” is worth what you pay for it. Isn’t it worth skipping a few meals in order to save up the money to buy an official, sanctified, Straight Dope volume? (Five volumes total, each in a different color, comprising a rainbowed “Five-fold Path to Enlightenment”, with additional folds planned at some point in the future). Wait – there’s more! The later volumes also include various extracts from the old AOL board, plus a bunch of other stuff, which appears nowhere online.

At the next get-together, when everyone else is discussing the Ed Zotti Bizarre magazine interview from Triumph of the Straight Dope, do you want to be sitting there in embarrassed silence, until everyone turns toward you, and then…

Oh, yeah. If you want – at your own risk – to view an online copy of the column in question, sans illustration!, rather than read it – illustrated – from page 198 of your own personal copy of Triumph of the Straight Dope, then – by all means, be my guest, go right ahead, you’re certainly welcome, I wasn’t hungry anyway, it’s a privilege to serve you, no trouble at all, I wouldn’t want it any other way, I always cry when I’m happy – the place to go is http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_198.html . But remember – in the Straight Dope aquarium, in the fight against ignorance, some of us aspire to be Pilot Fish, while those-who-are-to-be-pitied are content merely to be Lampreys.

What!? A typo in Slug’s illustration? Well, that does it. I am never going to post on this message board again. The idea!

I’m leaving now.

Don’t beg me to come back, because I won’t.

I’m gone.

I’m outta here.

I really mean it.

I’m not kidding.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
.
Oh, well, I guess I can overlook it–this time.

But don’t let it happen again! :mad:

One is deprived of the illustration only if one relies on the archives, and does not keep up with the weekly column; every current column has an illustration. So, I take it you wait for Cecil’s wisdom to be collected into a form requiring less effort than finding time to read the current column each week?