As such, I’ve looked at the slim Owner’s Manuals that came with the system. Here are some highlights:

On page 7 of the Owner’s Manual for the “TC-M Conditioner Series Water Treatment System” (Rev: A 06/09) we find,

“If water contains iron, manganese or hydrogen sulfide, a seperate iron removal system is suggested to be installed prior to the conditioner.”

Aside from the awful sentence structure, they misspelled the word, “separate”. This, my friends, is a word that a spell checker easily finds.

A couple paragraphs later on the same page, we have:

“Dain lines over 50 feet long, may need to be increased in size to allow the proper flow.”

That’s right, “Dain lines”. Again, not a word, and something a spell checker would easily find. The comma placement is also wrong.

Is this nitpicky? Perhaps. I don’t go looking for these things, but typically when you find mistakes in manuals they are ones which are not picked up by spell checkers. You know the company put extra minimal effort into a manual when they misspell words like “drain” and “separate”.

I have experience translating and proofreading manuals and, while tedious to write and correct, manuals are important. Many customers do actually read manuals and it reflects poorly on a product or service when the manual is half-assed.

I have not yet read all of the wonderful literature accompanying our new RainSoft system. I just hope they put more care into making their products than they do in their installations and manuals.

Allow me to explain.

The article begins when Ana Menéndez recieves a FedEx package at her place in Instanbul. (It was forwarded from New York, so you know she’s important.) There she is having a jovial nightcap with visitors (wine and a teak table are involved). She senses this package is important. The package, she finds out, claims her husband cheated on her. Upsetting indeed.

Then she backtracks to tell us how she met her husband, reporter Dexter. Two years after they became a couple, she cheats on him. She tells him, then they go on a bike tour. A few years later they marry and she is somewhat torn by playing second fiddle to Dex, but goes along with it because he’s interesting.

Things start going downhill. You know, typical stuff. Dex takes her to a public execution in Afghanistan. She’s not so into it, he wants a closer look. Why don’t couples discuss these kinds of potential conflicts before they get married? (Seriously though, what kind of person willingly agrees to go to a public execution?)

Then, the best (worst) part, which is pretty easy to overlook. Dex and Ana, tormented lovers, are awoken on September 11, 2001 by the sound of military jets. They live across the river from the World Trade Center in Hoboken, New Jersey. She doesn’t explicitly write this, but I think  given their proximity to the World Trade Center and her hotshot reporter husband that they at this point knew the World Trade Center had been attacked.

Her next sentence: “We made love.” I repeat, after being woken up by military jets on the morning of September 11, 2001 and witnessing (I assume) that the Twin Towers had been attacked, they “made love”. She continues, “And then Dex disappeared again into the story.”

Am I the only one baffled by this? At the time of their lovemaking, the Twin Towers had probably not yet collapsed, but who would really be in the mood to make love in such a situation?

This is a pretty easy question to ask because almost everyone remembers where they were when they found out about the Twin Towers attack. I remember also being woken up. I was due to fly out the next day from California to Germany. I sat half-asleep in front of the TV and was completely stunned. I remember driving around later that day feeling that I was in some kind of ghost world. Everything seemed off. And this was on the West Coast, not right across the river.

Ana Menéndez brags about her proxmity to the attacks and her distinguished reporter husband and then has the audacity to further mention her subsequent sex act. Am I the only one that thinks this is in very poor taste?

Sure, the article goes on. The woman with whom Dex apparently had an affair was killed in Iraq. Ana files for a divorce, even though Dex vehemently denies the affair. She hopes for reconciliation, doesn’t happen. At the end, she realizes that “it wasn’t Dex who needed saving.” Thank you. Correct. You need saving Ana. If you are aroused by something as horrific as the September 11 attack, you need help. If you see nothing wrong with writing this for the public to read, you really need help. And Vogue, come on. How did this even come to print?