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The mass-media reaction to meaningless blips like JFKJ's crash reminds me of Daffy Duck's travelling phrenologist: "I will now analythe the thignificanth of thith event. Hmm. No thignificanth? We make thome!" Whappata-whappata-whappata.
But the cultural and legal outcomes of such thignificanth-orgies as Columbine and Klaas force me to recognize an all-too-breakable skull beneath Elmer's shiny scalp....
My Malaysia; Dr. Mohamad's Air.
Tenuous Local Connection Made to Global Catastrophe!:
The first earthquake I ever experienced was in Turkey, while my father was stationed in Karamursel. But I have clearer memories of the cute Turkish girl next door, the fights I got into in kindergarten, and the waterfront....
Headlines for a New Society: It's not news till it's in Salon.
Headlines for a New Society
While indexing articles at the Pacific Film Archive library, Juliet Clark came across this rather racy item from the San Francisco Sunday ChronEx of February 10, 1985:
FLAMING SAMURAI SAGA BY THE JAPANESE MASTER
Kurosawa Makes 'Ran' Atop Mr. Fuji
[sic], [sic], [sic]
Plucky gal reporter "Torchy" Clark forwards a choice example (lead paragraph of a front-page feature story!) of the San Francisco ChronEx's ineffable wordcraft ("No Sentence Left Unbruised"). Watch out for those dangerously small parents.
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Baby Louie was born four months too early. Dangerously small, his parents, Hortensia and Dayo Sowunmi, felt Louie's will to survive strong, and so prayed while Dr. Gregory Organ operated on the 'micro-preemie.' Filled with hope and anxiety, the Sowunmi's waited for miracle.
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| Without a strong hand at the till of the ship of state, our nation's copyeditors continue to run wild in the streets. From the very first issue of the Acme Novelty Library to the current Amazon bestseller, Jimmy Corrigan has remained consistently The Smartest Kid on Earth. But evidence collected by conspiracy theorist Juliet Clark suggests that over half of the newspapers who've responded with "Zoom! Bam! Pow! Comics Aren't Just For Geeks Anymore!" book reviews instead for some reason consistently refer to "The Smartest Kid in the World."
In the race to incompetence, San Francisco's own ChronEx wins by a bulbous red-veined nose. Directly beneath a large reproduction of a graphic containing the original title, it refers consistently to "The World's Smartest Kid," trimming Chris Ware's wordy epithet by a full 20%. Compare and contrast; let the voters decide!
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Another waffling Democrat!
From "Dean's straight-talking image is getting tarnished By Mark Z. Barabak / Los Angeles Times":
Dean, a 54-year-old physician by training, had a more moderate record during his 11 years as Vermont governor than his current favor among liberals would suggest. He was a friend of the environment and signed landmark "civil union" legislation that granted gay and lesbian couples all the rights and benefits of marriage. But at the same time, he supported gun-owner rights, cut taxes, capped spending and consistently balanced the state budget, leaving enough for a rainy-day surplus that has spared Vermont the fiscal trauma facing most other states.
Yes, as a liberal, I
insist that rights go unsupported, that budgets be unbalanced, that governments maintain no surplus, and that spending always increase. In fact, the persnickety fiscal competence of the Reagan and Bush and Bush adminstrations is the very thing that turned me against them. No deficit, no peace!
Salon's IPO lies a-moulderin' in the grave but its soul goes marching on
A newspaper points to good online literary writing.
How do they know it's good?
Because it's just like what you find in newspapers!
There aren't enough urban weeklies and Sunday supplements and soft-spoken NPR shows and Eggers publications to contain all the English majors who've realized that they can easily mimic the non-reportage of urban weeklies and Sunday supplements and soft-spoken NPR shows and Eggers publications. But having been given all the freedom in the world, we're able to play columnist just as if we were fortunate enough to have real editors asking us to dumb material down for a pathetic amount of money which gets sent tardily.
And what else would anyone do, given all the freedom in the world?
Correspondent Matt Wall sends us disturbing news from the Monterey County Herald :
Panicked by word of Sandra Day O'Connor's retirement, Pacific Grove has been plunged into Wild West vigilante justice!
FOX Crossovers Gone Too Far?
As reported by the Monterey County Herald
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Copyright to contributed work and quoted correspondence remains with the original authors.
Public domain work remains in the public domain.
All other material: Copyright 2015 Ray Davis.
