Is it too early to start thinking about next Christmas? How about New Year’s? Michelle and Michael will be in Red Square (above) this time next and we already have the rubles and the rez to prove it. A full report pending . . . but first, a super scientific expose on modern newspaper reporting and the usage of usual journal jargon. . . .
News Speak—Our local fish wrap reporter reporting on the report of a “severely impaired person” laying like a dead skunk in the road over at North Port the other night mentioned that when the blue lights reached the scene they did indeed find the “severely impaired person” (drunken idiot), 49-year-old Chris Davis, sprawled out and unable to even remember his name, age, address, race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or even able to remember if he was human, frog, worm, or a mollusk bi-valve. Officers attempted “to place Davis into protective custody” (arrest him), the reporter continues, and take him to the “North Port correctional facility” (hoosegow), but Davis suddenly began fighting with officers. Biting, kicking, pinching, gouging, scratching, Davis thereupon “seized one of the officers by his genitals” (squashed his nuts). At this time, another officer “deployed his Taser” (whipped out his Buck Rogers ray gun and zapped Davis flush on the ass) “at which time Davis began cooperating” (at which time Chris provided free entertainment by doing a lively chicken dance on the street).
Too bad reporters do not occasionally break with decorum and tell it like it is, in earth tones, as per the above. If they did, I suppose there are many people out there who would be mortified by such crude lingo . . . but I don’t know any.
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Canals in the News—That leading cause of death among Florida oldsters, canals, are up to their old tricks again. Like Jason and Odysseus of old, there seems some evil chemistry, some magic magnetic force pulling old people toward these unnatural bodies of water and down to their destruction. Up near Tampa the other day the body of a sixty-five-year-old man was fished from the green muck. Although the official ruling for the old boy was suicide readers of this blog know better. Canals claim another victim. What can we do to stop canal violence? What can we do to prevent our geezers from being killed in senseless tragedies like this? I know, let’s confiscate them. Let’s drain them. Let’s dam them. Let's dynamite them. Age don’t kill geezers, canals kill geezers. We must prevent tragedies like this from happening in the future. Old people are powerless to resist canals. So, let's drain ‘em, dam ‘em, dynamite 'em, destroy ‘em . . . NOW!
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“Homeless man killed in Fla. house fire”—So reads an item in today’s local fish wrap. Up at sadly misnamed Holiday, Florida, firemen pulled a dead one from the blackened rubble that once was a home the other day. How they knew he was homeless is a puzzle, but somehow they did. “It’s unclear what he was doing there,” writes the reporter concluding her brief report. Hmmmm. . . . Homeless man? A home? Unclear what he was doing there?
Oh, hell, just forget it.
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Like flower buds unrolling to meet the sun, our days for two weeks or more begin rather gray, gloomy and unpromising, then burst into beautiful blooms around ten, eleven or noon, with golden rays, warmth and fun spreading everywhere. Lots of downs to living in Florida—pit bulls, geezers, gators, sharks, pythons, lizards, Walmart shoppers, meth addicts, paint huffers, man-eating canals, retardo reporters--but the weather ain’t one of ‘em.
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Photo of the Day
