As some of you may know (and if you didn’t, you’re about to), I’m one of the millions of people living with an undiagnosed illness. Thankfully, it’s relatively minor compared to some of the other conditions I’ve read about, though when it gets especially bad, I certainly find myself lapsing into “why me?” mode every [...]
Archive of posts filed under the bizarre news category.
How long before Steven Slater has a reality show?
Slater is, of course, the American flight attendant who famously flipped out on a passenger and slid down the emergency chute on Monday, and has become a cause celebre among disgruntled airline passengers who feel his explosion was justified. The case, and its aftermath, could be used as a microcosm of all sorts of grandiose [...]
Connecting The Dots, Edition #10
In this hectic world, often we don’t have sufficient time to connect the dots between seemingly disconnected stories that flicked their way through our collective consciousness. To help bridge this gap, say hello to Connecting The Dots, where I’ll endeavour to bring together and seemingly disparate stories into a contextualized, cohesive whole. Or I’ll just [...]
Talk about a roaming charge
With a headline like “Toronto woman sues Rogers after her affair is exposed“, you know it’s gonna be good. There’s nothing inherently wrong with the written story, nor the reporting behind it. But the content of it (in tandem with my laziness) cry out for a blow-by-blow (pun pardoned, thanks) “analysis”.
Time to FJM this bad [...]
Conclusive evidence that punctuation is really freakin’ important
Anyone who knows me knows I’m pretty pedantic when it comes to words. The most romantic gift I’ve ever gotten is probably a century-old Webster Dictionary for the Vest-Pocket. But I understand that for most people, things like punctuation and grammar are obstacles to communication, rather than conduits. For most people, typos are complete non-issues, [...]
Misreading The News: March 26, 2010
With attention spans shrinking daily, folks have less time (or at least, they devote less time) to fully comprehend the world around them… especially the parts that don’t comply with their pre-existing beliefs and biases.
And with the explosive growth of the “new media”, people are likelier than ever to simply scan headlines, rather than reading [...]
When in doubt, use a meat thermometer
You know you’re gonna get a sizable helping of good old-fashioned fail when you see a story entitled Moviegoer Stabbed With Meat Thermometer After Complaining About Cell Phone.
And you know it’s gonna be even better when it’s on the website of an American TV station. These stations presumably only file online written versions of their [...]
Misreading The News: February 18, 2010
With attention spans shrinking daily, folks have less time (or at least, they devote less time) to fully comprehend the world around them… especially the parts that don’t comply with their pre-existing beliefs and biases.
And with the explosive growth of the “new media”, people are likelier than ever to simply scan headlines, rather than reading [...]
Has objective news become an anachronism?
This morning I came across the story of Jonathan Springston, former senior staff writer for Atlanta Progressive News, an online news outlet. Springston was cut loose from APN for, as editor Matthew Cardinale told Creative Loafing, “[holding] on to the notion that there was an objective reality that could be reported objectively, despite the fact [...]
Giving A Shit: February 11, 2010
Like you, there are plenty of things that I can’t help caring about, even if they’re largely inconsequential to my own life… and on the flip side, plenty of things about which I ostensibly should care but about which I’m simply incapable of giving a shit.
Ergo, I present to you, Giving A Shit for this [...]