Monday, November 19, 2007

Stupid things to write, I guess

I just finished an article that includes the following excerpt:

"But your [Christmas] presents might not be safe even when you get them home, tucked on the top shelf of the closet where Jimmy and Jane won’t find them. Just like the crooks knew there were presents in the car, the crooks know there are presents in the house. And crooks love presents."

I feel a little bit bad, because I have no idea if that is true or not, but I'm learning more and more each day that good journalism consists chiefly of making shit up, but making sure it sounds believable. Like "crooks love presents." Do they? I don't know. But presents are fun, right? So why wouldn't they love presents? I place the burden of proof on the skeptic, not the reporter who made the statement. In fact, I think I'm going to go back and add "and crooks love cake too, even more than presents. Except crooks that are on the Atkins diet."

Speaking of retarded things to say, I would like to take this opportunity to point out a few phrases that many, MANY bloggers (including many good ones) use way too often:

"Blog fodder," as in "an excursion to the Hungarian rave with that old guy that had given me a roofie on our blind date sounded like a bad idea, but it would make great blog fodder, so I went for it."

"Bated breath," as in "I am super-duper busy this week, so it'll take a little bit for me to post the pictures of the wrestling party in the pool full of chili we had for halloween. I know you're all waiting with bated breath..." Except sometimes people spell it "baited breath," which makes me want to knee-drop them all the more.

"In other news," used just as a cute segway. Well, I've got news for you. A segway is not a cliche, it's a gyroscoped scooter that Gob Bluth and dorky policemen ride.

Over the weekend, I didn't do anything interesting. I ate crackers and cheese for dinner on Friday, and then drank a couple bottles of wine and watched TV by myself. On Saturday, I watched football all day and did about eight loads of laundry. When 7:00 rolled around and I realized nothing was going on, I got real hyper and drunk on gin and cleaned my room for about two hours. Sunday I went to Mass, ate four hot dogs, and went to sister and brother-in-laws to watch the (disappointing) Bears game and drink three manhattans, three glasses of wine a bourbon and two doses of Drambuie. Oh yeah, and we ate dinner. Well, that sounds depressing.

Today, I laughed and laughed at this post. Really, it's worth your time.

2 comments:

kickthehobbit said...

Of course crooks love presents. Who doesn't?

tiff said...

well shit, now that's three LESS phrases I can use. How ever will I fill up all that white space?

You know who doesn't like presents? Sex offenders.*


*I don't really understand the punchline either.