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Time Out For a Little Fun

Thanks to humorist and friend, Tracy Farr, for letting me share some of his humor here. It is always good to just stop all the work for a few minutes and de-stress with a little chuckle. Enjoy....

What was that again?

Putting together a newspaper, whether it be national or small-town, is a BIG JOB. Millions of words have to be spelled correctly, names have to be right, photos have to match stories, headlines have to entice the reader to read -- and all of these are subject to criticism by us, the reading public.

It's not right, but that's just how it is.

Speaking of headlines...I ran across a few headlines recently in my local daily that made me pause and ask, "What was that again?" They just hit me as funny, or confusing, and I thought I'd share:

American
orders 460
new airplanes

I thought to myself, "Holy cow, that must have been some wealthy American."

Preparedness net stretched taut across county

Shoot, how could I have missed THAT?

Hess remains
exhumed, then
cremated

Sounds to me like ole Hess escaped and didn't want to go back, but now he's cremated and that's that.

Bjorn roars in return to site of 2003 meltdown

Well, since I don't understand a WORD of that one, it must be sports related.

And finally, my favorite one of the week:

Orange man
gets prison time
for fatal crash

I thought as a society we were way beyond identifying people by race or color. It doesn't matter if the person is black, white, brown, yellow or orange. What matters is that the story tells us who, what, where, when and why, and in a manner that doesn't make us think, "Who is running this paper anyway -- third graders?"

(By the way, the man was from Orange, Texas, and wasn't really orange.)

Okay, I'll shut up now.
~~~~~~~

This piece first appeared on Tracy's blog, which is worth a visit any time you need a break.
~~~~~~~

Tracy Farr is a teacher living in East Texas who enjoys writing funny stuff and playing a banjo. You can get a  free copy of his e-book Never Trust a Goat HERE
Posted by Maryann Miller, who also has goats she does not trust. She also has books that she does trust. For information about her books and her editing services visit her website.

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Comments

  1. One of my favorites: Kids Make Nutricious Snacks.

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  2. Papers can say some funny things!

    Morgan Mandel
    http://www.morganmandel.com
    http://morganmandel.blogspot.com

    PS: I like LD's favorite also.

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  3. These are great! I've seen some nonsensical headlines in my town's newspaper. Sometimes I wonder if the editors leave it that way on purpose!

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  4. Okay...let me be honest, the headlines mentioned here really did have me wondering, "What was that again?" I had to do a triple take on the first one because I couldn't stop wondering who was this American and they better be making some great jobs happen with all those planes. lol @ myself once I realized what it meant.

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  5. LD, that is a good one.

    Laura, I've wondered the same thing.

    Angela, I think that is true for most of us when we read headlines like this. Sometimes the joke isn't even apparent at first. LOL

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  6. The Orange man was quite cute. I didn't think of the city. I thought he was a man who sold oranges.

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  7. It's interesting to see how these wacky headlines can take us in so many different directions, Helen. I thought it was a man who was wearing orange.

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  8. This article is really the one that I needed. I really learned a lot by reading the whole content. Thanks for this.

    ReplyDelete

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