Angela Merkel guarantees Muslim kids will not get separate sex sports

Geez, I would like to say more, but the headline says it all:

 

Source:  One sometimes hilariously bad English-language online newspaper 

Who wants to read yesterday’s news, anyway?

It was beautiful to watch, but today’s a new day, Obama says bin Laden’s dead, and I’ve got work to do.

Money is meaningless! And other great quotes from a great man.

Flipping to the preface of Outlaw Journalist, a book about the life and work of Hunter S. Thompson, I read the following quote:

Word of his death was a shock to me, but not particularly suprising… More than anything else, it came as a harsh confirmation of the ethic that [he] had always lived but never talked about… the dead-end lonelines of a man who makes his own rules…

I don’t even know where he’s buried, but what the hell?  The important thing is where he lived.

It’s not only a perfect introduction to a fascinating book about a great American writer, it sums up what I’ve been feeling for two years now about the death of a dear friend.

A few days before Christmas, 2007 I also got a shock.  I learned from a mutual friend that an old friend I’d met in my first days as a student reporter had died, found in his ramshackle house along a stretch of road across from a farmer’s field about a mile outside a very small dot on the map.  As the police put it, he’d passed away “on or about November 15,” so I guess he’d been there in the Quebec autumn cold for a while even before someone found him.

I’d heard about Malcolm Stone a few weeks before I met him.  Our journalism school teacher, Peter Scowen, simply called him Dr. Feelgood.

Malcolm Stone was the man who went out with me on my very first assignment for a real newspaper: the kind that people actually pay money for. I was on a summer break from school in Montreal, and at the suggestion of that same Peter Scowen – who was also the paper’s owner – I spent a week in the rolling hills of the Eastern Townships working for the Stanstead Journal in Stanstead, Quebec.

“You know Ian,” he told me as we were hanging out in his kitchen my first day there, “there’s this horse-breeder fellow I know who’s just started breeding elk. Elk! Can you believe it? You’ve got to get out there and do a little story on this guy.”

And he leaned back and slowly broke out in his wide smile. “I’ve already got the headline for it!” he said, tobacco-stained right finger waving in the air.

Stanstead farmer breeds horses of a different elk

That was back in the day before Google Search Engine Optimisation killed pun-filled headlines.

Malcolm was someone I deeply admired.  He came up in conversation I had one morning in the kitchen of a prominent Montreal television personality, the wife of the journalism school teacher whose paper I worked on.

“So is living in the middle of nowhere on the edge of poverty some sort of lifestyle you aspire to?” she asked.   It wasn’t a challenge, just an off-hand remark about how the man obviously had very little money to spare, but I said, yeah – if I can live my life enjoying what I want to do where I want to do it without having to answer to anybody and not have to wait ’til I’m 67 to do it, then sure.

Malcolm’s career path abruptly stopped somewhere in his mid-30s, about 25 years before I’d met him.  He was working as a flack, er… public relations officer and mouthpiece for one of the two schools that merged to form Concordia University in Montreal, when he got into an ugly mud-fest with his employer.  He was going to quit, but before he got a chance to, they offered him a whack of cash if he’d just leave.  So he took their money, bought an old two-storey wood-frame house on a plot of land near a farmer’s field outside a tiny town in the Eastern Townships, and lived out the rest of his life.

Not many retire at 37, but he knew what he was doing, that’s for sure.  The town was smack on the border with the States.  When Malcolm wanted to stock up on Camel cigarettes and cheap gas for his beater car, he’d head over the line and be back home within 20 minutes, pushing a bit of blue all the way.  If he needed to see a doctor, he ‘d of course stay on the Canadian side of the border and go to the guy in town.

He lived alone, so if the house hadn’t seen a spray of paint inside or out for the past 30 years, if the floorboard cracks in his kitchen were caked black with grime the dog brought in, if newspapers were piled to the ceiling at the top of the stairs leading to his scatter-house bedroom, if he walked around barefoot everywhere in an old shirt hanging out of his pants, if he got up at nine to walk the dog, tend his garden, listen to some jazz or NPR talkshow on the radio, have another smoke while contemplating his next move, he’d nobody to tell him to do it any differently.

I admired him because he had absolutely no need for the very things most of us strive for, yet was the happiest guy I knew.

“I want to leave The Record,” I told him one day after another of our rousing games of Scrabble.  “Two hours into the drive down from Quebec City last week I looked out the window and thought, if I’m going to start earning some real money, I’ve got to get out of here.”

“Ian! Money is meaningless!” he shot back, slapping the table and, in a way, me upside the head.  “Fuck it!” he said.  “Fuck ‘em.  I’ve got everything I need here – a place to go when I feel like writing or doing a bit of farting around, friends who come loaded with tunes, toots and juicy local gossip. What more do you want?”

Part 1 of 2   (or maybe 3)

I know we’re looking at a bear market, but this is ridiculous

Dear Editor,

Reading through the Financial Times lately can be as sickening as a frame-by-frame look through the video of the aftermath of a suicide truck bombing.

Truly a grisly scene.

Perhaps that’s what the copy editor meant when he came up with this headline on Page 7 of Monday’s edition over a sidebar item on the Marriott Hotel blast in Islamabad: Grizzly record on suicide attacks.

I love it when a well-respected international newspaper such as the Financial Times throws us a bone-headed headline.  It’s a reminder that those behind the pages are human like all of us.

Or is the Financial Times trying to tell us that this bear market we’re in is going to be bigger and more dangerous than any other we’ve seen, remarkable for the great length of its claws?

(Copy sent to Letters at ft.com.  I bet I won’t be the only one…)

Obama smear campaigner Larry Sinclair arrested after press conference

My first plunge into the frothy cesspool of US politics the other day resulted in a rude reminder of just what lurks out there, so at the risk of once again having my entire post swallowed up and regurgitated with my name changed on the right-wing drivel and splog site Free Republic, it’s time to take a look at what happened yesterday at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

That’s where Larry Sinclair, perpetrator of one of the most vile smear campaigns ever thrown at a US presidential candidate, got his chance to blow 3000 bucks and state his case before an invited press.

Well, turns out the man with the long criminal record and outstanding warrant was arrested shortly after and is now in custody.

So far the mainstream press has ignored his claims, including this recent development.  Even Fox Spews – Fare for the Unbalanced – has ignored the guy.

Granted, the Globe – no not the Boston Globe, the Alien Headhunters Kidnapped Pam Anderson’s Unborn Teenage Love Child supermarket checkout Globe – ran something on him a few months back, but from the wires, the mainstream newspapers, tv stations, websites?  Nada.

Given that there is nothing to substantiate his claims, is there any other reaction more appropriate?

I think there is.  Publish!  Get him on Larry King!  Get him on Jon Stewart!  Tell the world!  Let everyone get a good, long look at the level to which the enemies of a good man are willing to sink in order to draw attention to themselves and maybe even make a few bucks in the process.

It’s like Scientology.  The more you read about it, the more you realise not only how crazy the inventor must have been, but how deluded his followers are.

 

Europe’s largest-circulation newspaper runs photo of naked 13-year-old

It always bugs me how many hits I get on this blog from knuckle-draggers and mouth-breathers looking for kiddie porn, naked 10-year-olds and similar illegal content.

It’s a Google phenomenon, I guess. If you’ve built up a collection of posts with completely unrelated tags or words in the title that add up to a string of words one of these losers is typing in, Bang! Someone looking for naked kids comes to your blog.

But they wouldn’t even have had to have gone online had they been lurking around German newspaper stands on August 3, 2003. That was the day that Bild, Europe’s largest-circulation newspaper and world’s fifth-largest, ran a photo of a naked 13-year-old girl.

An excerpt from the Spiegel online article which translates what Bild wrote as a caption:

Hotsy-Botsy, this summer is becoming a catwalk for naked children.** The sun is stroking our beautiful women in their birthday suits more beautifully than ever before. Melanie from Leipzig, too, just can’t keep her clothes on in this heat. Do your clothes slip off in this desert heat, too? BILD is seeking the hottest summer girl. Send us your beat the heat photos.

The editors give a gosh-we-didn’t-know-she-was-underage excuse, which is funny because as the excellent Bildblog points out – in German – Melanie’s write-up that day was the only one in the series which didn’t mention her age.

I guess given the tabloid’s reputation for getting it wrong willfully or through incompetence it would be asking way too much to expect Bild’s editors to adhere to one of the guiding principles of journalism: when in doubt, leave it out.

But like the old line, Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, here they must have been saying Who cares? As long as our sales aren’t the only things that are firm.

© 2008 lettershometoyou

**Literal translation of the German Nackedei, which you call kids as they run around naked.

Former US Attorney general Ashcroft has heart attack in Hamburg

Moin-moin liebe Bild.de Leser!!!

Keine hat die Bilder entdeckt?  Glauben Sie nichts, was in Bild steht!!!

 

We have once again roused our reporter out of hibernation for another Definitely Not the Daily News world exclusive.

By Kathy Kitzler

Hamburg (DNTN) Former US Attorney General John Ashcroft has suffered what appears to be a heart attack while on a personal visit to the northern German port city of Hamburg.

Ashcroft, whose brilliant career at the US Justice Department included having a statue’s naked boobs covered up so he wouldn’t be photographed in front of it at press conferences, keeled over just as he was about to enter the tropical aquarium exhibit at Hamburg’s zoo.

“There’s this funny-looking house-like thingy outside the entrance with all this carved wood and stuff,” said a family friend. “John’s a little short-sighted, so he got up on tippy-toes to get a closer look. Poor bastard had a seizure right on the spot.”

The temple was hand-made in Nepal using ancient woodcarving techniques. It is dedicated to Lord Shiva, one of the principal deities of Hinduism.

“That Cheever guy must have been one sick and depraved bastard as well,” said a weakened Ashcroft in a telephone interview from his hospital room, adding he thought the temple’s location couldn’t be worse.

“Imagine putting full-colour carvings of people engaged in such disgusting and immoral acts right in plain view at the entrance to a zoo, right where all those kiddies walk by!

What the hell is wrong with German people, anyway?“

The temple has been standing for nearly five years at the entrance to Hagenbeck‘s, famous for being the first zoo in the world to come up with the idea of displaying animals in natural settings rather than cages.

Witnesses say they never noticed anything unusual about the building until the Ashcroft incident.

“It’s a good thing he wasn’t watching the boob tube,” said one 10-year-old zoo visitor. “You see this sort of thing on TV all the time here.”

Antipodean reaction to Ashcroft’s apparent angina attack was swift and decisive.

“That’s it, I’m headed to Hamburg,” said one well-known Australian nurse and blogger, adjusting her corset while logging on to a travel website. “I just love all those cute little figurines and stuff. Do you think they’d let me make a few plaster casts?”

© 2008 lettershometoyou

Polar bear cub Knut’s cousin killed in New Year Riot

Definitely Not The Daily News freelance reporter Daisy Confuse spent most of New Year’s Eve in a Hamburg bunker in an effort to keep from getting shot, emerging shortly before midnight into what appeared to be a war zone. We salute her work in filing this story despite the most difficult of circumstances.

by Daisy Confuse

Hamburg (DNTN) A cousin of Berlin Zoo polar bear sensation Knut has been found dead this morning, an apparent victim of German New Year’s Eve mayhem.

“He must have been shot through the chest with a stray rocket,” said Hamburg police spokesman Helmut Askew. “There was no point in even trying to revive the poor bastard. He was done for.”

The loveable Knut’s brown yet still cuddly cuz fell victim to a New Year tradition in Germany, which consists of setting alight an entire year’s pent-up environmental hypocrisy in an orgy of fire, smoke, noxious fumes, noise and filth. Efforts to convince Germans that polluting their neighbourhoods with toxic waste which eventually seeps into groundwater and fouls lakes, streams and rivers have fallen on deaf ears.

“Just fuck off, OK?” said one reveller three minutes before midnight. “I spent €300 on this overpriced crap, and I’ll be damned if anyone tells me I can’t have a little fun and help make this place look like the aftermath of…uhh…. World War Two.”

Germans spend hundreds of millions of euros every New Year on fireworks, firecrackers, screamers, sparklers, twirlers and various other items that go whizz-bang and make the kiddies go ooh-ahh. News reports of idiots shooting off their fingers or losing an eyeball are as traditional as waking up with a hangover. In addition to the human cost, taxpayers foot the bill for city workers to come out on overtime to sweep up the debris, but they never get it all. After the ice melts, for example, the garbage stays in lakes forever.

In a telephone interview from his pen at the Berlin Zoo, Knut said he was saddened by the death of his cousin, but added he took solace in knowing his fake furball friend died for a good cause.

“If this brought fun to someone, and some profit to someone else, what’s the problem?” he said.

Asked if he was going to be able to attend the funeral, Knut said he had other plans.

“Contact my agent,” he said, harfing down a dead fish. “I’m going to be in a movie soon, so I’m brushing up on my lines. I really don’t have the time for stuff like that.”

The editors and writers of Definitely Not The Daily News would like to wish you a Happy New Year anyway.

© 2008 lettershometoyou

:: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: :: ::

Norman Mailer: the song comes to an end.

If you’re looking for the definitive obituary on Norman Mailer, the great American voice which fell silent today, I’m sure there will be no shortage over the days ahead.

What I can tell you is this. If you’re looking for a book that will grip you with its story-telling, overwhelm you with its depth of research, and dazzle you with its clarity of style, read The Executioner’s Song.

I was a teenager in the mid-seventies when the trial of Gary Gilmore played itself out in the newspapers. With the years to come spread out endlessly before me and the thought of my own death impossible, I couldn’t comprehend how anyone – even a murderer – could come to the conclusion that his life wasn’t worth living. Gilmore asked the State to execute him, and the State carried out his wishes.

But when the book came out in 1979, I was doing other things and never read it. It won Mailer one of his two Pulitzer prizes. I still didn’t read it. The story was old, I’d heard what it was all about second-hand, my curiosity into the turmoil of the condemned man’s psyche had waned.

But upon seeing the movie In Cold Blood – based on another book I’d never read – I was ordering the book on Amazon and up popped the suggestion to buy The Executioner’s Song. I don’t usually fall for advertising pitches and abhor pop-ups like everyone else, but I thought: now or never.

Forget that it’s nearly 30 years old. Forget that it runs to more than a thousand pages. From the moment I picked it up the day it arrived, I was hooked.

It’s so good, I’m going to read it again.

© 2007 lettershometoyou

And the Brits say the Germans have no sense of humour

The parents of Madeleine McCann are said to be outraged and threatening legal action against a German satire magazine that puts their missing child’s image on products in a fake advertisement.

Note to Gerry and Kate: as much as I feel sorry for your being in the situation you’re in and hope you find your daughter, get a grip. This is the real world. When you decided to start a universal media campaign to find your daughter, you entered into a devil’s bargain. You got the media exposure, you got a huge free advertising campaign, but you also left yourselves open to criticism, ridicule and even tasteless satire. Accept it. That’s the price you pay for an open media in a free society.

Besides, aren’t the British always pointing out how humourless the Germans are, how they have to be told when a punch line is coming because otherwise it’ll pass them by? Often it’s just a question of style. It takes a Brit about five minutes after hello to insult you in some way, but they call that just taking the piss. No harm done.

So lighten up, will you? Titanic is a hilarious little rag. I bet there’s a satire magazine editor in London kicking himself silly right now because he didn’t think of it first.

© 2007 lettershometoyou