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The New York Times wrote an article on women bloggers titled Blogging’s Glass Ceiling, which they put in the “Fashion and Style” section.  Comedically speaking, I don’t think there’s anything I can add to that.

The conservative Washington Times reports on the latest feud between Senators Obama and Clinton.

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“She looks like a husky, those weird blue eyes.  Cindy McCain has the most intense blue eyes… They were so intense, I couldn’t stop staring at her.  She must have thought I was weird.”
– Katie Couric

I wonder why she might have thought that!

I saw this note in the Washington Post:

“California’s North County Times has fired an editor with a warped sense of humor. As a joke, the unnamed editor mucked with a wire-service account of a news conference on pet spaying at which a Los Angeles City Council member ‘held a kitten,’ changing the verb to ’strangled.’ The paper apologized for the ‘terrible mistake.’ ” Whoops!

In addition to writing articles, I work as one of my newspaper’s wire editors. Although I can’t recall any “strangled a kitten” moments, we do frequently put typos in our headlines. In the average edition of our paper, a wire editor only types 75-100 words. Though I don’t recall committing a headline typo, my event articles are usually riddled with poor writing. (Event articles are written the night the event happens, so there’s less time for me to think through my outline).

The Defense Department reports that the US Navy successfully hit a dying US satellite with a missile.  I’m, uhh, not thrilled that we’re spending (sixty million) tax dollars to shoot down our own satellites, but at least we didn’t miss.  Heh.

“Alien Impact Poisons Canadian Town”–headline, Discovery.com, Jan. 25.  Hat tip to James Taranto.

The lede for my article today is “Notre Dame has many Resident Assistants, but very few that can make a defensive tackle cry.”  (Our dorm pet was, for some reason, listed in the directory as an RA.  Unfortunately, he recently passed away and I’m writing an article on him).

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“Dallas Police, Officials Discourage Random Gunfire.”

Uhh… what were the Dallas police doing before?

On a side-note, I think the Dallas police will find that it’s easier to cut murders by reducing targeted gunfire.

 A Time article had the following correction. 

An article on Thursday about John McCain’s relationship with his children misstated, in some editions, the site of a graduation ceremony for Mr. McCain’s son Jimmy, which was attended by several siblings. Jimmy McCain graduated from Marine boot camp; there is no Marine Academy.

“There is no Marine Academy.” Yeah, Time. Any college football fan could tell you Marines play for the Naval Academy, one of an elite group of nine teams that beat Notre Dame this year.

I’ll chalk this up to a crucial misalignment of football fans, rather than a “I-hope-someone-at-Time-knows-military-stuff.”

And, just in case anyone at Time’s Human Resources Department is reading (wink wink), I know the difference between Kaipo-Noa Kaheaku-Enhada and a Hawaiian death-threat.

Agent Orange: “If journalism is really the first draft of history, we need some keen editors.”

Hello.  A few of my readers asked me about the chapter titles.  Did I mean ____ as a pun on ____? The answer is probably yes.  I’ll go through a few…

Gotta Kill ‘Em All! is a dark play on Pokemon’s slogan, “Gotta Catch ‘Em All.”  The popular children’s cartoon series, Hegemon, plays a prominent role in this chapter.  A related pun…  in politics, a hegemon is a completely dominant nation.  Since the end of the Cold War, “the hegemon” has always referred to the United States.  After all, what story about superheroes could be complete without a superpower?

How Many F’s are there in Katastrofy? (Win a Pulitzer in 20 Minutes a Day!) is a play on the latest Superman movie, where a supposedly Pulitzer-calibre journalist (Lois Lane) wonders how many F’s are in “catastrophe.”  Katastrophy is the name of the Hegemon that’s clearly based on Mewtwo (he’s in the header).  For reasons that I will hopefully be able to reveal by the end of 2007, the real-world incarnation of said character decides to go by “Catastrophe” because you’d have to be a complete idiot to spell it “Katastrofy.”

National Catastrophe is a phrase.  In a book that already has a character named Catastrophe and Nation in the title, how could I resist?

Dr.  Berkeley’s name is actually a reference to George Berkeley, an 18th century philosopher who claimed that anything we perceive is necessarily real.  (Mirages and The Matrix are both perceivable things that probably aren’t real).  The more obvious Berkeley association features a certain university in California, but that wasn’t my main objective.

What Do We Do About Berkeley? This time the reference actually IS to the university.  Governor Ronald Reagan (R-CA) had been advised by his gubernatorial staff not to hit on the counterculture of UC-Berkeley.  Reagan responded: “Look, I don’t care if I’m [campaigning] in the mountains, the desert, the biggest cities of this state, the first question [I get is]: ‘What are you going to do about Berkeley?’ And each time the question itself would get applause.”  I amended the phrase to “What do we do…”  rather than “What are you going to do…”  because the title is already a bit long.

Forget Who’s Watching the Watch-Man…  Don’t Leave Yourself Alone with Him is a play on the phrase “but who watches the watchman,” and of course the comic book series The Watchmen, but most prominently Syler from Heroes.  You definitely wouldn’t want to find yourself alone with THAT watch-man.

The Empire State Strikes Back is an obvious play on Star Wars…  not too tricky.

Gods and Supermen at Yale is a reference to God and Man at Yale, conservative William Buckley’s seminal work on the relationship between faith and scholarship.  In the context of Superhero Nation, the “Gods” are researchers…  well, I shouldn’t spoil a chapter I haven’t written, right?

The Crisis of Infinite OSIs is a play on DC Comic’s seminal series, The Crisis on Infinite Earths.  Really, really devoted students of US government might know there is a separate Office of Special Investigations within the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Justice, the Air Force, and the legislative Government Accountability Office.

It Takes a Child to Raze a Village…  the original is liberal Hillary Clinton’s quote, “it takes a village to raise a child.”  I can’t say any more without hopelessly spoiling the chapter.  Suffice it to say that I hope you won’t miss Greenwich.  (Heh.  A red herring, I assure you).

The First Draft of History is a reference to the quote that “journalism is the first draft of history.” 

Hegemonic Instability Theory.  Maybe you’ve heard of “hegemonic stability theory,” the theory that particularly strong nations contribute to world peace.  Well, mental instability appears to be more relevant to the plot (and creation) of this novel, so I thought that was more appropriate.   It’s also a play on the Hegemon angle, if you’ve been paying attention.   (Additionally, Orson Scott Card wrote a book called “Shadow of the Hegemon,” which  I might turn into something like “Shadowing the Hegemon”)

The Last Oorah.  “Oorah” is a Marine concept…  hell, a way of life! Its origin probably derives from “heard, understood and acknowledged” (HUA), a general expression of enthusiasm (ahem…  “anything and everything but no“).  At one point, I had the chapter called The Last Huah because I wasn’t sure whether the character that dies is a Marine or an [Army] soldier.

The pun is that there’s a novel called The Last Hurrah, which is also a stage in Star Fox 64.  (Wow, I am such a nerd).

A few of the chapters (Agents of Change, Agents of Destruction, etc.) play on the double meaning of “agent” as a federal employee (IRS agent, OSI agent) and a causative factor.  The Free Agent plays on a sports-term for someone who currently has no employer.

Yep, that’s most of it.  I should add– well, it should be obvious that– a title that has to be explained is probably not working.  So hopefully titles like A Free Agent or What Are We Going to do about Berkeley? work even if the reader isn’t familiar with the inside joke.  If they don’t, then the author has needlessly alienated a lot of his readers.  I think the titles would be effective even if the reader didn’t know.

Have you noticed that attack ads sound pretty similar? They’re all made from the same script. To create a political advertisement, you just need to plug in…

• One opposed political candidate

• Two positive interest groups

• One positive adjective

• Three negative adjectives

• Two negative interest groups

• One supervillain

I’ve got some suggestions for you, but you can pick your own. After picking your words, plug them into the Script at the bottom of the page.

Word-Banks

Opposed political candidates (1)

• Pick your favorite. It’ll work on anyone.

Positive interest groups (2)

• Armed servicemen

• Puppies

• Armed servicepuppies

• Unemployed Media Studies professors

• Starving single-parents with absolutely no control over their situation

• Starving artists that are merely misunderstood by society

• Ninja amphibians

• Superhero Nation readers

• Navy SEALs [not to be confused with ninja amphibians]

Positive adjectives (1)

• Daring

• Sexy

• Vigorous

• Punctual

Negative adjectives (3)

• Bible-thumping

• Atheist

• Anti-puppy

• Tax-and-spend

• Tax-cut-and-spend

• Mutant-loving

• Puppy-eating (don’t play the fool with me. In Pinnochio, there’s a puppy that follows the “protagonist” and then the puppy suddenly disappears. What happened to him? Kibbles and bits).

Negative interest groups (2)

• Illuminati

• Massachusetts

• Big Tobacco

• Big Media

• Big Toilet Paper [not to be confused with Big Media]

• Texas

• The New York Money People [“but my best friends are Jewish!”]

• Seventh-Day Adventists

• Mutant haters

• Mutant sympathizers

• Pirates

• Captain America

Supervillains (1)

• Magneto

• Spock (“Spock’s not a supervillain!” You need to pay more attention, biatch).

• Rush Limbaugh

• Lex Luthor

• a Teletubby

• Hillary Clinton

• Barney the Dinosaur

The Script

Dear Voter,

Hello. Even as we speak, (political candidate) is plotting to destroy America, even our cherished (positive interest group #1)s. Any (positive adjective #1) American can see that (political candidate) is only running because he wants to sell out our (positive interest group #2) to advance the (negative adjective #1) agenda of (negative interest group #1). Because he’s (negative adjective #2).

If you are wavering on the issue of whether (political candidate) is a (negative adjective #3) pawn of (negative interest group #2), ask yourself: can America survive a President that looks so much like (supervillain)?

Retired Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez gave a speech on the military-media relationship. Hilarity ensued. Here’s an excerpt…

I ALSO REFUSED TO TALK TO THE EUROPEAN STARS AND STRIPES FOR THE LAST TWO YEARS OF MY COMMAND IN GERMANY FOR THEIR EXTREME BIAS AND SINGLE MINDED FOCUS ON ABU GHARAIB.

LET ME REVIEW SOME OF THE DESCRIPTIVE PHRASES THAT HAVE BEEN USED BY SOME OF YOU THAT HAVE MADE MY PERSONAL INTERFACES WITH THE PRESS CORPS DIFFICULT:

“DICTATORIAL AND SOMEWHAT DENSE”, “NOT A STRATEGIC THOUGHT”, LIAR, “DOES NOT GET IT” AND THE MOST INEXPERIENCED LTG…

ALMOST INVARIABLY, MY PERCEPTION IS THAT THE SENSATIONALISTIC VALUE OF THESE ASSESSMENTS IS WHAT PROVIDED THE EDGE THAT YOU [incompetent journalists] SEEK FOR SELF AGRANDIZEMENT OR TO ADVANCE YOUR INDIVIDUAL QUEST FOR GETTING ON THE FRONT PAGE WITH YOUR STORIES! AS I UNDERSTAND IT, YOUR MEASURE OF WORTH IS HOW MANY FRONT PAGE STORIES YOU HAVE WRITTEN AND UNFORTUNATELY SOME OF YOU WILL COMPROMISE YOUR INTEGRITY AND DISPLAY QUESTIONABLE ETHICS AS YOU SEEK TO KEEP AMERICA INFORMED.

Incidentally, the European Stars and Stripes’ website has a front-page writeup of the speech. This is how they described it:

Ex-Iraq commander Sanchez: War ‘a nightmare with no end in sight’
The former top commander of U.S. troops in Iraq slammed the handling of the war and gave a bleak assessment of the current situation in Iraq. “There is no question that America is living a nightmare with no end in sight,” said retired Lt. Gen. Ricardo Sanchez. “From a catastrophically flawed, unrealistically optimistic war plan, to the administration’s latest surge strategy, this administration has failed to employ and synchronize the political, economic and military power,” Sanchez added.

To be fair, Sanchez did say all of those things, but clearly the scope of his speech went well beyond Iraq policy. In top-to-bottom order, he criticizes the media, both political parties, the Bush administration, Washington, the national intelligence community specifically, and the UN. I suspect that the EUSS take on this speech will be pretty typical.

I just finished phone-interviewing an NFL spokesman. That was an interesting experience, but definitely not my finest work ever. I rambled a lot and didn’t have enough lines of questioning.

The best moment was when the interview was interrupted by the roar of an audience in the background. I think he was watching a key play on a television– sounded exciting. Anyway, I then mentioned that I had been up until 2 AM watching the Arizona-San Francisco game. He offered condolences on my Fitzgerald pick.

I learned a few things that might be interesting. I had suspected that the NFL rolled out the ad campaign in question because of the highly publicized Michael Vicks case. Lisa Baird said as much in the New York Times…

“Within the league, people were worried that ‘the misdeeds of a few’ were starting to ‘represent the image of all 2,000,’ she said.

Mr. McCarthy, the spokesperson I interviewed, said that the ads were not linked to the Vicks case and that they had been created (conceived?) in January. I’m not sure whether the discrepancy is relevant to the Brady Quinn/Notre Dame article. Seems like padding.

This is pretty indicative of how the interview went. He mentioned Willie McGinest and Brady Quinn and Vince Young and Braylon Edwards and the rest of the lineup. I asked if there was any particular reason there were two Browns players selected out of six. (I had expected that the players were chosen with geographic diversity in mind). Whoops. It turns out that there were three Browns players: I missed Edwards (but knew McGinest and, of course, Brady Quinn).

I’m trying a crash course approach to football, starting with a fantasy league and watching five games a week, but this area really isn’t my forte. Unfortunately, no one is as interested in politics… my site’s traffic has doubled since I started adding football posts.   According to Google Analytics, the most popular search query leading to this site is “Appalachian football”, followed by “Michigan [got] dominated”.  Dammit!  Writers of the world, unite!