Get Incensed

Has as much to do with this story as anything…

I have a fairly simple life plan.

I fully intend to delude myself into thinking I’m still 23-years-old by playing basketball, telling jokes and drinking beer until I can no longer deny the reality that I’ve either blown out a knee, started to sound like my grandfather or am incontinent.

After that, I am going to embrace my inner curmudgeon and start wearing a black beret and carrying around a hand-carved walking stick I can use to bang on the floor for attention or point at people for emphasis as I make a particularly curmudgeonly point.

The whole idea of the second phase of the plan is to become progressively more of an insufferable prick until I get to be 110 years old.

I figure by that time I’ll come up with a new plan or somebody will have beaten me into a coma. Either way, I’ll be at peace.

All in all, I believe I’ve set some very achievable goals and, I am happy to report, I’m actually ahead of schedule on some counts.

I still play basketball three to five times a week, but that hasn’t stopped me from grumbling about things I read in the news. (The fact that I occasionally chuckle at a Pickles cartoon on my way to reading Doonesbury is another good sign.)

More and more, I find myself taking offense at the stylistic elements of a particular story. At this rate, I may become the youngest person ever to win the Nobel Curmudgeon Prize.

The thing is, I don’t consider myself an expert on grammar or the fundamentals of journalism. But is it too much to ask that, if you’re going to write something, you can at least follow a simple chain of thought or maybe even have a chain of thought?

I believe there is a special circle of hell reserved for misleading headlines that tease you into reading a story that has virtually nothing to do with the headline.

With so many news stories to read, watch and link to these days, I think truth-in-advertising laws should apply to headlines. Otherwise, you’re wasting precious time for all of us.

Do I have an example? Of course, I do.

Here’s a headline and sub-head from MSNBC news:

Cool. This sounds like an awesome story. Did the dude suck people’s blood before he bombed the hotel? Did he seduce beautiful women with the promise of immortality while the hotel exploded in the background?

Did he at least wear a cape and talk with a funny accent while he was rigging the explosives?

Um…well, no. It turns out the only thing he did was refer to himself a character from an Anne Rice novel.

Let’s let MSNBC explain:

LA PAZ, Bolivia - A convicted hotel bomber from California who modeled himself on a fictional vampire has died after becoming ill in prison, officials said Tuesday.

Twenty-six-year-old Tristan Jay Amero was serving a 30-year sentence for bombing two low-rent hotels in the Bolivian capital of La Paz in 2006…

The native of Placerville, California, Amero adopted the name of Lestat Claudius de Orleans y Montevideo — a variation on a character in Anne Rice’s vampire novels.

That’s it. He didn’t change his name. He didn’t wear fake fangs. He didn’t even slick back his hair to accentuate his widow’s peak.

Hell, MSNBC didn’t even refer to him as Tristan Jay “Lestat” Amero. He kinda just called himself that once in awhile.

Talk about a journalistic hand job.

Okay, I’m sorry. That’s being a little harsh. And it’s blatantly unfair to hand jobs.

At least with a hand job there’s some small sense of satisfaction at the end of it.

If a fleeting imitation of someone is what’s going to count for “modeling” yourself after someone, I guess I modeled myself after every one of the top NBA players as I was shooting hoops in my driveway growing up.

Worse yet, I once sang “Like A Virgin” in a karaoke bar. Please tell me that doesn’t mean I’ve modeled my life after Madonna.

Because, trust me, that was never in the plan.

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Awarded to us by The Cult of Qelqoth

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