Roadkill on the ... oh, never mind.
A week ago, idly perusing a copy of The Reader. I fell into a deep, deathlike slumber. I was awakened only this afternoon, jolted into consciousness with an adrenaline shot direct to my heart, delivered by my faithful nurse, Bettina. "What the hell," I murmured, once I recovered from the shock.
"You have been sleeping for a long time," she said. "I know you tell me not to disturb you when you are, how you say, indisposed, but I've never seen you sleep such a long time."
"What day is it?" I asked, still more than a little dazed.
"It is Thursday," she said. "June the 23rd."
I looked down at the copy of the Reader she had placed beside me on the couch. "ROADBLOCKS ON THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY," blared the headline on the cover.
"What year is it?" I asked, a tremor in my voice.
"It is 2005."
"Ah," I said, relieved. "Then it is not me but the editors of the Reader who have fallen into a time warp into the past!"
OK, OK, not all of the stuff above is, strictly speaking, true. Bettina is not, for example, a nurse; I just have her dress that way.
But Jesus Fucking Christ: ROADBLOCKS ON THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY!!!???
That headline was stale in 1994; now, it’s just bizarre. INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY?? Is Al Gore writing the headlines this week?
If you’re going to pull INFORMATION SUPERFUCKINGHIGHWAY out of your ass for a headline, why not just go all the way and call it the INFOBAHN. (Remember that?) Then at least you could do a headline like:
NO FUN FUN FUN ON THE INFOBAHN.
That’s a terrible headline, but it’s better than ROADBLOCKS ON THE MOTHERFUCKINGINFORFUCKINGMATIONHIGHMOTHERFUCKINGWAY.
I do apologize for the profanity.
Later in the article we find one of the Reader’s trademark pull-quotes-long-enough-to-be-an-actual-article-by-itself. The scintillating bit of prose the Reader saw fit to puff up in red:
"Economists argue that, over time, most public decision makers fall victim to political pressure to provide cheap universal; service, and then they either run the enterprise into the ground or sock taxpayers with a big ongoing bill."
I feel myself getting woozy again even thinking about it.
Bettina! Prepare the smelling salts!
posted by spacecog at 11:42 AM
5 Comments:
This is nice:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/music/sidebars/COUNTRY2005.html
He disses almost every band!
Ha!
Though I somehow suspect most of them deserve it.
I like his lead sentence. It's as if his hostility towards the bands led him to concoct the dullest lead ever:
"The Country Music Festival in Grant Park is traditionally the only block of thematically linked programming during the Taste of Chicago."
You guys need to start another blog with a less depressing premise.
Because the Reader truly does suck ass, and your writing is too good to waste.
While reading this I was reminded of volvo truck part you should stop by.
even though I'm mentioning "These Parts" here (which I confess that I enjoy), I'm commenting on the this post because the Reader website is so sucky. I had already recycled my These Parts Reader, but wanted to sample some of the "Good Iowa Eats" mentioned (especially the organic (!) one). So I googled "these parts chicago reader" (which put this Reader SUCKS as #4), and got the following link (at #3) for These Parts: http://www.chicagoreader.com/features/stories/theseparts/festivals/
I defy you (with either Firefox or IE) to be able to get to any of the content by clicking on the map (or on the #nogo link right next to it). Doing a page source and searching on #nogo revealed the secret: just replace (manually, natch) the word "features" for the link in question (such as "illinoisfest"), all of these appear as "../illinoisfest", etc) and there you are. Talk about roadkill...
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