Fun_People Archive
18 Aug
Bull 335 Excerpts

Date: Fri, 18 Aug 95 16:45:09 -0700
From: Peter Langston <psl>
To: Fun_People
Subject: Bull 335 Excerpts

Excerpted-from: BONG Bull No. 335!

*********************************************************************
        The Burned-Out Newspapercreatures Guild's Newsletter
 <<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> BONG Bull <<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>
                      Charley Stough, Chief Copyboy
*********************************************************************
            Copyright (c) 1995 by BONG.  All rights reserved.


Subscribe:  Email to LISTSERV@NETCOM.COM.  In the text say SUBSCRIBE BONG-L.
...
DIDN'T HURT TRADE A BIT.  A journalists' group on Internet
noted that Divine Brown, companion of Hugh Grant on a recent
off-Sunset parking problem, recently did a TV spot for an L.A.
radio station. She sang, "Easy 100, the perfect station to
listen to while you work."
     Reports are that it ran one day before being jerked.

A MATTER OF DEFINITION.  Richard Frey advised that the Aug. 10
Guardian had an "entirely serious" article headed "Sexual
allegations a blow to Gingrich."
     "What can this mean?" asked richard (at) frey.demon.co.uk.
The Editorial Standards and Last Week's Story Committee
wondered at length, Dick, but could only conclude for sure that
one or more major execs at Guardian won't take another day off
without leaving phone numbers and strict instructions.

LETTER TO THE COPYBOY.  Tom Sandbach (gsandbach (at)
state.de.us) of the Delaware Office of the Public Defender
wrote, "Enjoy your newsletter very much.  Thanks for providing
it. But, have you tried spell-checking Unisys using
WordPerfect?"
     Actually no, Tom.  It looks like you have it right and
besides, most reporters we know just slap a CQ on everything,
eliminating the need to check.  But perhaps a WordPerfect
devotee out there will run your problem through the cruncher
and after the probe, tell the whole sordid tale.

THE EXTRA-REPORTERS PREDICTOR.  Rick Emerson (rick (at)
ssg.com) read in BB334 about Doug Pizzi's stillborn violence-
prediction index.  That was Pizzi's calculation based on heat,
humidity, moon phase and liquor and power-tool (read: chain
saws) sales, allowing reporters to predict the amount of space
needed to cover police news.  Pizzi called it the Propensity to
Stab (PTS) Index.  Couldn't find a way to say PMS, Pizzi said.
     "This is too easy: 'Potential Mayhem Statistic,'" offered
Emerson.
     But cold weather is as much a contributor as tropic heat.
New England cops know the syndrome:  Unreconstructed hippies
make it through the worst winters just fine, they report.
Months snowbound in cramped cabins living on bark tea and old
popcorn have no effect on the flower children.  Then in March
there's an early thaw.  The freaks dance joyous and naked in
the meadows.
     Then when April's sudden blizzard whistles down through
the woods, they finally take axes to one another.  We report
this only because early snow fell this week in the high
Rockies.
...
CABLESE PHRASE BOOK.  The Chief Copyboy got swept into the
vortex of a wild debate among computer-aided reporters on the
Internet, about the meaning of the note "CQ" in copy.  As
usual, a radio sort couldn't let it go, wasting a lot of space
on ham lingo.  It means "Correct" to journalists, no matter
what radio operators or elevator operators or piano players in
houses of ill repute take it to mean.
     Exclusively to BONGers, Paul K. Harral (harral (at)
onramp.net), former Dallas bureau chief for UPI, added:  "The
ones I was always amused by were the differing ones on 'as soon
as possible.'  ASAP (of course).  SAP.  And when that wasn't
good enough or fast enough, SAPPEST.
     "And then there were the variations on foul language, as
in: NFG and AFU.  And a favorite Christmas greeting to me from
the DA bureau after I had moved on to DX (Denver): 'MX SB.'
     "Then there were the variations on time: smorn (this
morning) and sweek or swk (this week).
     "There's a short science fiction story by C.M. Kornbluth
who was ex-AP out of Des Moines (I believe), about an inter-
galactic wire service in which he said that editors always
wrote in cablese which was then hashed up by editing marks
because of their bad typing, thus becoming virtually unreadable
by anyone outside the business.  The example he cites (working
from memory here, folks) was: 'How pls offheading bitches three
which bypassed you yestermonth.'"
...

© 1995 Peter Langston