I try to keep this kind of thing down to no more than once a week, but my cold has made me ornery, and, from the CNN front page:
This lead was either written by Tarzan, or someone with a third of a bottle left on their desk and a smile on their face.
From the CNN front page:
Let’s ignore the fact that this sounds like a b-reel gag from a late-’70s/early-’80s car & cop movie – I’m looking at you, Cannonball Run – why is CNN presenting this as a question? The “?” actually detracts from the lurid tease.
Absolutely not from the CNN front page.
In no way to honour my birthday, I thought I’d introduce a new feature to the site: Simple Answers To CNN’s Stupid Questions. All of these are found on today’s CNN front page.
Up front, the sport section hits us with a hat-trick:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QoPWALM2riQ]
Yes.
– with bats!
Thank you, good night!
From the CNN front page:
No, dammit, YOU interview someone interesting.
What is this supposed to even be, advice on how to spend your Sunday?
Other possible CNN suggestions for ways to fill your time:
Update: Whoa! How did I miss that Sanchez got himself fired!?
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HrFoLZqY_s4]
Another grab from the CNN front page:
I realize that this is supposed to be an enticing lead in, but it struck me more as CNN just asking me a question: “Seriously, why am I so tired? I can barely even write this useless human interest story. Not covering actual news is exhausting, imagine if I was Richard Engel? OMG.”
A member of the Relic Radio forums brought this article to my attention, and, since reading it, it’s had a terrible grip on my imagination:
The brothers first heard about Duffy’s Cut from their grandfather, a railroad worker, who told the ghost story to his family every Thanksgiving. According to local legend, memorialized in a file kept by the Pennsylvania Railroad, a man walking home from a tavern reported seeing blue and green ghosts dancing in the mist on a warm September night in 1909.
“I saw with my own eyes, the ghosts of the Irishmen who died with the cholera a month ago, a-dancing around the big trench where they were buried; it’s true, mister, it was awful,” the documents quote the unnamed man as saying. “Why, they looked as if they were a kind of green and blue fire and they were a-hopping and bobbing on their graves… I had heard the Irishmen were haunting the place because they were buried without the benefit of clergy.”
[…]
Two weeks ago, a new piece of evidence came up from the ground at Duffy’s Cut: A skull with a perforation that could be a bullet hole. “In fact, we can see some nice cracked edges that do look very much like a bullet hole,” Monge observed. – CNN
Maybe this is just a ghost story ingrained in family tradition – I do love the idea that some kernel of truth wrapped in an oral history carried on data that was unknown to the stacks of documentation every modern zoning, purchase or construction creates – but my mind can’t get over the fact that it might be something darker.
What if it does turn out these men were murdered? What if a fun family custom actually originated when Great-Grandfather Watson began spinning tales to commemorate the graves he himself had dug?
What if the self-aggrandizement of a long dead serial killer now leads to the discovery of his previously undocumented crimes?
The dogged, in-depth journalism at CNN, strikes again:
It’s tempting to crack the cryo-vaults and make a ‘read it for the articles’ joke, but I think the truth behind both the highlighted articles is something closer to the idea that social pressure can make you do some odd things.
I just hope CNN will decide it’s front page news when I finally unveil the Safe For Work version of skinner.fm.
(It is interesting to see ancient FARK-ese creeping onto the CNN page – how long until they pick up an 
tag?)
Also, I’m suddenly concerned this may one day lead to a product entitled “Disney’s™ Playboy For Kids”.
From the CNN front page:
Listen, I understand that I may not fully grasp all the subtleties of a good game of footy, but these new naval rules are just confusing.
Listen, CNN: If you’re gonna claim that a tiny village has been transformed by meteorites I expect to find some mutated human-reptile hybrids, or a town matron that now has the strength to toss around Hummers like horseshoes, not a story about people selling space rocks at reasonable prices.