I Didn't Know the Pug Was Loaded

Humor column.

 

I Didn’t Know the Pug Was Loaded.

By R. G. Nestle

 

I was browsing through the headlines today trying to find headlines which grabbed my eye. When I realized that it was pretty stupid to meander through Internet news waiting for something to do me bodily injury, I began looking for something to write about instead.

Oddly enough, there were quite a few items which were interesting enough to make me say, “Huh?”

I start with a foreign item which absolutely has to be written about because it was so uncomfortably believable.

First, is the headline from the New York Times (motto: We will write about anything!), written by Celia W. Dugger. The headline reads: Ending Famine, Simply by Ignoring the Experts.

Largely, the point of the article was that by ignoring the infallible experts in the area of hunger management, we could actually solve the problem of managing hunger. People under the age of 28 have been espousing this view since the 50’s! Why hasn’t anybody been listening?

The radical view of growing food faster and radically more efficiently by actually using fertilizer on the ground which�"believe it or not�"needs nutrients to grow actual food, is radically being used in Malawi in a very radical way. Instead of just shipping in food which lays in storage rooms until it rots due to paperwork mishandling, these farmers were joining the 19^th century and actually are using soil enriching fertilizer to make their lives better. And by that, I mean they are using it in their soil as opposed to whatever the alternative may be.

It seems that they will never run out of this life saving waste; not if these same experts continue giving advice which they have been giving the good people of Malawi for the past several decades.

Another headline which jumped out at me (I keep a Taser just for just such occasions), was presented by Mark Mulligan in the Financial Times (FT.com) of December 2, 2007. What was the headline? Eta Members Shoot Dead Civil Guard.

(Insert a short pause here with a confused look on your face.)

I’m not even sure I need to make a humorous comment on this one. It’s a good example of a bad headline. Like, “Thief shoots man with dog.” “I’m sorry, sir! I didn’t know the Pug was loaded!”

Then there is the local KOMO news report by Ken (I’m so well known in my local area that I can be rude and no one can do anything about it or I will embarrass them on my show, but actually that’s usually the best part of the news) Schram. He reports: “Sea-Tac Airport strip-searches soldiers escorting the body of a combat colleague home for burial.”

No joke! Soon we’ll all have to be strip searched just to be allowed to walk through the metal detector. “Sir, is that a bomb you are concealing in your personal orifice? We’ll have to check.” There is nothing funny about that, so stop laughing!

I almost needed therapy because of the last time I tried to fly. We soon won’t be allowed to take our saliva glands on board certain flight for fear of our drool concealing molecules of some harmful liquid. Babies will have to be checked at the counter and all food service will stop just in case someone begins salivating at the thought of airline food with the consistency of cardboard, but with much less flavor. Of course, this only applies to the airlines which haven’t already discontinued food service.

Lastly, from USA Today (no By Line attached), we have the heading, “This fire truck brought to you by…” It’s a testament to the forward thinking! In Stockertown, PA, they are looking to put ads, ala stock car racing, on their fire trucks. Really!

I have been playing around with an idea like this for a long time. We should have sponsored Police and Fire Departments. They could be formed and operated the same way we organize football and baseball teams. The captain would become the coach, the officers, would be the players. They could get ungodly moments of money for the work they do! At least there would be a reasonable return on the investment. When was the last time you heard of a basketball player taking down a pick pocket? “Please, Mr. Ming! Just take me in! Looking up so much is giving me a nose bleed! And your freakishly long shorts are frightening me!”

We could give severe fines for bad cop behavior and their income would no longer come from local, state, and federal taxes. All of their salaries would come from big advertisers such as the pharmaceutical companies. ‘This foiled bank robbery brought to you by (insert name of male member enhancement drug here)!’

Their cars and body armor could be emblazoned with all manner of colorful, distracting logos and ads. The bad guys would be so preoccupied with trying to figure out what was being advertised, they would be much easier to arrest. Of course, there may be a lot of attempts to get from one jurisdiction to another so they could be arrested by their favorite police force.

Well, I hope that I have been of some service here, today. It’s not an easy job, but I will continue scouring the Internet and newspapers for more content that we can send to Malawi to keep those crops growing.

Do you have a bizarre news story you would like to bring to my attention? Please send it to my office at 1902 Grove St. #4 Marysville, WA 98270 or to my e-mail address: [email protected].

Author's Note

Please be brutally honest. I really need truthful reviewers, not "yes" men. Thanks!

Reviews

[Nicole (Carpe Diem)]

i loved the bit about the pug... bad headlines make me laugh to no end. sometimes i wonder if the people writing them actually go back and read what they have written...

just one little thing i found wrong -- when your talking about the fire truck -- you have adds... should be ads.

i enjoyed reading this piece... good luck getting it syndicated.

[Zephyr]

i laughed when i was reading this. this had a lot of humor, my favorite moments being thnigs like "grabbing your eye" and "jumping out at you" being taken literally.

i noticed one mistake, though: when you're talking about the extremitites that will result at airports you said "babies will have to be checked at the counter and all food service will stop just in case someone begins salivating at the thought of airline food with the consistency of cardboard, but will much less flavor."

"will much less flavor" should technically be "with much less flavor"

other than a typo, though, and some capitilization/slight grammar errors, i thought this piece was very entertaining.