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BONG Bull No. 688, press briefing
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Charles Stough
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Feb 02, 2007 10:57 PST
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The Burned-Out Newspapercreatures Guild's World-Famous Encyclical
BONG Bull
No. 688
Copyright © 2007 by BONG
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For Feb. 2, 2007. Oh, good work, Turner Broadcasting and your Cartoon
Network committee! Paralyze Boston traffic with bomb scares, send a
couple of giggling doofuses to the post-bail press conference and clear
it all up with an offer of $500,000 to make good! Inspired flackery and
conspicuous corporate citizenship, says the Burned-Out
Newspapercreatures Guild, and this is BONG Bull No. 688!
REST IN PEACE MOLLY IVINS; THE WORLD'S THE GRIMMER FOR YOUR PASSING.
While Exxon Mobil admits making $75,000 a minute in profits, Texas is
perforated by more than 17,000 holes abandoned by oil and gas drillers
who are happy to leave the cleanup to taxpayers. Texas builders sell
houses salted with poisonous asbestos waste, and Texas legislators
interrupt a special session on school finance to punch out a law
protecting builders from lawsuits about it.
It was a place that had to have a Molly Ivins.
For a brief moment there was a Molly to call out that state's
shitkickers on their vile habits, with or without a good ol' boy in the
White House. Now it is left to all Texas newspapers to try to take up
the slack. As they say in Texas opinion page committees with their
manicured fingers on the pulse of every public outrage, "Boy howdy, time
to come out for a new football stadium, y'all!"
AND SO LONG ART, ARTIST OF THE WORD. Art Buchwald had a career in
satiric commentary almost as long as Mark Twain's and James Thurber's
put together. He certainly had the longest running obituary as a series,
the rare patient and even rarer newsman ever kicked out of a hospice for
refusing to die.
Buchwald moved in a flock that included Twain, Thurber, Max Shulman,
Dorothy Parker, Robert Benchley, Ring Lardner, Walt Kelly -- an army who
came on as gentle warriors, but whose high-hat victims didn't know they
had been cut down until they reached for a handkerchief and found the
seats of their pants burned away.
Roy Blount, Calvin Trillin, Garrison Keillor, Jon Stewart and Steven
Colbert carry the banner still, but they are too few, and witless
imitators are too many.
Consider the agenda -- pageant queens, plutocrats, randy preachers,
disaster relief, war as political patronage, underpants-optional pop
culture, politics as comedy and vice-versa, White House daughters,
congressional felons, no-pill pharmacists and no-booze cabbies. Who
can't see a Sunday page front on any of these? And yet why do so few
even dare?
MEANWHILE, BACK TO UGLY FACTS. A titmouse is not a rodent. A bison may
be a daughter. And a grouper may at times feel very, very alone.
Observing a need for education on these and other points of fact (not
only for copy editors, but for people too), BONG's new subsidiary the
Getting It Right Foundation announces free graphic reminders suitable
for any screensaver. Choose one here or at
http://new.photos.yahoo.com/copyboy@sbcglobal.net/album/576460762387368757
LOST IN TRANSLATION. Internet lore provides these signs, allegedly from
world tourist spots.
-- In a Tokyo Hotel: Is forbitten to steal hotel towels please. If
you are not person to do such thing is please not to read notis.
-- In a Belgrade hotel elevator: To move the cabin, push button for
wishing floor. If the cabin should enter more persons, each one should
press a number of wishing floor. Driving is then going alphabetically by
national order.
-- In a Paris hotel elevator: Please leave your values at the front
desk.
-- In a Japanese hotel: You are invited to take advantage of the
chambermaid.
-- In a Moscow hotel near a monastery: You are welcome to visit the
cemetery where famous Russian and Soviet composers, artists, and writers
are buried daily except Thursday.
-- In an Austrian hotel catering to skiers: Not to perambulate the
corridors in the hours of repose in the boots of ascension.
-- In a Hong Kong supermarket: For your convenience, we recommend
courteous, efficient self-service.
-- In a Soviet Weekly: There will be a Moscow Exhibition of Arts by
15,000 Soviet Republic painters and sculptors. These were executed over
the past two years.
-- In a Zurich hotel: Because of the impropriety of entertaining
guests of the opposite sex in the bedroom, it is suggested that the
lobby be used for this purpose.
-- In the window of a Swedish furrier: Fur coats made for ladies from
their own skin.
-- In a Swiss mountain inn: Special today -- no ice cream.
-- In a Copenhagen airline ticket office: We take your bags and send
them in all directions.
-- At a Budapest zoo: Please do not feed the animals. If you have any
suitable food, give it to the guard on duty.
-- In a Majorcan shop: Here speeching American.
COMIX SECTION. The Further Adventures of Herman "Speed" Graphic, ace
photographer for the Chagrin Falls Commercial Scimitar, and his Faithful
Companion, Typo the Wonder Pig.
PANEL ONE: Speed eyeballs Typo suspiciously as they discuss the day's
photo assignments, but Typo queries earnestly, "Boss, remember that
sinking feeling you used to get when the city editor said, 'I'm gonna
make you a star!'"
Speed replies, "Yeah."
PANEL TWO: Typo continues, "And remember before that thing at the
tango contest, when Absentee Publisher Gimlet Peen used to say, 'My boy,
the new computers will put this problem behind us!'"
Speed grumbles, "Yeah."
PANEL THREE: Typo appends, "And how about all those times when
Features Editor Hyperba Lee used to say, 'Oh Speedy, would you mind
covering a few extra assignments every day, just until we get the
overtime budget worked out?'"
Speed gasps, "Oh yeah."
PANEL FOUR: Typo cheers, "Well, Boss, I have our assignments here,
and I'm glad to say we're going to get even!"
Speed croaks, "That sounds even worse than what Hyperba said, Typo!"
PANEL FIVE: Rolling out the copy desk coffee urn, soon to be
converted to a low-orbit rocket by the addition of a Do-Good Pellet from
the pocket of Speed's trenchcoat, a deathbed gift from an ancient mystic
wire service executive editor on a fog-shrouded eastern island, Typo
exclaims, "It's true, Boss! For this assignment I got us unlimited
overtime and Class A charge-everything travel budget! We're touring,
Boss!"
Speed reads from Hyperba's assignment slip: "'For the Dating page,
find Julio Iglesias and bring him to me in satin, leather and
handcuffs.' I say, Typo, have you been doing ventriloquist things in her
answering machine again?"
BONG Bull is the product of Chief Copyboy Charley Stough in Dayton,
Ohio. E-mail bongs-@yahoo.com for any reason. Or what the hell, for
no reason.
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