Wow, I got a letter from Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations!
I Dr. Kofi Annan, Secretary-General of the United Nations, would like to ask for your partnership in reprofilling funds over $250m in excess, the funds would be coming via a string of selected banks in Europe and Asia.
The Funds in question were generated by me during the Oil For Food Programme in Iraq. I have been getting scandals/ controversy in this regards, you can read more on the links below-
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2005/apr2005/anna-a05.shtml
http://www.canadafreepress.com/2003/main042803.htm
You would be paid 10% as your management fee. Please do not write back directly to me via my official email address. All further correspondence should be sent to my private mail box (kofiannan4un@o2.pl ). As soon as you indicate your interest I will give further details.
Remember to treat this mail and transaction as strictly confidential. I will await your urgent correspondence via my private mail box-
Dr.Kofi Annan.
SECRETARY- GENERAL
kofiannan@un.org
www.un.org
Strangely, he uses three different e-mail addresses (the original one was sent from kofiannan4un@walla.com). That must be how important he is!
I feel very honored by this. I sure hope the spambots who visit this URL don’t harvest those, because that would be a shame.
Give them liberty, or give them a shady spot where dogs won’t piddle on them.
(And if they have to stay oppressed, would it kill someone to put a Virginia Tech outfit on them?)
When Tracie Troha started work at the Daily Press, I thought I would give her some advice about covering Hesperia. I let her know who the players were, how they related to each other (officially and otherwise), gave her a bunch of important phone numbers and took her around to meet some folks. I also gave her some advice about the various government meetings in the city:
News happens places other than just at meetings, but it also happens at meetings. Sometimes, the biggest news stories aren’t on the agenda, and you won’t know about them unless you attend even a meeting where “nothing is going to happen.”
Well, unfortunately, she actually listened to me, and is kicking butt up and down Main Street. So she does stories like this one in today’s Daily Press, meaning I have to figure out a second day approach to the same news for next Tuesday’s edition of the the Hesperia Star.
How dare this new reporter actually make me work harder, smarter and better?
Years ago, at the News Messenger, this list was something that was faxed from newsroom to newsroom. It was offline for a bunch of years, but it looks like, earlier this year, someone found an old fax and put it online. The list is now traveling around journalism Web sites and mutating as it goes. I’ve seen versions that now reference Google, for instance, which didn’t exist the last time I saw this list.
Here’s a copy of the list that’s closest to the one I remember. Snagged from here, who snagged it from somewhere else, and so on, and so on. This one’s longer than I remember, and “tits out to here” certainly wasn’t in the old list. Still, it’s funny. Use of these terms in past, present or future editions of the Hesperia Star do not necessarily line up to the humorous definitions listed below:
Feisty: Short, old female
Flamboyant: Homosexual
Controversial: He did something bad but we’re not sure what
Scandal-plagued: Guilty
Informed source: Reads the newspaper
Confirmed bachelor: see “Flamboyant”
War-torn: We can’t find it on a map
Venerable: Should be dead but isn’t (eg: Strom Thurmond)
Knowledgable observer: The reporter
Knowledgable observers: The reporter and the person at the next desk
Self-styled: Phony
Guru: see “Self-styled”
Screen Legend: Reporter is too young to remember his movies
Teen idol: Reporter is too old to have heard of him
According to published reports: We got scooped
Embattled: He should quit
All American: White kid caught in criminal act
Troubled youth: He lit something on fire
Scrappy: a runt
Beloved: Someone who’s been around so long no one can stand them any more (eg: Bob Hope)
(The original ended here, as I recall.)
Hero firefighter: He put out a fire
Hero cop: He got killed
Honor student: Dead kid registered for classes somewhere
Recently: We lost the press release
First in the modern history of: no Nexis entries
Never: no clips
Source who spoke on condition of anonymity: flack
Prestigious: has indoor plumbing
Exclusive neighborhood/school/club: the reporter can’t get in
Mean streets: slums
Street-wise: Hasn’t been hit by a bus so far
Allegedly: He did it but we can’t prove it
Shocking revelation: leaked on a slow news day
Gang: a group of white kids
Wolf pack: a group of black kids
Highly placed source: one who would talk
Supermodel: her picture was printed somewhere
Beautiful: a woman who’s been savagely murdered
Blond: see “beautiful”
Reportedly: we stole this bit of information
Intensely private: Not promoting anything right now
Rarely interviewed: Promoting something right now
High-brow: boring
Family Values: right wing idiot
Progressive: left wing idiot
Couldn’t be reached for comment: the reporter didn’t call until after 5 p.m.
Legendary: about to die
Unclear, uncertain, unknown at press time: no one will tell us
Plucky: someone who is very, very young, very, very old, or very, very short who is ambulatory
Temblor: Reporter has a thesaurus
Brutally raped: raped
Savagely murdered: murdered
Celebrity: He has a publicist
Superstar: He has a publicist and an agent
Tony neighborhood: has no McDonald’s
Modest, well-kept home: at least the cockroaches are dead
Exclusive: No one else returned the flack’s calls
Investigating: waiting for someone to drop a dime
Gentleman bandit: he wore shoes instead of sneakers
Police task force: cops who were working on no-publicity cases yesterday
Elite: see prestigious
Conflagration: what was a fire in the first paragraph, a blaze in the second and an inferno in the third
Outspoken: Rude man
Strident: Rude woman
Effervescent: She won’t shut up
Shapely: face like a mud fence
Full-figured: tits out to here
Statuesque: Tits out even further
Zaftig: fat
Diminutive: under 5 feet tall
Petite: emaciated
Sexy: better looking than reporter’s mate
Dogged by character issue: He screwed a floozy
Political Action Committee contribution: bribe
Moderate: fence straddler
Long-time companion: they had sex
Socialite: woman without job who lives between 57th and 86th street, west of Lex. and east of Fifth
Heiress: see above, but able to hire a pricy divorce lawyer
Good Samaritan: Too stupid to run away
Innocent by-stander: Too slow to run away
Tearful: Could have been crying
Choked up: Definitely could have been crying
Weeping: Tear spotted in one eye
Entrepreneur: Hasn’t made it yet, but we’re doing a nice story about him
Mogul: Has made it, and we’re doing a hatchet job
Mega-mogul: Has made it, and is in process of losing it
Activist: Will talk to press
Stunned: couldn’t give a decent quote
Dapper: Hasn’t bought new clothes in 20 years
Hot button issue: only editors care about it
Towing industry expose: editor got a parking ticket
“with wire services”: no original reporting whatsoever – we just changed the lede
Yesterday, I caught an NPR segment on children’s fantasy literature. It was a really good segment — Neil Gaiman is always a seemingly effortlessly good interviewee — but a comment by Christopher Paolini, the whiz kid whose first novel was written when he was 15 years old, made a comment that I fundementally disagreed with. He said — and you can listen to the segment online yourself and hear his wording — that J.R.R. Tolkien’s works weren’t really concerned with people going away and returning home, grown up.
If you consider Lord of the Rings to be a single novel (as Tolkien did), I think it’s hard to find a fantasy novel of his that isn’t about this. In The Hobbit, Bilbo is fundementally changed when he’s roused out of his comfortable home and taken out into the wide world, which is much more complex, much darker but more wonderful than he imagined back in Hobbiton. In Lord of the Rings, the book ends with the hobbits returning home to the Shire, not as child-like innocents who have to be protected by non-hobbits every step of the way, but as heroes capable of routing Sauruman from their homeland all on their own. Even Farmer Giles of Ham features a character going away on what he thinks is a simple journey but ending up becoming someone he never expected as a result.
Anyway, an otherwise great piece, especially the talk about Narnia (I had no idea that Gaiman had written a sequel in the Flights anthology).
|
|
