By Zay N. Smith
News Headline: “Fiscal cliff looms over U.S. economy.”
OK. Wait.
If the fiscal cliff looms over us, doesn’t that mean we already fell off it?
Forget the economy.
We’re losing control of our metaphors.
News Headline: “Fiscal cliff negotiators face high hurdles.”
News Headline: “Fiscal cliff a minefield for U.S. political parties.”
News Headline: “A path around the fiscal cliff.”
Tell you what.
We can handle the cliff.
Just have someone get us around the high hurdles and the minefield.
News Headline: “Jessica Biel reveals she decapitated Barbie dolls as a kid, decorates Christmas tree with them today.”
Ho, Ho, Ho!
The Case for Zero Tolerance of Modern School Administrators:
Seminole High School in Sanford, Fla., went into lockdown and called a hazmat crew when a student brought a mercury thermometer to school for a chemistry project.
News Item: “. . . found to cause treatment-related fatal events. . . .”
News Item: “. . . work-related fatal events. . . .”
Peter Fuller, a Chicago reader, wants to know when did deaths become “fatal events,” and when can we have deaths back?
And. . . .
News Headline: “Pope starts personal Twitter account.”
The latest from Pope Benedict XVI as of this writing:
“@Pontifex hasn’t tweeted yet.”
Well. OK.
You might not be so speedy, either, if you were responsible for infallible tweets.
n canit realy B d 20th aNvrsrE dis week of txtN?
evidntly.
dis S also nat Read a b%k mth, by d wa.
just chooz an old fav:
twas A1 of tyms, twas d wrst of tyms, twas d age of wis, twas d age of . . . .
News Headline: “Whiskey restores man’s eyesight after vodka blinds him.”
The blindness had to do with methanol in the vodka.
The ethanol in the whiskey neutralized the methanol, curing the blindness.
And QT sees it has been right all along in maintaining its preventive regimens.
News Headline: “New study links athletes’ repetitive head injuries to degenerative brain disease.”
As of the XIIth week of the NFL season, players had suffered CXXVII concussions (CLXXV counting the exhibition season).
At this rate, expect XL or more concussions before Super Bowl XLVII.
Modern Education + the Criminal Mind =
A young woman who robbed a bank in Waco, Neb., went home to post a YouTube video with the title “Chick Robs Bank.”
The video has had more than 92,000 views, including views by a sufficient number by police.
News Headline: “Hay shortage on farmers’ minds as winter nears.”
This is what we always get with the overproduction of straw men in an election year.
Rush Limbaugh regarding presidential campaigns:
“Presidents used to never go on shows like Leno or Letterman. Now they live there. Is it an indication of how dumbed down our culture’s become?”
It happens hardly ever.
But in the holiday spirit:
When he’s right, he’s right.
News Item: “. . . enough cell phones to stretch from San Francisco to the North Pole and back. . . .”
Or the distance covered by 26,188 Empire State Buildings laid end to end, if you are still trying to visualize it.
From Poor QT’s Almanack:
On this day in history 19 years ago Timon of Athens closed after only 37 performances on Broadway, which seems to have put Shakespeare in his place.
QT Grammar R Us Seminar on the English Language:
News Item: “. . . budget continues to tow the line directed by the slowly recovering economy. . . .”
News Item: “. . . failure to tow the line of ‘Socialist Realism,’ which. . . .”
G.S., a Chicago reader, warns that it is impossible to toe the line properly when we are busing trying to tow a line.
And to the readers who, reading in QT that the reindeer’s name is Donder, not Donner, wrote to say that Donner is the one who ate all the other reindeer:
Ho, Ho, Ho!
Write to QT at qt@beachwoodreporter.com
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QT appears Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.
Posted on December 5, 2012