Busytown: No news is good news
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Matt, that's a truly depressing blog and article. This quote highlights the ignored scale of the issue:
When I first presented a list of victims to the state Department of Motor Vehicles for photos, the clerks were baffled. Twenty young people every week? "What is this?" one asked. "Did a plane crash?"
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The accompanying interactive Homicide Map is also cool, in a grisly, black stat, kind of way.
If Keith Ng met David Simon in an LA bar, this map could settle arguments over how many killings with knives there are on Tuesdays, or what the preferred killing method for victims aged over 50.
Cheers,
Matt -
If Keith Ng met David Simon in an LA bar
I'd sell tickets to that.
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I used to look out for other people on the train reading Harpers magazine but never saw a one. A lonely club, I was.
I remember once reading a suggestion that single women travelling alone at night on the London Underground felt safer if a fellow male traveller or two was reading The Guardian or New Statesman--rather than The Sun or Daily Mail.
My newspaper experiences started when I sold The Hawera Star at the local races (you could alway spot a winner, for a possible bonus!), then graduated to maintaining their clippings library, and then doing rewrites of items from other papers (my first encounter with plaigarism?). My father ran the giant, clanking Cosser printing press.
This was in the days when a small town of 'round 10,000 in South Taranaki could sustain a daily newspaper. -
I'd sell tickets to that
..and I would make a group booking!
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I was a huge newspaper reader as a child/teenager - one of my great pleasures in life was getting up half an hour before the rest of the household, doing my chores, having a hot chocolate, and reading the paper before anyone else got to it. Then when I took it down to my parents with their morning cuppa, I got to announce the major headlines and chat to them about what it meant. I was gutted when the Evening Post went; I could tell that the Dominion was reporting stuff that had happened no later than the evening of the day before, and the Evening Post used to catch me up on that day's news.
That totally stopped when I left for uni, though, and nowadays I barely touch an actual paper. The cost has something to do with it, I'll admit - why pay for what I can get for free online? I still enjoy the feel of spreading one out, but the older I get the more cynical I get about the quality of the articles; half of it is stuff I read three days or three weeks ago in my feed-reader, the rest is bloody Rosemary McLeod and co. I miss the ritual, but I don't miss the actual content. I think I'll still be sad if they go entirely, though.
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Ahahaha... Actually -- IIRC -- Jolisa's magazines were Tammy and Misty. I always preferred Misty because of the darker subject matter, and was mortified to see the issue where they "merged" -- and see Misty's logo get smaller every month thereafter until - *poof*! - it disappeared one day without a word...
I never got over it, and eventually married a girl who looked like one of the characters from a Misty story.
ANYway... about a month ago the Herald started turning up in our letterbox. I rang them and asked them to cancel; I don't want piles of unused paper in my house. They claim not to be delivering it to us. The only explanation I can think of is that one of our neighbours hates the paper SO MUCH that they get up every morning and shift it to our letterbox.
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The cost has something to do with it, I'll admit - why pay for what I can get for free online?
The cost is half of it for me, the other is the tremendous amount of paper.
I fail to see why I should pay money for them to waste paper printing half a newspaper worth of adverts that I never wanted to see in the first place.
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I never got over it, and eventually married a girl who looked like one of the characters from a Misty story.
And now all the Misty readers are lost in an inappropriate fog of "the one where a girl gets turned into a jellybaby" and "the one where the girl has the amulet made by pig-worshippers", completely unable to remember the features of anyone in other stories.
My friend got Girl magazine. Who knew the world contained so very, very many disadvantaged ballerinas and gymnasts?
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...and it was me that got harassed by the dog. I remember it vividly. A standoff of sorts with a growling but otherwise nondescript black mutt, labrador-sized. I learnt later that her drooping nipples were an indicaton that she was a new mother of several pups.
She stood and growled, and I - being from a dog-owning family - approached carefully, paper in hand, astride my bike, shuffling towards the letterbox she was guarding. She shambled up to me, and promptly bit me on the ankle, almost sheepishly, leaving nothing more than a graze caused by me pulling my foot away rapidly.
Of course the shock caused me to fall over, run away, and start bawling my (guessing) 10 or 12 year-old eyes out. Cue several neighbours, and one apologetic dog-owner explaining the situation: that she was just defending her pups. I handed him his paper, and someone helped me deliver the next few houses, then I was on my way, finishing my round.
How different would it be today? Front-page news in the Courier? SMALL BOY BITTEN BY VICIOUS DOG!
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P.S. This post now has (Grace)Wood bingo!
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Ah yes - I remember delivering the Harbour News in Point Chevalier and dreading one particular address which was home to an energetic, territorial, and terrifying Alsatian (also ex-police, as it turned out). The owner was a friend of my dad's as it turned out and a lovely man, but 10-year-old me never quite trusted the dog regardless.
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The owner was a friend of my dad's as it turned out and a lovely man, but 10-year-old me never quite trusted the dog regardless.
I was bitten (fairly non-seriously) by an Alsatian at age eight while patting it and talking to its owner - the mother of a friend of my sister's. I've been terrified of them ever since.
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Hey look, with superb timing, aversion therapy for the both of us tonight at 8:30pm!
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I likethe sports section. It means that I never have to worry about which section of the paper can be used for wrapping rubbish.
If I didn't get the Manawatu Substandard, I'd need to start accepting junkmail again...
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then doing rewrites of items from other papers (my first encounter with plaigarism?)
Please - they call it "lift and copy".
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IS, shouldn't you be over in Emma's thread? Oh wait, that's "lift and separate"... As you were.
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How different would it be today? Front-page news in the Courier? SMALL BOY BITTEN BY VICIOUS DOG!
Man bites dog, now that would be news.
I notice no actual dogs have contributed to this thread. Presumably, despite the loss of small delicious ankles to gnaw on (hey, meals on wheels!), they're all delighted at the imminent demise of the hateful-rolled-up-object-for-whacking-them-on-the-nose-with-when-they're-just-being-extra-doggy-for-goodness-sake. It must feel like a repeal of some unspoken canine Section 59...
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I notice no actual dogs have contributed to this thread.
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I set 'em up, you knock 'em down!
Jack "Russell" Elder, don't think I'm not onto you. Who's a good boy then? Who's a good good boy? Want a biscuit?
[Turing test for dogs: he won't be able to resist]
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are you sure you're on the right thread?
i think Emma might have just the thread you're looking for... -
Down, boy! Nothing beastly going on here.
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Actually, all this nostalgia for print made me recall the "W fold" -- a skill seemingly possessed by all adult Japanese (and perhaps abetted by the layout people on Japanese newspapers).
It involves taking a newspaper and folding each side longways so that the result is a long thin strip of newsprint that can then be read on the train without inconveniencing your neighbors.
I never quite got the hang of it.
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@richard:
you wouldn't believe how few people read the paper on the train these days. a quick survey usually reveals 50%+ doing something with their phone (watching tv, videos, email, web surfing, e-book reading, mixi, etc.), 10% playing with their Nintendo DS, 10% reading a bunko-bon (small-format paperback), 20% doing something with their iPod, 5% reading the paper, 10% reading manga, 10% reading the ads on the train and 20% sleeping. Sleeping with iPod in seems quite common. i know, it adds up to 135%, but multiple answers allowed, ok? -
And now all the Misty readers are lost in an inappropriate fog of "the one where a girl gets turned into a jellybaby" and "the one where the girl has the amulet made by pig-worshippers", completely unable to remember the features of anyone in other stories.
Amy, this is a pretty accurate example of what he's talking about, I think. He's got jolly good taste, my bro. Preteen alt.goth - it obviously made a big impression on a lad.
And look, Misty is still being published! But the new cover girl has a crap haircut.
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