Wednesday, June 29, 2005

headline mania

tdw has a game called "headline mania":

Here’s what you do: Go to the Star website and read the headlines out loud. Make a sarcastic comment about a headline. Or just giggle about the vagueness of something written by a copy editor at midnight.

let's try it out, as there are some interesting stories with really bad headlines up today.

Executives agree to prison in price-fixing

i'm envisioning something akin to the phantom zone in superman 2, that two-dimensional square where krypton imprisoned the very worst of their prisoners, like general zod... or maybe like han solo being frozen in carbonite, only in this case the executives would be somehow frozen in "prices".

but actually, it's a story about no-good businessmen from greensfield indiana who agreed not just to go to prison (a normal prison, i guess), but to pay "the largest [fine] ever in a domestic antitrust investigation."

Irving executives Daniel C. Butler, John Huggins, Fred R. "Pete" Irving, and Price Irving were charged with conspiring with competitors to set the price of ready-mixed concrete sold in the Indianapolis metropolitan area from approximately July 2000 until May 2004.

Pete Irving has agreed to pay a $200,000 fine and the other three executives have agreed to pay $100,000 fines. All four agreed to serve five months in prison, followed by five months of home detention. The pleas of the executives are subject to court approval, officials said.

Showers ease strain on utility

after a long, hard day at work in the muggy midwestern heat, sometimes the thing you want most is a nice hot shower. this is true not just for humans, but for utilities also.

or it could mean that showers increase utility, therefore also increasing productivity & worker efficiency. help stop outsourcing: shower regularly

or maybe it means that if your "utility" (wink wink, nudge nudge) is experiencing a "strain" (for example, becoming engorged with an oxygenated fluid), then a cold shower will ease that strain right up.

Farmland women strip for courthouse

i always felt a little dirty when walking by the courthouse, like it was undressing me with its eyes or something. now i know what a lecherous old perv that courthouse really is. these aren't young women stripping, either: the courthouse would probably call them GILFs. (also, i can't be the only one who's amused that there is actually a town in indiana called "farmland"... in today's star we have felonious businessmen and a small town called "farmland" full of nude grannies. really making the state look good.)

No comments: