Rejected Onion Headlines 7/21

Thursday, July 24, 2008

I have realized that blogging mostly about The Onion is pretty masturbatory. However, there are a few reasons I'm keeping this up:

• I need blog material, and this is close at hand.
• I don't have the time to comb through stuff I don't want to read to find interesting stories about Georgetown, and I'm not living there right now so they don't just come to me.
• Everyone else seems too lazy to post on our blog.

Anyway, a long two-week vacation and special projects week have meant that it's been a while since the last installment of rejected headlines. This week, following an extra brainstorm session, I read 28 headlines instead of the usual 15.

Week Eight
Failing in the first round (Monday 7/21):

1. Dollar General's Troop Morale Low
2. Shark Attacks Sensationalist Media
3. Bush Finally Breaks Out Looney Tunes Ties
4. West Virginia ‘Doing All The Work’ To Keep Up Pen-Pal Relationship With Western Sahara
5. With No Other Options, Man Forced To Create Own Sudoku Puzzle
6. Bored Dubai To Build Next Skyscraper Out Of Poor Arabs
7. Greatest Generation Buys Greatest CD Set From Infomercial
8. Man Survives 14 Hours In Death Valley Without Internet
9. Following Controversial Comments, McCain Campaign Drops John McCain From Ticket
10. McDonald's Worried Olympic Sponsorship May Conflict With Its Nonconformist Image
11. OE: It Would Have Been A Crime If I Hadn't Stolen That Rubber Cement (by a third grader)
12. OE: It's In My Heart, I Just Open Up My Mouth And It Happens (by an amateur karaoke singer)
13. OE: Those Fajitas Better Come With Taco Bread And Salsa Sauce
14. P/CP: Point: My House, My Rules (by a mom), Counterpoint: You Don’t Own My Body (by the house)
15. MAG: If We Put These Pictures Of Obama And McCain Next To Each Other, Does It Look Like They’re Kissing?
16. MAG: We Imagine An Exclusive Interview With J.D. Salinger
17. MAG: 50 Great Ideas That Will Fail To Make It To The Market
18. MAG: “You Have To Laugh” And Lots Of Other Bullshit We Put In Steve Carell’s Mouth
19. MAG: Our Interview With Junot Díaz: Boring As Hell, And He Seems To Have No Information On What It’s Like To Work With Michael Cera
20. MAG: McCain Or Obama? We Help You Cast Your Inconsequential Vote For The One Who Conforms To Your Inane, Misinformed Worldview

Failing in the second round (Tuesday 7/22):

1. Area Grandfather, Baby Given Obsolete Palm Pilots
2. Conspiracy Theorists: Ted Kennedy Being Killed By More Than One Form Of Cancer
3. MAG: Hey There, Is That Picture A Metaphor For America’s Decreased World Power?
4. MAG: Hot New Band Vampire Weekend: From Riches To Further Riches

I got four headlines into the paper this week. Two are magazine covers. One is an op-ed one-liner, an item that will be accompanied by a picture and featured on the left-hand column of the front page of the paper and the bottom of the website (we call them "skyboxes"). The last is another skybox (a news one, not an op-ed), that I will be really excited to see in the paper. I'll just say that it's terribly morbid and is probably the best Onion headline I've written so far.