Great Paragraph

Today, CNN.com had the headline, "Jack Hanna, flamingo trapped in airport turnstile." Jack Hanna, if you didn't know, is an animal expert and director emeritus of the Columbus Zoo, who is often seen on TV talk shows showing off animals and being generally goofy. The story proceeded with this opening paragraph:

"COLUMBUS, Ohio (AP) -- Animal expert Jack Hanna and an 11-month-old flamingo became trapped while trying to squeeze through an airport security turnstile. It took firefighters to finally get the flamingo out."

We had to read five more paragraphs to finally learn that Jack Hanna was able to free himself without help before the fireman were called. Aw, shucks.

Great Sentence

Because I write those humor column thingies for Real Change, the ones called Adventures in Irony, which I have been posting over at that other blog, I constantly read news items about various subjects, but especially about homeless people and homelessness. My main hope is to find something outrageous to rant about but sometimes I find other sorts of gems hidden in the rough.

Today's rough was an article in the San Francisco Chronicle titled Children who survive urban warfare suffer from PTSD, too. The gem is this sentence:

"The F-word flew smoothly out of Tierra's mouth as if it had been there before, which it had."

I want it known, here and now, that, if you ever see me writing a sentence like that, it was totally intentional. Oh yes, I write humor, oh yes.