There was a phrase in the previous blog entry on the 6-year-old kid, where I imagined the school staff: “Run in circles! Pull out your hair! Scream like a little girl!”
Today Nancy in Illinois complained that was “sexist language.” She writes:
This story is what got me started on remembering Herb Caen — it’s from True’s 17 May 2009 issue:
Important Update Below
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Sundays are writing day around here: it’s the day I write This is True each week. This week, I had the usual line-up of stories about stupid people doing stupid things (or, as the case may be, smart people doing stupid things!) when I came across the story of Mark Rimkufski from the weirdest state in the union, which is of course Florida.
Episode #28: “You Think Your State is Weird?”, from True’s 14 December 2008 issue.
Episode #18: “Artificial Education”, from True’s 5 October 2008 issue.
Episode #14: “How Embarrbutting!”, from True’s 7 August 2008 issue.
I do a lot of research when looking for stories, and I see quite a bit of amazing stuff. Most of it I use for stories, but sometimes even truly wonderful items just don’t quite make it into the final product. This is one such case.
There’s a group of friends I hang out with online, all of us online entrepreneurs. One sent a URL around urging us all to “take 8 minutes to watch the video,” adding “if you care about such things, please consider blogging about it and/or passing it on.” What things? Our kids. Or, more accurately, the education of our kids. The world is a very, very different place than it was when we were kids.
Do the ! and ? in the title above, in relation to the quotation marks, bother you? Vindicate you? Make you wonder? Maybe you’ll enjoy this little debate, which opened in the 22 January 2006 issue.
I Became Aware of the Beaver Problem when researching the 18 June 2000 issue. People really enjoyed the resulting story. Pay particular attention to the second half:
See 2006 Update, Below
Many readers enjoyed these two stories that appeared in the 16 February 2003 issue, as they showed how different — and how similar — Australians and Americans are:
See Updates Below!
I showed a friend the story below from the 3 October 1999 issue, and she found it way too hard to believe.
It’s really hard to coin a word. I tried it in the 17 July 1994 issue: