Puppies Found On Titanic

[D. Scarlatti]

I picked up what's advertised as the "Final Issue of Weekly World News!" But I'm not sure whether to believe it.

Meanwhile, "Publishers Challenge TV With New Hi-Def Books!"

The new books are an offshoot of large-print editions sold to visually-impaired adults and will present extremely sharp text in a 16:9 letterbox shape. The ultra-high resolution text will provide sharper descriptions with more vibrant color for all readers.

"Purple prose seems somehow purpler," said HD book design expert Phil Masler.

[Potato]

"Publishers Challenge TV With New Hi-Def Books!" sounds like something that the Onion would come up with.

[D. Scarlatti]

In other news a Boston man returned from work to find his unemployed roommate in exactly the same position on the couch he'd left him in the morning: he "hadn't budged all day." Alarmed, the man called an astrophysicist, who said, "Not only wasn't Tim moving, even the atoms in his body were motionless."

The man had "achieved a state of absolute entropic stasis. He was the ultimate 'body at rest' - he had achieved the 'Speed of Heavy.'" The man was jolted awake by switching the teevee to the Yankeesfan Channel.

[livius drusus]

"Publishers Challenge TV With New Hi-Def Books!" sounds like something that the Onion would come up with.
I think the Onion and the WWN have a lot in common.

[Kyuss Apollo]

Last issue of WWN? I'll have to pick that up. That paper was an endless source of amusement and pertinent news events from around the world.

One of the bands I was in back in the day (Exploding Pigs) got its name from a Weekly World News article about an unknown force devastating swineherders in Brazil.

No more Bat Boy! :bigtears:

http://www.danielamos.com/stunt/batboy.gifhttp://content.answers.com/main/content/wp/en/1/1e/Batboy_Steals_MINI.jpg

[Ensign Steve]

Oh, that's where the pageant photographers got the inspiration for the doll eyes.

[Kyuss Apollo]

Check it OUT! A coloring page of Bat Boy! He will now live on, on all our refrigerators...

http://www.paperpumpkins.com/images/coloring/coloring013.gif

[Ymir's blood]

Weekly World News is usually the only supermarket tabloid worth checking out. They've always been over the top but this last decade seems to have them stop caring at all about reality. Always a good thing IMO.

Now I've a mind to make a bat boy smilie.

[livius drusus]

Here's (http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/06/AR2007080601293.html?sub=AR) a great tribute to the checkered history WWN in the Washington Post.

It all began in Lantana, Fla., in 1979, when the National Enquirer, America's premier tabloid, bought new color presses to replace its old black-and-white presses. The Enquirer's owner, a former CIA agent named Generoso Pope, couldn't bear to leave the old presses idle, so he founded Weekly World News as a sort of poor man's Enquirer, running celebrity gossip and UFO sightings that didn't quite meet the Enquirer's high standards.

"Early covers tended to be dominated by a gigantic celebrity head -- not headline, head -- like sitcom king John Ritter's head the size of a beach ball," Clontz recalls in an e-mail. "Circulation didn't top 200,000 until then-editor Joe West named my brother Eddie managing editor and gave him sweeping powers over content and presentation. From that point on, it was Katy bar the door."

Eddie Clontz was the mad genius behind WWN. A 10th-grade dropout from North Carolina and former copy editor at small newspapers, he imbued the WWN newsroom with his unique philosophy of journalism: Don't fact-check your way out of a good story.

[curses]

This was a post from Neil Gaiman regarding the rag:

Fortean Mysteries

Neil Gaiman - Neil Gaiman's Journal: Fortean Mysteries (http://www.neilgaiman.com/journal/2007/08/fortean-mysteries.html)
When I first came to the US in the late 1980s -- before I even moved to America -- I used to love the Weekly World News. It was like a little doorway into a world that worked on story logic. While a story here or there would be too far-fetched, there was a strange delight to wondering if some of the stories might be true, and one would occasionally run across things one had already seen in the Fortean Times or in the News Of the Weird. But mostly it felt like a joke -- one that you were in on, and that some people weren't -- "There are people who believe this," it seemed to be saying. "Be thankful you aren't one of them." It was a portrait of a cock-eyed, X-Files world.

It famously only existed because the owners of the National Enquirer had a black and white printing press and, after the Enquirer went colour, nothing to print on it.

I stopped reading it in about 1992, picked it up again in around 2000 when a friend got a job writing for it, and I had a wonderful time suggesting stories. I noticed they rewrote them to put jokes in, though -- weak, "don't take any of this seriously" jokes.

A few weeks ago I heard from my friend Bob Greenberger (who worked there) that the owners were closing it down.

So I picked up the final copy today, because I was passing a cash register and it was the last one after all. Even allowing for the probability that it was filled with articles they'd commissioned and hadn't run because they weren't very good, or that they were reprints, it... well, the whole tone of the thing felt wrong. The articles were just silly. It wasn't story logic any longer. A baby gets delivered in an avocado because the sperm donation got mixed with avocado sushi... There wasn't the feeling reading it that anyone could have believed it. Not children, not the stupid, not someone who'd been born and raised on Mars and this was the only thing they'd read. It was like the joke had become nobody could believe this stuff. And now nobody was buying it. It had a Sergio Aragones drawing though, and some comics...

I can't believe I'm sitting typing about the long-lost glory days of the Weekly World News. Probably, it was of its time anyway.

And truly I've always preferred the Fortean Times.

[slimshady2357]

At my former job I occupied a standard cubicle, one amongst many in a large room. I used to plaster my cubicle with articles from the WWN. Awesome, fantastical, magical articles like 'Man Eating Sheep' complete with pictures of sheep with photoshopped in vampire like fangs. I would have a couple dozen up at any time and would slowly exchange the oldest for new ones as each new copy of the WWN came out.

People would come by regularily to see what was new and have a good laugh. There were even people who would ask about once a month 'Do you think that might be real?' :D Seriously, they would ask. And I would point to the picture of Clinton shaking hands with poorly photoshopped in aliens and say 'Sure, it's from the same paper as that story, how can it NOT be real' ;)

I haven't seen a copy in a couple years, but I'm still a little saddened that it's gone. It provided me with a lot of laughs and loads of good conversation.

[D. Scarlatti]

The main reason I bought this issue (I actually had a subscription, years ago) is because it said "Farewell to Ed Anger" on the top, but there's no damn Ed Anger column inside. Bastards. (No "Dear Dottie" either.)

Also, I just noticed I paid $2.99 for the damn thing. Jesus, I thought it was 50 cents.

By the way I read A LOT of stories by Joe Berger. He was the best.

[Uthgar the Brazen]

I'm going to miss WWN. A film class I took used it as an example of a great place to mine ideas. And it always made my day. :sadcheer:

[livius drusus]

There's a sweet little article by a former WWN, erm, reporter in Salon today: Farewell, Bat Boy (http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2007/08/25/weekly_world_news/).

I once pitched a story positing that the U.S. government had data confirming that the one commonality linking all mass killers, including the Columbine shooters, was that they never masturbated. Rather than issue this report, which would save lives but promote onanism, the government preferred to let occasional slaughters take place. My editor rejected it on the grounds that it was "too plausible."

During my stint at the News I turned down chances to write for (the much better paying) Enquirer, because I didn't want to engage in celebrity trash-talk. WWN avoided celeb gossip, with the exception of Elvis and politicians (for instance, Donald Rumsfeld: "Rumsfeld Changes His Name to Rumsfeldstiltskin and Tells Rogue Nations 'Guess My New Name or We'll Invade You,'" "Homeland Security Chief's House Robbed Five Times in a Week"). By those standards alone, I considered it a higher calling.

[viscousmemories]

Rumsfeld Changes His Name to Rumsfeldstiltskin and Tells Rogue Nations 'Guess My New Name or We'll Invade You,'
:laugh:

[Ymir's blood]

That could totally have happened.

[erimir]

I once pitched a story positing that the U.S. government had data confirming that the one commonality linking all mass killers, including the Columbine shooters, was that they never masturbated. Rather than issue this report, which would save lives but promote onanism, the government preferred to let occasional slaughters take place. My editor rejected it on the grounds that it was "too plausible.":foocl:

:bow: