Cursing in the newsroom

I think the solution is obvious: Next time you see one, launch into a joint rendition of "Uncle Fucker," then demand your one-day suspensions. To be served at once, of course. None of that spreading-it-out bullshit.

 

So I take that no one here has worked for a psuedo-Menonite as ME and a Mormon as SE? I can't begin to tell you how much fun it is.

We curse anyway, but have been warned via e-mail by the SE because he was too much of a pussy to actually confront us. He told me he was offended by my cursing. I told him I was offended by his chickenshit lies to get out of his shift to watch BYU in the NCAAs. So fucking busted.

We openly encourage him to move to Provo.

 

I used to throw pens when I'd get really pissed off, until one time a pen ricocheted off a desk and almost took out an eyeball.

I've tried to tone down my swearing, especially at work, because it does reflect poorly. Still, I can cuss with the best of them when the need arises, and lord knows I've muttered strings that use the f-word as just about every part of the sentence. When a computer eats a page or swallows a story I've been working on forever, breaking out a "son of a biscuit!" just doesn't cut it.

 

true story: one of the very first conversations i was privy to at my place was when a desk guy came over to the sports department and loudly proclaimed he hoped jim edmonds would get arrested for bending chris carpenter over and "raping him in the ass." then, he said he hoped edmonds would get repeatedly raped while in prison before "getting shanked and bleeding out." in turn, he then went on to say he wished carpenter would catch aids from the "assfucking" he took from edmonds and then "die a slow miserable death."

yes, the desk guy is a cubs fan, and yes, there is a touch of cursing that takes place at my shop.

 

Taters, my friend wants to have a talk with the people in your office (slightly NSFW).

http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z164/emanicke/funny_cat_pictures_082.jpg

 

Idaho's off the hook.

 

If I were chazp, I'd drop that three-letter palindrome acronym, then talk about asking female athletes what their favorite position is.

Regardless, that was fucking funny.

 

On the dog issue: I didn't mind the dog roaming around. It was a harmless fucker, one of those sheep dogs.

At a former stop, my boss brought in his German shepherd every day, and the dog was a regular fixture in his life. A co-worker brought in a 3-year-old on a regular basis. When Boss' German shepherd died, he wrote a column about the dog's death, complete with a photo (our photogs always took goofy pics of us). Interesting reading, to say the least.

 

The paper I recently left started integrating its copy desks into a universal desk around five years ago. I had moved on to a non-news department by then, but the guys in sports would pass along their war stories. Things leveled out as time passed -- the sports guys eased up a little bit, but the news guys got a tad more colorful and less restrained.

The wusses from the old news copy desk had a hard time at first understanding that sometimes you just have to let fly with a "shit-fuck." They began to adapt, though, when they started handling some deadline sports copy and found themselves on the wrong end of one of your run-of-the-mill, AP clusterfucks -- a seven-inch hole layed out and only four inches of copy half an hour after the post-game show was wrapping up on TV.

Speaking of TV, a few of the news copy editors regarded the sports desk of the old days as the toy department in part because we also had the TVs tuned to ballgames. They had a hard time comprehending that the only way we used to get MNF into the Tuesday regional edition was to top AP running with three paragraphs on the winning TD drive written from TV on deadline.

Seeing it up close and in action rather than from the other end of the room gave them a little bit more of an appreciation for what we did. Games that ended at 12:15 a.m. found their way into the full press run. Homocides and traffic fatals from 9 p.m. too often only caught the replate.

You perform well under pressure and the people in charge tend to look the other way when you feel the need to recite George Carlin's greatest hits.

 

At our paper, election night. And they act like it's some big fucking sacrifice. Then they complain when sports people start eating the pizza brought in to atone for this huge inconvenience.

 

Kitty learned well from Mommy, didn't she?

 

First football Friday night, come in about four and buy the staff pizza at 5... when Newsside comes over, complain loudly