Dear dimwit on the phone

Dear hick who has too much time on his hands,

I understand your frustration that I never wrote that big front-page story on the broken traffic light in town but what you don't seem to understand is 1.) the light works now and 2.) you wanted a big front-page story on a broken traffic light.

I understand you may not see how stories on the town council's pending budget nightmare and pension reform aren't "important" but, believe it or not, I know for a fact those stories impact more people than your stupid traffic light.

And I know you came up with the clever headline "Lights out" and I'm sure you were really proud of that for a couple of weeks but, sir, it is neither original nor creative.

So, please, stop emailing my reporter, myself and my publisher asking for a front page story on a light that used to be broke and now works. It's never, ever, ever going to happen.

Yours in Christ,

-Schieza

 

You only write about traffic lights when they'e broken!

 

Hey, in a small enough town, that's a big story...

Other heds?

Lacking Direction
Failure to light
Anyone need a light?

 

The daily in the town where I live -- not where I work -- had a front page story a few weeks ago about a new four-way stop. Thing is, it's on a street that runs by our house. I actually read it with great interest.

 

Oh, I could understand that but this story, essentially, was that there was a new traffic light installed in this small town but it hadn't been activated (yet).

By the time we got a call on this, the light was a couple days away from getting activated and it was up and running by the time we went to press.

So, apart from a "How important are traffic lights?" story, I don't know what we could have done with this completely, 100 percent irrelevant story.

 

Dear lady who was "offended" by our choice of calling last night's football game "sloppy."

Did you actually watch this game? There was about 215 yards of penalties combined. Combined offense was 313 yards. There were six combined turnovers. The other team's punter couldn't catch his three snaps. The first time it happened, he was on his won goal line and instead of kicking the ball out of the endzone, he tried to throw it and got illegal man down field and intentional grounding penalties. The home team had a player pick up a punt from the ground forgetting he was on the receiving team and not the kicking team.
Ma'am, the game was offensive. The people on the sidelines knew it was terrible. Anyone who watched the game knew it was a bad game. The coach talked about all the mental mistakes and bad play on offense.
We're not going to talk about how hard Little Billy played, because, well, he really didn't and that is why we called the game sloppy.
And, now, I'm not going to apologize to the team, they need to apologize to me for watching that game.

 

I'm never moving to Rhode Island. Everybody who lives there is a dimwit who spends all their time calling Schieza and Rhody.
If there was no Rhode Island, this thread would be closer to 20 pages, instead of 70.

 

Back in the day, the Washington Post Style section was known to take something odd like that, some weird reader call, and spin in into one of those projects where four writers went out and did four different kinds of stories. Not suggesting that in this case, of course ...

 

I am Rhode Island born, and I am Rhode Island bred and when I do, I'll be Rhode Island dead.

This message wins!

 

Don't forget Sgreenwell. He contributes to this thread quite often.

 

I was just going to post! Aw thanks sweetie <3

 

Get a room ...