Week 12 Blog

For the newsoftheweird.com site I clicked on the "news" tab and read the initial page that came up. I will write about an article posted under "Compelling Explanations". The first quip is about a guy who had documents on his computer that pertained to a business matter involved in a lawsuit. He deleted the files on accident. He claimed that he had only intended to delete the massive pornography files that existed on his hard drive.

I chose this article because I thought that it was hilarious. A lot of the articles I thought were funny, but this one made me laugh out loud, what an incriminating statement, "I thought I was deleting porn." It just makes me laugh.

I really don't know why this made the news. Maybe it was a high-profile white-collar crime case. Possibly it made the news because of the idiocy of this guy. I really don't know.

For darwinawards.com I will report on this article. This shit is hilarious (punny). The article is about a zoo keeper who, while trying to relieve one of the zoo's elephants of constipation, died of suffocation under 200 lbs of "poop". Apparently he was giving the elephant an enema of olive oil when the tragedy occurred.

I chose this article because I kept clicking the "random" tab until I found an article that gave me great pleasure. Not that I don't feel bad for the man and his family, it's just that I find that method of death rather amusing. However, a part of me believes that that is a very honorable way to go.

Once again I am not sure why this made the news. I could see it showing up in the obituaries, yet I think that whoever wrote it would be a little more tactful.

You assigned this because you want us to question the quality of the news we read, to recognize and challenge the source of our information, and so you could read anything humorous that you may have missed during your own search of weird news.

America is obsessed with this type of media because it is an escape. People are able to relate their position in society through others (that may be good or bad). When someone has a bad day they can read this stuff and recognize that it could be worse. Another reason why it may be considered news is because of demented individuals like myself who really get a kick out other peoples idiocy. That would be strictly for entertainment.

I don't honestly feel that these articles are objectively reported. Some of them are completely cynical, and there maybe a better way of reporting that "news". However, some of the stories themselves lead to biased articles. When people put themselves in really odd predicaments it would be hard to be objective while writing an article.