I know life's a bummer baby, but that's got nothing to do with me

"I used to be with it, but then they changed what 'it' was. Now, what I'm with isn't it, and what's 'it' seems weird and scary to me."
-Abe Simpson

Billy was drunk. He had spent the last hour in the bar of the Hotel Marriott in Harrisburg, while a few of his colleagues were recognized by the Society of Professional Journalists upstairs.

The only reason Billy was there was because he had won second place in the far shittier Keystone Awards for a front page design that he didn't even do. But the people who were responsible had moved on to France or TV Guide. And Billy had been working that night so he got a free dinner and plaque.

"Journalism awards are like assholes, they hand them out to everybody," he found himself telling the husband of another award winner. He had presumably snuck out to the bar to watch the Preakness Stakes, which would be going off in about a half hour.

"As long as none of the local horses pull a Barbaro, I'll be happy," Billy said.

"Did your paper do a lot a of stories on Barbaro last year?" the husband asked.

"I would guess about 500," Billy said. He instantly realized this averaged out to more than one per day. He also realized it was an accurate estimate.


The Preakness went off, horses ran really fast and none broke their legs. Billy went upstairs to the reception. His plan was to pound as many gin and tonics as possible during the 45-minute open bar.

After the open bar, Billy followed a few of his coworkers to their assigned table, marked not with the name of their newspaper, but the soulsucking corporate entity that owns it.

He settled in for a banquet of shitty prime rib and shitty wine and found himself sitting next to O'Neill, the crusty night editor.

This was not an ideal position. O'Neill was prone to rambling, incoherent monologues about "where the bodies are buried in Connecticut politics." So Billy decided to go on the offensive.

"Hey O'Neill, when are you going to start a blog?" he said. "Surely you could enlighten some of the young folk on how the world really works."

"Fuck that bullshit," he replied. "It's a sad world we live in when some dweeb on the Internet has as much say as a venerable institution like the Washington Post."

Billy laughed. "The Washington Post? That shit hasn't been relevant since Woodward and Bernstein. I don't see any newspaper reporters calling Bush on his bullshit. It's the bloggers who do that now. Ever heard of The Daily Kos? PrisonPlanet.com? It's a brave new world. New rules, bitch. Adapt or get the hell out of the way."

This seemed to put O'Neill off, he mumbled something about people living in their mother's basements and moved to another table.

Success! Billy thought. He turned back to the rest of his table, who were divided into two camps. His younger coworkers were stifling laughter while those over 30 were aghast. Shocker.

Professor Crazyhate or: how I learned to stop worrying and love the PWNAGE

Billy was driving down to the city at the buttcrack of dawn and he stops at Wawa for coffee and a bagel. Glancing over at the newspaper rack, as he is wont to do, he notices a young man of asian descent brandishing various glocks on all the local dailies, except for the Inquirer (who wisely kept such images below the fold).

That is fucking awesome, he thinks.

Upon return to work, the news editor has worked himself in a none-too-rare rage because 30 or so subscribers, mostly mouth-breathing members of the moral majority, have called him to express their displeasure over this editorial choice.

"Well now you know what the victims saw!" he says into the phone, slamming down the receiver.

"People called in to bitch about the front!" he says like Billy and everyone within earshot has something to do with the choice of photographs. They did not.

Then the crusty alcoholic night editor comes wobbling in still drunk at 3 pm, brandishing the NY Daily News like a club.


"The fuck they did," he says, "Those fuckers need to get with the damn program."

Billy quickly turns back to his computer, so as not to engage the alky in one of his rambling, incoherent monologues about the black arts (of journalism) in the good old days (the 70s).

He sits at his desk, staring at his monitor, zoning out. He's not doing anything, but it looks like he's working. This is the worst reader outrage there has been since Barbaro's death, so it's best to lay low.

Maybe the protesters will show up, he thinks. That would be nice. But tis not to be, the protesters are a story for another day.

The immediate danger passes when the editors head into the conference room for a meeting, so Billy gets up to take a lap around the newsroom. He stops behind the resident ambulance-chasing photographer, who is looking over various front pages at newseum.com.

"The photoshop winner is The Detroit News," the photog says.


Billy heads back to his desk, wondering what it all means. Maybe Richard McBeef, Cho's poorly written one act play will shed some light.

It doesn't. Cho still comes across as a fucking psycho.

"How the hell was this guy allowed to purchase guns?" he says to himself while contemplating how to get a gun of his own. Probably a revolver or shotgun.

But there is no time for idle thoughts -- there are pages to lay out, web sites to update and news stories to write, as Billy's corporate overlords have balanced many golden eggs on his lumpy, misshapen head.