what's black and white and read all over?

Often, reading the newspaper only seems to reinforce my long held notion that the world is completely fucked. Usually this feeling comes as a result of actual news. Rarely does it stem from the way an article has been written, although it has been known to happen.

Allow me to present to you an article from yesterday's Brisbane Times:

My immediate reaction to this was what the flying fuck is a goon bag?
Like "king hit", which is possibly the most revolting and unnecessary of these colloquialisms used by Fairfax publications in place of actual words, it's a term I've never heard before.

Thinking that there would be explanation offered for this odd and unfamiliar term, I started to read. As it turns out, the headline is downright misleading. The assault in question actually occurred more than two years ago, and the article concerns the sentencing of one person involved in the assault. Now I hate to be pedantic, but if you're going to be this imprecise with headlines, then why not see how far you can push the envelope? Last week when everyone was pretending they had something new to say about Princess Diana's death, why didn't you go with "Tragic Princess Dies In Car Accident, aged 36"? Oh that's right, because people would notice you were rehashing a years-old article to fill space on a slow news day.

The author of this article, Christine Kellett, who the Brisbane Times website tells me "...enjoys reading, eating out and entertaining friends and family from south of the border.", and whomever her editor is, seem to be of the opinion that "goon bag" is a term their readership is familiar with.   

Anyway, back to the point. I still didn't know what a goon bag was. I read on.

Right.

This bag of goon can be used to knock the glasses off someone's face? Interesting.

So this goon stuff must be quite dangerous then, if she's threatening to break the bag, I thought. I needed to know what on earth a goon bag was. It seemed like tragic Aussie Slang, so perhaps Urban Dictionary would be able to help.

It was:

Right. So this is an article about somebody hitting people with a plastic bag full of liquid. This must truly be the zenith of your journalistic career, Christine Kellett. I strongly doubt any of the injuries sustained by any party during the assault were a direct result of being "bashed with a goon bag".

I think perhaps this nonsense can be explained away by remembering that this is the Brisbane Times. Our neighbours to the north aren't exactly renowned for their intellectual prowess. Perhaps everyone in Queensland knows what a goon bag is. Perhaps they regularly purchase and consume them. I don't know.

What I do know is that the differences between Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne can be summed up quite neatly by this little screen capture from two weeks ago:

On the left, we have the most read article in Melbourne that day, a juicy political scandal. On the right, Sydney's most popular article, an international sport star caught up in a drug scandal. And in the middle, what have Brisbane-ites been reading? An article about A TALKING CHIPANZEE.

Comments

[living is detail]

Are you making fun of "The Smart State"? Oohh that is asking for it - they might come down here. Very funny post.