Sigh. I tried to let this go. I really did. I took the article I had ripped out of the newspaper and folded it into quarters. I left it under a pile of books. I wanted to let it slip out of date. I hoped my outrage would subside, and for a time it did. In fact, I nearly forgot about it.
But last night I was visited in a dream by Jacques Barzun and Theodore Bernstein combined in the form of a two-headed woodpecker. They arrived quietly, surreptitiously tied my shoelaces together, and cackled spitefully when I fell. Such was my punishment in the dream for disregarding the importance of clarity of thought and expression, and I was further instructed in the error of my ways by a staccato barrage of stereo pecks.
“All right!” I cried. “Jacques! Ted! I’ll be silent no longer!”
So. The following has been carefully transcribed from the 16 November 2006 Anchorage Daily News. All errors in punctuation and grammar are those of the source. Please follow the footnotes for my arrogant and pedantic comments.
Troopers try to sort out shooting after house door is kicked open
A Wasilla man was shot in the arm Tuesday after he kicked the door in of a Wasilla home, intending to assault the man who then shot him, troopers said[1]. Troopers and Wasilla Police responded shortly after 2:30 p.m. Tuesday. Alaska State Troopers Wednesday did not release the names of either the shooter or the man who kicked in his door, saying Wednesday[2] that the difference between the victim and suspect is vague and needs to be sorted out[3], said troopers spokesman[4] Greg Wilkinson.
“These two gentleman were known to each other,[5]” Wilkinson said, “This was not just a random act.[6]” Wilkinson said the 20-year-old man who kicked in the door had showed up with between four and five[7] other people, intending to assault the 21-year-old inside. The man entered the house and was promptly shot. The people who had come with him ran off, Wilkinson said, and the wounded man drove himself to a local clinic.He had surgery to fix a damaged bone in his arm. Clinic personnel called troopers[8].
Groan. Bitch. Gagging noises.
[1] Here’s some poster board and a marker, you go lie down on the rug in the living room and diagram that sentence. No, wait, that was mean. So it was a rough entry, but let’s give it a chance to improve. A plucky newspaper reader can hope, can’t he?
[2] Oh, I’m glad Wednesday was mentioned again. It was hard for me to remember that it was Wednesday, because the first time was all the way back at the beginning of the sentence.
[3] Woah. Hang on. I thought that “troopers” was a plural. There must be an apostrophe AWOL. Uh, all right. I have a pen. ” ‘ ” There. Okay, continue.
[4] The difference between the victim and suspect is vague? Are the two men becoming some kind of single amorphous blob? I assume what is meant here is that the police aren’t sure if either or both of the men committed a crime, but that is not at all what has been stated. Of course, this may not be the reporter’s fault because we are about to check in with Officer Wilkenson, who evidently is not capable of making a cogent statement.
[5] What the hell does that mean? What’s with the crazy tense? Do these guys both have amnesia? And why gentlemen? Neither of them seem particularly gentle to me. God help us if there’s something politically incorrect about just calling them men.
[6] Wilkenson has essentially said there is a reason this happened. While I find it comforting that this police spokesperson does not believe in a universe ruled by chaos, I don’t know exactly what that has to do with the story. If, f’rinstance, he happened to know what that reason is, that would be a different matter altogether.
[7] Here’s the deal: I wasn’t there. I don’t really know. Maybe there was a portion of a person there. Maybe there was someone who was dead inside, and therefore only counts as two-thirds of a person. It might have been an animate hand. It’s not my place nor do I have clairvoyance enough to make any pronouncements such as these, but it is my place, as someone who doesn’t want to be confused or have strange images thrust into his head, to say that it was not very likely “between four and five people,” it was “either four or five.” Ooh! How about just “four or five.” What’s wrong with that? Nuthin.
[8] Blink, Blink. What did they call them?
Now — Jacques, Ted? Can I go back to dreaming about unmentionables?
Clearly the assailant showed up with four people and a midget, but they couldn’t think of a politically correct way to say so.
I think they may have been using the word “difference” as a synonym for “disagreement” — but that’s a veddy British usage, and completely out of line in so lower-class American an article as this egregious piece of crap (of course I mean the newspaper article, not your post).
Ah, how I wish I had so dreadful a newspaper to make fun of! All I have is the Oregonian. Oh, wait. Never mind.
Damn! I hadn’t thought of “disagreement.” Curse you, Rochester, curse you right to heck!
*sigh* If only I had a quarter for every time I’d heard that. I’d . . . well, I’d surely have enough to buy a high-end candybar by now. Like Green & Black’s organic 80% cacao dark chocolate. Oh man, that’s good stuff . . . bitter and haunting as a melancholy one-night stand with the woman you’ve always dreamed about but could never have except for that one fatal night after a bottle of red wine redolent with sun-kissed fruit. But I digress.
Sniff, sniff. What is that? Scotch?