Amber Night

Every time someone splits an infinitive, God kills a sea otter.

Later in this article (EDIT: The original article has been removed, but Google remembers all.) you will learn that Sony's PSP uses witchcraft to seduce your innocent teenager into viewing porn, and that you should be scared and outraged. But because it's the first sentence in the story, the very first thing you learn is that there currently is a copy editor strike at KMSP FOX 9, Minneapolis, and Muppets have been brought in as scab replacements: 

Kids are using a gaming device to access porn out of thin air, even at school Kids like to keep secrets from adults, there's a kind of power that comes from knowing the adults are clueless.

Oy. Reading this comma-spliced abomination from the morphological abyss is like trying to ice skate in stilleto-heeled diving fins. FOX dudes, I'm not asking you to get all crazy in the paint with your grammar and shit. It's the internet. Relevance is measured in hours and you don't have time to have every single story graded by Mrs. Schultz, the grammarian from hell. I understand that. I can truly dig it. I'm just, you know, asking for a little respect for the language and for your reader. And by respect I mean shuffle your lazy ass on over to your co-worker's 6th grade daughter who understands rudimentary goddamned sentence construction before you post this piece of what can only be loosely described as "journalism" to the big scary intarweb. Thank you. Apparently the uncredited (and who can blame them?) FOX 9 Investigator who wrote this explosive exposé has discovered something truly diabolical which has nothing to do with his or her proofreading skills, yet it oddly showcases those skills. 

What mom thought was just a game is actually a very sophisticated piece of electronics that a clever kid can use to capture pornographic images out of thin air.

Porn. From thin air. Thin goddamned air. God only knows what they can pull out of thick air. Possibly a copy of Strunk & White, but I'm not getting my hopes up. 

On a dare, Jeff showed his pals how the PSP could magically display images of naked women. 

Can you just see it? Little Jeff in his Harry Potter getup, round glasses and all, whipping a hanky off his PSP, as his friends gather round in wide-eyed fascination. Where before there had only been pictures of naked men–behold!–nekked women, in all their buff and busty beauty. From the void, the ether, the plane of nothingness, emerge clad-less temptresses, conjured as naked as the day they were born, which was in fact right this very instant. Sorcery! Jeff then goes on to perform the jumping fingers trick, after which he is drawn, quartered, and burned at the stake. The story goes on to expose the horrific truth behind the magic:

There are lots of places besides a school, where a kid can go to get free wireless access to the internet. Jeff showed us, and his mom, how his PSP was able to hook up to a wireless connection outside a public library. once connected he could surf to his hearts content. 

Not only will the investigators at KMSP FOX 9, Minneapolis, stop at nothing to bring you the hard truth behind the unholy ritual of the Summoning of Teh Naked Babes, but said investigators will not stand idly by while a comma is placed correctly after the word "school," or the first word of a sentence is properly capitalized. Neither will they stand on proper tense. That's not how those brave Investigators roll. (And when I say brave, I'm looking at M. A. Rosko, who so bravely maintains her smile on the KMSP FOX 9, Minneapolis, web banner because, well, the surgery really won't let her form any other facial expression.)

We found numerous web sites that cater specifically to the PSP.

This just in: The KMSP FOX 9, Minneapolis Investigative Reporter Team now has Google technology. The competition will never know what hit them. WCCO Channel 9: we're looking at you. You guys are fucking toast.*

The FOX 9 Investigators tracked down the owners of one of these sites. Its run by two,19-year old brothers. Reporter: "Are you trying to target kids with this?" Website Operator: "Not at all, because its really hard to get money, or advertising if you have only kids coming to your site." His target audience, he says, is the over 30 crowd that owns PSP's. Reporter: "How do you know you don't have some kid who's 10, 12, 14 years old going on to your website?" Website Operator: "We really don't know their ages, or their gender."

It's worse than we thought folks. Not only are there "two, 19-year old" (as opposed to "two 19-year-old") brothers running a website, they have no fucking clue who's accessing it. Unlike the rest of the internet where age is closely monitored by all website owners, these punk-ass (or, in FOX-speak, "punk,-ass") derogates think they can just flaunt the rigid rules that govern the internet and let anyone with a magical connection access their site through thin air. Hey 19-year-old duo, the entire rest of the internet knows the age and gender of their website visitors. What makes you so special? Bastards. 

Dr. David Walsh is president of the National Institute on Media and the Family. He says parent's need to get hip about the technology their kids are using.

Yes, "parent is" need to get hip about technology. Parents might also want to consider getting hip about technology.

At Jeff school, they're rethinking the policy that allows students to bring portable games for use outside of class time. 

Jeff school board have heap much thinking first before implement policy. I for one would love to know what the editorial process is at KMSP FOX 9, Minneapolis. It's one thing to read a piece of journalistic crap like this on somebody's personal blog, or even one of the many pseudo-news sites that make the internet such a colorful place. It's another to read it at a supposedly professional news station. And I know at least some of you are saying to yourselves, "Amber, it's FOX. What do you expect?" Here's what I expect: Keep up the good work KMSP FOX 9, Minneapolis. We need more stories like this. If I'm going to read yellow journalism that makes gaming look scary and evil to ignorant people, I want it poorly researched, proofread by Muppets, and presented in eye-bleeding typo-vision. It's stories like this that keep blogs like mine running. Good on you KMSP FOX 9, Minneapolis Investigative Reporter Team.

* This just in: Amber Night has also acquired Google technology. Call me, WCCO Channel 9. We'll deal. Thanks Dave for pointing me to the story.

This entry was posted on Friday, June 2nd, 2006 at 11:42 am and is filed under Main Page. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.