http://saveferris.stumbleupon.com/review/2559386/
SaveFerriss dredges up some long-suppressed memories of my last job. I spent a year as a “media monitor” to pay the bills I accumulated whilst trudging ’round Europe, and it’s still the strangest of the jobs I’ve held. My entire day was spent reading newspapers and periodicals for keywords; sounds boring, and sometimes was, but it yielded a surprising number of laughs (all of which had to be suppressed in the library-like atmosphere, or else you’d be shushed within an inch of your life) This fine gentleman and others of his ilk figure prominently in small town weeklies all across the country, for whom the main focus of reportage is the result of the town euchre games, played by Olive, Eunice, Pearl and other old-timey-named ladies. (A friend and coworker dubbed these “GoodTimeHadByAll Columns.”)
As a big-city cynic, I began to find these quite endearing as the year wore on. My absolute favourite is still the small Ontario town who devoted three FULL pages to a description – and multiple pictures of – its first ever stoplight, complete with instructions on how to use it. Then, at the end of the school year, this same small town reported a pranking student as its first ever squeegee kid.
I really must figure out how to use my dusty old scanner – I’ve got some bizarre-news gold that is just begging for a wider audience…
