Writer's workshop with Mike Fitzgerald!

It's tough coming up with daily content for this site. I don't say this to garner pity, I say it to make a point. One of the features we came up with to help generate that content is the Quick Links, which is basically a list of multiple stories that we make fun of. We fully admit to it being lazy writing, but we can get away with that because we're unpaid bloggers who do this in our free time. If you're a paid writer who has, say, 3 columns a week, we expect a little more.

But Mike Fitzgerald's column Sunday wasn't just an example of lazy writing, it was like a lazy writing clinic. By our count, there's at least 3 lazy writing techniques in just that one column. Missed them? Feel free to follow along at home.

As we said, lists are lazy writing. Lazy writing we're guilty of but lazy writing nonetheless. Anytime someone starts a column off with "A few random thoughts." or "Some loose items for a lazy summer Sunday." they're pretty much saying "I couldn't think of anything so watch me blow smoke out my ass." Fitzy does this occasionally. Don Blount's done it already during his short but illustrious stint as the Monday columnist. Mike Klocke not only throws up random lists but also usually lists the same things (more often than not his columns are an El Guapo roll call). And of course Bob Highfill has made the meandering mind droppings column an art form. Tomorrow one of Must Be's bulletpoints will probably be "I wonder when that Nick Diaz fellow is going to fight again. It's been a while hasn't it?" (By the way, watching Diaz pretty much bitch slap Frank Shamrock for a round and a half was glorious. And the Stockton crowd was out in force Saturday night).

But anyway, yeah, lists only work when the items are related. When you're jumping from budget cuts to book shilling to a glorified obit it kind of kills any flow the column could have had. And trust me, I know all about killing the flow of a column/post.

Next, and the one I take biggest issue with, is playing devil's advocate. Presenting something unthinkably stupid and then saying "Just kidding! But it's an interesting thought, ain't it?" Fitzy not only does this, but he couples it with his populist crusade against "frivolous" government spending (OMG! They're spending money! You guys don't have any! Follow me with your torches and pitchforks!). He spends a majority of his column on this one item in which he suggests killing the Asparagus Festival and the presents and then shoots down arguments to keep it. All in the interest of playing Devil's advocate. Of course he forgot one big reason why his idea doesn't hold water, but it would kill the whole discussion right away so he doesn't bring it up. Plus it also makes his whole excess government spending crusade look bad. And we can't have that.

Anyway, the big hole in his entire argument is that, as he states in his column, the city spends roughly $526,000 on the Asparagus Festival. $300,000 of that going towards police OT. But the city's budget shortfall is $31 million. So his entire bad idea is based on the premise that the city would make up less than 1/60th (or 1/30th if you want to count the 2010 Asparagus Festival as well) of the budget disparity by eliminating one of the few entertaining events we have left since the city raped the spirit of St. Patrick. Of course, this lapse in logic hasn't stopped him before in calling for the elimination of free coffee/water for government employees (saving the city $32,938, which is such a small fraction of the budget shortfall it's not even worth calculating. Also, ironically suggested during another list column), so why should it stop him now?

And then of course there's the last bit of lazy writing, copying and pasting. Which is pretty much what he did with that part about Vernell Jefferson. Maybe I've just spent too much time at the Duke family household, but a large family is hardly a big deal. I used to know a family in Lodi that boasted 22 kids (yes, they were Mormon), so this reprint of an obit doesn't impress me at all. So yeah, saying "Hey did you catch this?" and then reprinting it is way lazy. Sure, we do it all the time. But more should be expected from Fitzy. He's a well-paid columnist in a field that's seeing across the board cutbacks, and we're just a bunch of anonymous drivel.

Is it OK to crush high school and college athletes?

The Record sports section can be at times humorous, like calling a team by the wrong name.  

The Record sports can make a good call.

But one thing I've always taken issue with is crushing non-pro athletes.  

Yes Pacific lost a bad game to a bad team while getting outplayed.  But to say "no one has the guts to take responsibility and say enough is enough," is a personal shot at everyone in the Pacific basketball organization.

But it doesn't stop there.  The whole article is a shot tearing this team to shreds.  And thats garbage.  

Bad losses are nothing new.

Bob, lets take a step back to when you were in college.  What was on your plate?  Next party?  Getting laid?  Wild class schedule and workload?  Working to support yourself?  

Now, lets take a look at Bob the professional.  Bullet point column involving very broad generalizations?  A BS semi-recap of the game and your viewing venue?  I hope you don't hurt yourself with that workload.

In the end, these are still kids, learning to be responsible adults and working towards a higher education.  And at Pacific, they should be applauded for their work and their 82% graduation rate for student athletes. 

If you want to rip someone to shreds, rip the Kings for re-signing Beno to a 5 year deal.  Rip someone getting paid to do their job if it doesn't meet your standards.

But for some reason I can see you in the hot seat while a college coach has a little chat with you.  

Time for a morality check

Morals are a tricky thing. Mostly because the definition of morality is up to each individual person. We don't claim to have better morals than others. Our morals just work for us. Most of us have a similar core grop of morals. Gimmies like buying your 2 year old a lap dance for their birthday or hitting a woman. Both of those are things we hope are universally accepted as immoral.

One of the things that really grinds our gears is when somebody tries to tell us we're immoral. Because most of the time they don't know a thing about us and usually the moral sticking point is something that is anything but a no brainer. Which brings us to Fitzy's column yesterday.

He reviews the book "Edges of Bounty: Adventures in the Edible Valley" by William Emery. The book is about...well we're not entirely sure. (Which is a great sign of quality writing) Whatever it is, it invokes a lot of "isms", which is never a good sign. The main ism that's thrown around appears to be edibilism, which apparently is the practice of catching or growing one's own food. Emery argues that this method is morally superior to commerically grown/purchased food. Why? We never find out. It just is. (Which is a shakey arguement for a blog, let alone a newspaper column.)

Wait a sec, arguements about commercialism and morality without anything substantial to back it up? Why, I believe that's the mating call of the...oh fuck. Hippies! (And if he's not a hippie, he probably should have left out the part about lazily smoking from a pipe on the porch)

God we hate hippies. Out of all the people who try to force their own set of morals upon other people, hippies are the fucking worst (Mormons are second worst).

We're not even going to dignify most of his claims with a respose because that would be lowering ourselves to his level. We don't claim the moral high ground. Because as we said before, everybody's different. Respecting livestock and growing your own food may be good for you, unfortunatly we have these things called lives.

We will tackle his main claim though. Emery states that food you grow/catch/kill yourself is better because you can just tatse to moral superiority oozing out of its juices. So we asked our resident farm boy (El Duke) if that's true. His response:

"I've personally chopped the heads off of and defeathered chickens in my backyard for dinner and didn't notice any difference from store bought chicken. Same goes for the pigs we raised, but how can one really improve upon bacon? He might have a point with food you grow, but that's more because of the sense of accomplishment than anything moral. And a sense of accomplishment doesn't taste like dick."

Wow, that response stank of moral inferiority didn't it? We're not trying to say what Emery wrote is inherently wrong, it's the casual use of the concept of morals that we take issue with. Emery doesn't know any better than you or I do because every person is an individual. What one person might call "parasitical urbanism" might be called "supply and demand" by another. Who's wrong? That's not really for us to decide. (Hint: It's the dirty hippie.)

Don't think we forgot about you Fitzy. What the fuck's up with all the hippie ads lately? First that faith healer bullshit and now this? At least you wrote the Reiki column. Half this column is regurgitated shit from some jackass's book. We can shit out two posts a day in addition to the actual jobs we have, and you can't even form a fucking opinion on the book who's passages you lifted to fill space? You just thank the guy for coming by and realizing we had to step up production after we started supplying goods for more cities.

While we appreciate a good "present the facts and let the reader decide" story as much as the next guy, it usually helps if you present the other side. Otherwise you're pretty much just handing your column over to some douchebag who came by and said our agricultural system is fucked up because they ("they" meaning the ag industry) want to make money. God forbid families get supported.