Today’s Sunday Times includes an article about the two British suicide bombers. In an otherwise pretty good article, the reporter Nick Fielding slips in an ultra-stereotypic way when describing the other man’s youth: But he also had non-Muslim friends and enjoyed playing football and snooker. As if choice of sports really had anything to do with one’s personality.

Another journalistic blunder was the inclusion of a 1/3 page story about the upcoming Harry Potter game. The article highlights the various obstacles Electronic Arts developers had to overcome in order to make the game work. No wonder she’s the richest person in Britain when she gets this sort of free publicity.

Financial Times, a respected, although a tinted broadsheet – bad pun intended –, once again demonstrated how difficult it is to master the art of headlines. Saturday’s leader piece bore the heading Gains and losses in the local elections, with a clarifying subheading There was good news and bad news for the main parties. Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Oh, and another thing: one FT writer referred to Matrix as a ”cult hit”. What a weird definition that is.

Okay, who confesses to messing around with our copy of today’s Guardian? First there was this astonishing headline.

Not to mention the picture accompanying it (why the hell is he smiling?). The whole thing had ”the Onion” written all over it. Now, I was willing to write that one case of as a freak accident.

Alas, more fun was on the way. Come to think of it, everything worked out in a way that bears a strong resemblance to self-fulfilling prophecies: once you know what to look for, it becomes much easier to find. But I’m hurrying ahead of myself here.

So after American media satire it was the turn of an old British favourite.

Tell me this headline isn’t something out of a vintage Monty Python episode.

Luckily things then started to slow down.

This headline doesn’t actually have anything to do with the paper but with the English legal lingo in general. Could someone please tell me what constitutes a legal killing?

One more item before I stop. This was a brilliant example of spoof advertising, more clever than the little scuffle between Ryanair and Easyjet (no way am I going to endorse their silly way of capitalizing the name). In case you’ve no idea what I’m talking about, Easyjet has been running ads with the line ”High prices to Spain? That’s bullocks!” to which Ryanair responded by quoting a survey about the reliability of various airlines and the line (paraphrased) ”Punctuality? That’s bullocks!” But I digress.

Take a look yourself. First the one pushing BT’s new number directory service and then the competing one:

But then again, anything is better than the slogan of one local bar / club / restaurant / whatever, the name of which fortunately escapes me: ”Be scene, not herd”. Now I might be a tad on the slow side but doesn’t being part of the scene mean exactly being part of a group of people, ie. herd?