The QT: Our fat, drunk, and stupid nation, the threat of Ted Cruz, and more
A veteran journalist, tongue firmly in cheek, riffs on the latest headlines
News Headline: "U.S. junk food subsidies since 1995 equal to cost of nearly 52 billion Twinkies: Study"
News Headline: "Mississippi among the nation's best at beer drinking"
News Headline: "Utah lawmaker calls for end of compulsory education"
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Consider this an intervention.
Fat, drunk, and stupid is no way to go through life, nation.
***
News Headline: "New theory says the universe isn't expanding — it's just getting fat"
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That goes for you, too, universe.
***
News Headline: "Ted Cruz is a legitimate 2016 threat"
QT has done some research.
No large asteroids are expected to come close to Earth in 2016.
So Cruz will have to do.
***
+ Doug Dahlgren, a Chicago reader, regarding QT's wondering if it could ever get readers to stop playing games with President Obama's announcement that his favorite food is broccoli, writes:
"Beets me."
+ Tara Gallagher, a Seattle reader, writes:
"You may be sailing uncharded waters."
Your cress is as good as QT's.
***
News Headline: "SyFy announces Twitter contest to name Sharknado sequel"
M.T., a Chicago reader, writes:
"Add a new species, and it could be Snakes on the Rain."
Sorry. No more games.
QT will put the brakes on a refrain.
***
News Headline: "Chess game escalates into armed standoff"
Chess rage?
***
News Headline:"George Zimmerman eyes law school"
Fair warning to avert ours.
***
News Headline: "Fracking and energy exploration connected to earthquakes, say studies"
Move along, nothing to see here...
***
QT Grammar R Us Seminar on the English Language:
Karl Weiszhaar, a Denver reader, writes:
"I know that 'defenestration' is the act of tossing someone or something out a window. Is there a word tossing someone or something off a balcony?"
Using the same method of drawing from a Latin root, QT comes up with "demaenianumification."
Except there is not a single Google hit for "demaenianumification."
No. Wait.
There is now.
***
Write to QT at zaysmith.qt@gmail.com
Zay N. Smith is a Chicago writer. Before starting the QT column he worked at the Chicago Sun-Times as a reporter, foreign correspondent and writer of major features. He has also worked as a bartender, having played a key role in the 1978 Mirage Tavern investigation, in which the newspaper operated an undercover bar to document the breaking of many laws by many officials.
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