BREAKING: BLOG READER MISSING AFTER ATTEMPT TO ‘GO THERE’

Posted: September 1, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: General Inanity, Woeful Writing | 2 Comments

SAN RAFAEL, CA – Marin County Search and Rescue is calling for additional volunteers to assist with the search for a missing blog reader, The Organic Onion has learned.

Sharpay Jones, 26, was reported missing on Monday evening after telling friends she was going to “go there!”
“We don’t actually know where ‘there’ is, but it has something to do with bacon, cream, sugar or chocolate,” said Cecilia Curtain, a friend of the Jones family who is assisting with the search.
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Authorities suspect that Jones may have been trying to follow in the footsteps of popular food bloggers who routinely “go there!”

“To be frank, I’m surprised it has taken this long for something like this to happen,” Marin County Sheriff Deputy Clark Patterson said of Jones’ emulation of the bloggers and subsequent disappearance.  “Put something in front of them with fat or sugar in it and they’ll ‘go there!’ faster than you can say ‘triple chocolate torte.'”

Leaders of the blog community expressed their regrets over the incident, as well as concern over the rising popularity of the ‘go there!” movement.

“It’s a little unclear, at this point, where this movement is going – no pun intended,” said Holly Hagweiner, spokesperson for blog advertising network FoodScuzz.  “Bloggers say they’re going to ‘go there!’ and they usually describe the place as ‘naughty,’ ‘sinful’ and/or ‘heavenly.’  Is it heaven? It is hell? It is purgatory? We don’t know.”

“In any event, we are hoping and praying for Miss Jones’s safe return,” Hagweiner said.

As the days elapse since Jones was last seen, concern grows over her odds of survival.  According to witnesses, Jones was clad only in a thrifted frilly apron and a pair of vintage Louboutain booties when she vanished – which may have been another nod to her food-blogging idols.

“I just hope they find her soon,” said Curtain.  “And that she never tries to ‘go there!’ again.  I mean, really.  Who cares if she makes her pie crust out of butter, corn syrup and crushed Oreo cookies?  There’s no need to go anywhere because of it.”

HEMINGWAY RISES FROM GRAVE, SUES BLOGGERS FOR POOR IMITATIONS OF STYLE

Posted: August 31, 2011 | Author: | Filed under: Woeful Writing | 5 Comments

KETCHUM, ID – In the one of the only recorded instances of self-exhumation in more than 2000 years, American author Ernest Hemingway has risen from his grave to protest the blatant co-opting of his writing style by dozens of healthy living bloggers.

Hemingway had been dead since 1961.

In an affidavit filed in Blaine County District Court, Hemingway accuses the bloggers of brazenly appropriating his style of brief, understated sentences  and claims that his estate deserves of a portion of their profits.

“These women are writing as if they were the first to discover that short sentences can pack a punch,” said attorney Harry Pomerantz, who represents Hemingway. “But when you’ve got 60, 70 single-line sentences in a row, sometimes only explaining why you skipped the gym…well, it’s like reading The Sun Also Rises. Also it Rises. Also? It Rises. In Addition, it Rises. And nobody wants that.”

Nearly a half-century after his passing, author Ernest Hemingway seeks damages from bloggers who have profited by bastardizing his minimalist writing style.

Among the bloggers named in the suit is Laurel Johnston, who writes at SoLaurelDictates.com. In an email, Johnston defended – if obliquely – the manner in which she blogs:

 “My writing comes from my soul. 

My blog is a creamy ice cream cone, a hug at the end of the day.

My words are tentacles to my flogs [friends who blog].

Lawsuit negativity hurts my heart.”

 “I don’t really know what that means,” Pomerantz said, when shown the email.

Hemingway is claiming a portion of bloggers’ profits from all advertising sources, and would require bloggers to link to his WideSky.com shop, in which his estate sells whiskey and shotguns.

Odette Van Kirk, a professor of English at the University of Idaho in Boise, said the bloggers were far from the first writers to who have tried to knock off Hemingway’s signature style of writing.

“In two decades of teaching freshmen writing seminars, I’ve seen a lot of wannabe authors camouflaging a lack of distinctiveness by ‘going Hemingway,’” Van Kirk said. “The problem with these blogs is that they are using his style of understatement to overstate everything.”

Van Kirk pointed to blog RunGorgeThrive.com, in which the one-sentence paragraph “It was a stretchy-pants night” appeared 45 times in one month.

“I’m all for literacy, but reading these blogs was kind of like sitting through a remedial Toastmasters meeting,” Van Kirk said. “If these women want to find a real style, I’d recommend finding reading material that doesn’t come from the book section of Walgreen’s.”

Still, blogger Holly Pagano of blog PupzInOatz.com, who is named in the suit, appeared unconcerned about the situation, maintaining that her lack of subordinating conjunctions was purely her own.

“Hemingway? Is that a brand of protein powder? Never heard of him,” Pagano said. “He’s not even on Oprah’s Book Club list.”