I was scrolling through my email the other day, and in one of my daily emails from The Onion, I came across this headline:
Study: Average U.S. Third-Grader Reading At Level Of Crow –
Who could pass up clicking on that?
Here’s a bit of what the story went on to say about this sad state of affairs: “In tests of word recognition and reading comprehension, most 8- and 9-year-old pupils in the United States measured up quite well against crows of a similar age.”
As I read the story, it occurred to me that it has been a while since I shared a few classic Onion headlines. I thought it had been about a year, but it has actually been four years. I think I am overdue.
So here are some recent headlines that only The Onion could come up with:
Limo Departing Climate Summit Runs Over Earth’s Last Leatherback Sea Turtle – no story here, just the classic image you see at the top of this post
Zoo Assures Public Escaped Leopard Will Kill Them Quickly – Zookeeper Lloyd Rich explained that leopards are quick and quiet killers, so any concerns that the wild cat would waste time toying with an injured person’s body before finishing the victim off were unfounded. Lloyd did warn that the escaped rhino, on the other hand, would take its time before allowing you to die.
Park Ranger Slips Fat Fish To Bear Before Gesturing Towards Littering Family He Wants Mauled – the ranger reportedly palmed the 700-pound male grizzly bear a salmon and glowered at the offending group as he clenched in his fist the empty Ruffles bag he had found at their site that morning.
Congress Approves Empty Paper Towel Roll For NASA To Use As Telescope – “Thanks to this generous act, our scientists will soon be able to cover up one eye, squint through a cardboard tube with the other, and sort of see a few stars,” said NASA administrator Bill Nelson.
Where’s The Rest Of It?’ Screams Yale President Standing Over Shaking Alumni Fundraiser Who Didn’t Make Quota – Rolling a copy of the Yale Alumni Magazine into a makeshift but effective bludgeon, Yale University president Peter Salovey demanded Wednesday that the trembling, weeping alumni fundraiser getting blood on his office floor tell him where the rest of the money was.
Creepy Old Man Has Book Filled With The Home Phone Numbers Of Everyone In Town – “It’s so upsetting. He has our first and last names, our addresses, our phone numbers. I’ve heard he even has us all alphabetized in there! Ugh, what a freak.”
If I could get a job writing headlines for The Onion, I’d gladly give up my day job of teaching the intricacies of credits on the left, debits on the right…
I wonder what the job pays. Might be worth applying, especially if you can work from home. Then there is the job of creating the images. PhotoShop skills required. Now that could be interesting.
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maybe I could subcontract out the photo work to someone in an emerging country…
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Hell you could subcontract it out to me. Wait am I living in an emerging country. Only my contract rate will tell.
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maybe my lack of photo editing skills would just add to the ridiculous headlines…
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I really like the Onion but I lean more toward the Beabylon Bee.
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Babylon
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I had never heard of the Babylon tree, but I just checked it out and it looks great. Thanks for the tip!
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I like the Babylon Bee, too. But I like just about anything satirical, including the Onion.
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I was happy to find out about the Babylon Bee…
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I still want to know how crows reading abilities are measured.
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you put a bottle of poison in front of it, and if it doesn’t try to open it, then you know it read the warning label…
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😂😂
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I always love a few good headlines!
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there’s almost no need for the rest of the story…
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I agree!!
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My favorite is the park ranger and the bear. I like the visual in my mind.
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yes, it does paint quite the picture…
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Highly entertaining! I can see where this would be a fun job to have. I especially like the “old creepy guy” who is freaky because he has a copy of the white pages.
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yes, the white pages one was funny. I’m not sure how many people got that…
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i love the paper towel roll the best and have always loved the onion. many times it’s very challenging to find the difference between the onion and the real news headlines.
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yes, as I was scrolling through a lot of them yesterday, I couldn’t tell f it was a news story mixed in with the fake stuff…
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These are all very good. We have similar sites here, The Harold, The Rochdale Herald, and Southend News Network among them. The last one has actually had stories picked up and republished as fact by the real tabloids: take a bow, Sun and Mail, for not fact checking your stories 😂
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I will have to check those out – always like a new source of potential blog material 🙂
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If they don’t float your boat, try Wikipedia – they have a list of some of our finest on there. They are mostly Brit-centric though, so may not be much use to you…
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the British ones will likely add their unique sense of humor…
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Some are funnier than others…
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that’s to be expected…
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SNN seem to have stopped publishing – nothing for more than a year – but this was their biggie: https://southendnewsnetwork.net/news/southend-news-network-just-fooled-the-sn-into-publishing-a-fake-news-story2/
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that was funny – vegan stuff is always good for a laugh! looks like a lot of the images are missing though…
that must have felt great to trick the S*N…
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Considering the Scum and the Fail both have well deserved reputations for printing false stories it was quite an achievement. Sorry about the images – they all worked for me! What you might have missed were shots of the writer’s 8 month old daughter in a cow onesie, and a series of screenshots of a conversation with a Sun reporter wanting more background info. Priceless!
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luckily I did see the photo, but Iw as missing all the other screenshots.
I always enjoy the nicknames you come up with for things – Scum, Fail, (c)rap, Trump…
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I think you saw enough to get the point, though.
Scum and Fail are what they are commonly known as here. They seem to fit…
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🙂
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Fun stories. Poor turtle! LOL! Yes, I would like this job!
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those turtles are pretty tough; I think the car may have gotten most of the damage…
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Its been months since I last looked at a phone book. I still get several of them each year.
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I haven’t seen a phone book in a few years it seems like; I wonder if anyone under 20 has ever seen one…
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I hope the park ranger was successful.
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he’d have to clean up after the campers though…
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Not if the bear does a good job.
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🙂
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Brilliant. Welcome back Onion!
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Oh, who wouldn’t want the job of writing these titles? And who wouldn’t want to read every shifty story?
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sign me up for both!
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😀
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I started to comment and then thought, “Why not? Why not write one?” Try it, Jim!
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I like that suggestion – maybe I’ll give it a shot for one of my blog posts!
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You could even make it about economics! I mean, I’ve read Freakonomics; there’s humorous material in numbers!
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Freakonomics was a such a good book, and you are right, humor can be found in just about anything…
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OMG remember phone books!?! Lol this post reminded me of the yellow pages we’d get every year and then look up our friends (or crushes numbers) LOL… or the days of hearing people say, “look me up, I’m in the book!” 😲 Kids, these days, would have no idea what we were talking about!
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I did the same thing when the new phone book came out; what a relic from another time…
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“Zoo Assures Public Escaped Leopard Will Kill Them Quickly” had me laughing too hard!
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the Onion is so good…
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At the moment, I am laughing too much to think of any more career changes. But, hold the presses . . . retired teacher discovers the fountain of youth. Now, does anyone have a photo?
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if the fountain of youth is the same as being immature, then I’ll live forever 🙂
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Good one Jim!
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