The Mytery of Joseph Palazzolo

Alleged portrait of Joseph Palazzolo

There is one thing that can be said about Joseph Palazzolo with certainty; and that is that nothing can be said about Joseph Palazzolo with certainty.

Swaddled in secrecy, his life and work are so obscure that even his alleged employer, the Wall Street Journal, has nothing specific to say about him in their official profile of him. They merely list the articles he has supposedly authored.

Is the man real, or just an anthropomorphic algorithm? 

After months of intense research and dogged investigation, Tim Torkildson's Clown Alley is at last able to reveal the startling truth behind the myth of Joseph Palazzolo. He is the creation of the Wall Street Journal's groundbreaking new security strategy -- "Operation Straw Man." 

Concerned for the security of its reporting staff, the Wall Street Journal decided to create several fictitious reporter personalities, complete with ethnic names and pointillist portraits, to deflect the ire and unbalanced attention of lunatic readers from the real flesh-and-blood journalists that work at the Journal. Thus 'Joseph Palazzolo,' writing about gun control, privacy issues, the Supreme Court, and corruption in high places, acts like a decoy, or a straw man -- diverting the enraged crackpots that darken the American landscape nowadays. Efforts by various subversive groups such as the Molly Maguires and the Ancient Order of the Foresters to locate and harass 'Joseph Palazzolo' have kept them from interfering with the genuine Journal reporters. 

How are Palazzolo's stories written? They are simply a pastiche of Wikipedia articles and marital advice columns from the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette. Run through an automated Thesaurus template, the articles have enough patina of authenticity to fool poltroons and the occasional moon calf. Astute subscribers, of course, have always suspected that Palazollo was a myth, a wraith, a mere will-o-the-wisp, and not a solid character at all. Their surmises, it turns out, are correct. 

So if you are ever contacted by a reporter who claims to be one 'Joe Palazzolo' from the Wall Street Journal who wants an interview, you should immediately hang up and then alert the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, because you may be the intended victim of a bamboozlement. 

John Schwartz and the Difficult Cats

John Schwartz, of the New York Times

John Schwartz is a hard boiled reporter who has worked at the New York Times for the past nineteen years. During that time he has seen it all -- the law of the land bent to serve malign purposes; the overarching and implacable march of technology; the insane renewal of the Space Race; the futility of warning the general populace about the coming cataclysm of global warming; and the craven toadying of book authors who would do anything short of honest work to get into his good graces. He even claims to have written humor columns, when he's in a good mood and the planets align.

By his own admission, he is one tough customer who doesn't allow the wool to be pulled over his eyes.

Except in the matter of cats.

As Shakespeare wrote: "A cat by any other name is still trouble." Mr. Schwartz subscribes to that philosophy whole-heartedly, and yet he and his family are part of the world wide conspiracy that continues to aid and abet domestic felines. He can give no rational explanation for his fondness for cats, except to hint at a congenital propensity to be taken in by mousers that has run in his family for generations.

He has tried to break the habit with wombats, iguanas, skinks, dingoes, and flying foxes -- but none of them, according to Mr. Schwartz, possess a tenth of the cunning and fascinating mutability of a cat. 

Outside of this one disturbing foible, John Schwartz is considered to be a genuine humanitarian by his friends, family, and colleagues.

He is the author of half a dozen books, pamphlets, time tables, and telephone directories that have garnered him the position of Sub Adjunct with Woodmen of the World. 

Lela Moore, of the New York Times, Likes to Run

Lela Moore is a runner AND a fighter

If it wasn't for marathon running, says Lela Moore of the New York Times, she'd probably turn into a snarling virago at each full moon, what with the stresses involved in handling reader's comments.

While many readers are pleasant and appreciative of the work New York Times staff does to cover major world events, there are always a few soreheads who have a hatchet to grind; they find fault with everything from typography to POV to niggling factual wobbles. These are the people that would turn Lela's fetching auburn hair grey were it not for the kilometers she puts on her Skoras each week, running for hours in the rain while 'Bohemian Rhapsody' plays in the background until she sprints up those steps in Philadelphia and gives Rocky a high five.

 Her interest in running began as a child, when she suffered from mal de raquette. Her pediatrician put her on a strict regimen of running around the block, and a diet of vanilla PEZ. Moore soon discovered that a constant canter not only cured her of her illness but made it impossible for anyone to ever say anything negative to her -- she was simply too far away from them by the time they began kvetching. In college she majored in Advanced Loping. 

She once ran from Throop to Coxsackie on a bar bet.

Moore is a three-time winner of the Zaner-Bloser Handwriting Contest, and was recently a runner up on Bowling for Dollars. 

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Corey Kilgannon: The Harun al-Rashid of the New York Times

Corey Kilgannon wanders the highways and byways of New York City for the New York Times

Like the fabled Harun al-rashid of the One Thousand and One Arabain Nights, who went out each night in the city of Baghdad to see what his people were up to, Corey Kilgannon wanders about the Big Apple to report on the ups and downs of its denizens for the New York Times. He started doing this nineteen years ago, and has never lost his relish for the offbeat and obsessive characters he runs across.

He developed this passion for probing as a young novice at Seto Ghumba, a Buddhist monastery in Nepal. He was sent there by a wealthy uncle who wanted his nephew to learn how to levitate, and still the unruly clamor of the New York City subway system.

While at the monastery Kilgannon studied the mystical techniques of Ron Hubbard and the subtle ambiguities of Adam Sandler to achieve a state of Nirvana that the older monks could only gape at in awe. The head Abbot proclaimed him आश्चर्यचकित बच्चा -- which means "The Wonder Child."

Kilgannon now runs his own Theravada Transcendental Study Group at the Fulton Fish Market, where he teaches novices the art of observation and engagement. New Yorkers, he explains, are wary of the media and will not willingly open up about their dreams and disappointments. They must first be taught to trust in the Third Eye, and then coaxed to let go of their pastrami-tainted physical self -- at which point they are ready to be interviewed, photographed, and even fingerprinted.

Kilgannon collects kugel recipes in his spare time.

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Are Ballot Selfies Legal? From a Washington Post story by Abigail Ohlheiser.

Abigail Ohlheiser, of the Washington Post

So, exactly how many states ban ballot selfies? CNN’s analysis suggests 18, but there are a few tweaks we’d make to their conclusions. CNN lists Massachusetts as a place where ballot selfies are fine -- but the secretary of the commonwealth told CNN that ballot selfies are illegal, even if there’s nothing they can do to enforce the prohibition.    @abbyohlheiser   @washingtonpost  

Take a ballot selfie in Rhode Island and it's fine.

Do it in New Jersey and you're really out of line.

Try it down in Texas and they'll hang you out to dry.

But out in Californy it's as harmless as bonsai.

Rocky Mountain regions do not seem to mind at all.

But Utah and its Mormons hesitate and like to stall.

I send my ballot in by mail, so mostly I don't care --

but ev'ryone who votes today should get the Croix de Guerre!

Reporter Profile: Sarah Krouse of the Wall Street Journal Has Experienced English Weather and Lived to Tell the Tale

Wall Street Journal reporter Sarah Krause thinks England has too little weather

When Sarah Krause worked for the Financial News in London, England, she discovered, as had hundreds of talented writers before her, that English weather is a palpable presence in everyday life, like double decker buses and Yorkshire pudding. If you don't learn to deal with it, you go mad.

When she first arrived in London her editor immediately handed her an umbrella and a stout pair of yellow galoshes.

"You'll need these, lass, afore the lashin' o' the rain!" he told her in a thick Scottish burr.

On her very first assignment, covering the collapse of the bashed neeps market in Brown Willy, Cornwall, it rained for five days straight, and then fog set in that was so thick she couldn't see the forest for the trees -- or something like that. 

When it wasn't raining the very ground oozed a sullen damp that got into her socks, her car, her apartment -- even her cherished antique hugger mugger on the fireplace mantel; it grew so moldy that she finally donated it to the National Penicillin League.  

And when the sun actually made an appearance it merely highlighted the centuries of soot and Marmite that covered every brick, street light, fountain, and statue in London and the surrounding suburbs. She also discovered that English people see the sun so rarely that it frightens them, and they refer to it as 'the big yellow monster in the sky that wants to kill us with heat rays.' 

It never snowed; the Worshipful Guild of Costermongers spread white confetti on the ground every Christmas Eve, and that was it. 

Krouse soldiered bravely on for three years under these appalling meteorological conditions before succumbing to dish pan fever and being evacuated back to America by the Royal Navy on the battleship HMS Otiose. 

She now writes about the shenanigans of the telecommunication industry for the Wall Street Journal, winning the coveted J. Fred Muggs Award for her coverage of Ted Danson's liver spots. 

She makes her home in the back of the former Buster Keaton Land Yacht:

Profile: Washington Post Reporter Paul Kane and the Fightin' Blue Hens

Reporter Paul Kane of the Washington Post obsesses about the Fightin' Blue Hens.

Kane holds a BA from the University of Delaware -- but a BA in exactly what has never been revealed to the public. Some say he studied such subfusc subjects as the mechanics of jellied eels and the entomology of gutta-percha. The most common explanation is that his BA stands for 'Back Again,' because most of his professors had a strong hunch he would have to repeat their classes. Kane remains mute on the matter, except to say that there's only one goose to the gander and keeping your nose clean is more a matter of mind than of kleenex.

Kane has many interests outside of the office, but here again he has steadfastly refused to ever tell anyone, even his immediate family, what those interests are. We can only assume he plays bongos and is working on a petition to ban evaporated milk from all pumpkin pie recipes.

Coworkers say Kane often talks about retiring from the hurly-burly of journalism to move to Portugal so he can pick lint off of merino wool sweaters.

Kane's obsession with Delaware's Fightin' Blue Hens is so strong that he keeps a dozen of them in a small wire coop next to his desk at the newspaper. Whenever his team wins he roasts one for celebration -- and whenever his team loses he roasts two for consolation. He is working with NASA to send a Blue Hen to the Blue Moon of cliched fame. 

His middle name is not Clarence, thank goodness. 

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Election Day Misinformation -- The Office Desk Phone -- The Non-Vote Bloat

But beware any text messages that tell you that voting hours or locations have changed, that new forms of voter ID are required, or that your voter registration is not valid.  NYT.  @kevinroose 

A gullible voter got text

that his polling station was hexed.

He wore garlic wreaths,

a string of bat teeths,

which made polling judges quite vexed.

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At home and work, technology habits have changed a lot over the years—and then there’s the office desk phone. With people carrying smartphones everywhere, a segment of the workforce has a hang up with the clunky office versions. Employees find them annoying and complicated, if they use desk phones at all.  WSJ.   @jenniferlevitz 

The office phone remains to me 

an ever-lovin' mystery.

It lights up like a Christmas tree

and plays a ring tone symphony.

Each button is the apogee

of any kind of clarity.

If I were Trump I would decree

that office phones are history!

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About half the country’s eligible voters don’t vote — well more than that in most midterms. Yet in a situation such as Tuesday’s election, with the nation divided into relatively equal-size groups of locked-in partisans and control of Congress and some state capitals depending on closely contested races, nonvoters in their own way hold great power. In dozens of battlegrounds, especially in politically essential suburban House districts, it’s the habitual nonvoters who control the margin.  Washington Post.  @mffisher @kristinegWP  

I never voted in my life;

who needs that kind of noisy strife?

Instead I write these lyric lines

(as trite as many valentines.)

My head and heart are in the clouds;

I leave all else to fake news crowds.

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Margaret Sullivan of the Washington Post is a Person for All Seasons

Margaret Sullivan writes about the media for the Washington Post

Margaret Sullivan hails from Buffalo, New York, where she began her journalistic career as an intern on the Buffalo News. She is remembered fondly by her former colleagues as an eager beaver and go-getter who never let the grass grow under her feet and kept an eye peeled for the Main Chance. (It should be noted that all of her former colleagues have been jailed for cliche abuse.)

As a member of the Pulitzer Prize board she helped shape the sound and feel of American reporting, as well as its texture and flavor -- to say nothing of raising its Scoville scale.

Her interests include refurbishing aqualungs and bottling beetroot jelly. She is a registered Whig. 

She often teaches classes in basic Wildroot Hair Cream and Creative Napping at Columbia University. 

Her latest non-fiction book is entitled "The Big Coffee Table Book of Screen Savers."

Halloween Costumes That Can Get You Fired -- My Ballot ain't safe anymore -- Killing Saudi Critics

An Idaho superintendent has issued a public apology and placed 14 employees on paid administrative leave after staff at a public elementary school dressed up as Mexicans and a border wall for Halloween. WaPo.  @emrosenberg 

When dressing up for Halloween

beware of the national spleen

that lacks any humor

and sits like a tumor

upon the American scene. 

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The controversy is the latest in a rash of concerns that have flared across the country, as candidates in both parties have traded accusations about threats to ballot integrity amid multiple reports about voting irregularities. The issue has started to affect voter confidence, according to new polling, which shows that a majority of voters in both parties are deeply suspicious about the opposing party’s commitment to fair elections.  WaPo.  @AmyEGardner

My ballot ain't safe anymore.

The hackers who work way offshore

have got it disguised

so it's compromised

and makes me vote for Michael Moore!

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To repatriate its critics, the Saudi government has tried to lure them back or enlisted friendly regional governments to arrest them or even carried out brazen kidnappings in Europe.  WaPo.  @kfahim  @LovedayM

Killing Saudi critics is easy as can be.

You stuff 'em in a basket, then skewer them promptly.

Or have a friendly nation put them in chains, toot suite.

Then hang 'em up to perish out in the glaring heat.

Rather than a critic, I'd be a camel there --

No one would try to shoot me and I'd get loving care.

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"Never trust a furriner."