Punning for Dummies

Yesterday, Apple announced that they would be releasing a new red iPod Nano, that would sell for $199. Of that $199, $10 would go to fighting AIDS in Africa. And frankly, I'm outraged.

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for fighting AIDS. And if you can do that by selling a product people like and make a buck doing it, that's great. But Google News had 61 articles related to this story and not one was titled "An Apple a Day Keeps AIDS Away." Common people, that headline freaking writes itself. The closest Google had was "An Apple Can Keep AIDS Away!" from EFYtimes.com, and that's a pretty garbled version of what it should have been. Plus, to add insult to injury, EFYtimes.com is a news service in India. As if it wasn't bad enough that India was kicking our ass in the programming and tech support industries, now they're threatening that most sacred of American economies: the obvious headline pun industry.

Not a day goes by where ESPN.com's headline doesn't make my appendix hurt (for those who don't know, scientists recently discovered that the appendix, long thought useless, is actually an advanced pun detector, hurting slightly when near puns), but I worry now about just who's writing those puns. Are they American-made puns from unionized job-shops? Or are they bought from Indian pun outsourcing firms for three cents a pound?

But there are those who comfort me. Like the Washington Post reporting on a new computer game called Bully, which was taken to court over whether it was appropriate to sell to minors (and won, thankfully). The Post's headline? "This Bully isn't so Tough."

Or the New York Daily news who, reporting on the rainout of the Mets game and how it gave Mets pitcher Tom Glavine an extra day of rest, named their story "Rest assured, Glavine ready."

Thank you, brave punners, for giving me hope.

In other news, the Detroit Tigers won the ALCS and I was there to see it. I don't have anything particularly clever or interesting to say about that, I just wanted to brag.