The News

What section of the news do you read first? What sections could you care less about?

The section of the newspaper that I read first (because it’s usually in big bold type and hard to ignore) is the front page headline.

Tsk tsk, plinky. Asking me what I could care less about is actually asking me what I do care about, because if I could care less it means that I already care to some extent. If what you really wanted to know is what I COULDN’T care less about, no matter how hard I tried, it would be pretty much the whole rest of the paper.

Except maybe for the comic strips, but often they’re so buried in such strange and hard to find places that it’s hardly worth the effort. And sometimes I pick up the sports section to see how they’ve re-worded the fact that the Oilers are still pathetic losers. Also I hate all the advertising and all the pictures of houses and cars for sale. Okay, let’s face it. I don’t even remember what else is in there, it’s been so long since I read one.

Normally I don’t see the paper at all, because W gets to it first and reads it from beginning to end and mixes up all the sections and throws them into the ‘paper basket’ in a huge unholy mess. I never feel the urge to sort that out. If he’s away I put a vacation stop on receiving the news. If I get to the paper first I take out the fifty pounds of glossy flyers and throw them into the paper recycle bag. And then throw the remaining bits of the paper (all sections neatly in order!) on his footrest so he can read them from beginning to end and sort them into a huge unholy mess. Tomorrow we will repeat this whole process in the same order, or some variation of it.

So, are you sorry you asked me yet? I could go on for a bit about the black newsprint finger marks on the inside of our front door, or how sometimes the paper comes in a skinny orange plastic bag if the weather is dismal. Or how it’s very useful for starting fires and lining the compost bin.

But perhaps you COULDN’T care less about that. So I won’t.