Tuesday, April 01, 2008

Top 10 Tabloid Headlines for April 2008

cucumber_killerApril is National Play with Words Month!

Actually it's National Poetry Month but to keep the prompts relatively short and encourage people who cringe at the word poetry, it's a whole lot more about playing with words.

Last year I introduced Kenneth Koch's poetry warm up exercises. (You can see them all here by clicking on Poetry Warm Ups over on the right.) They're a way of playing with words to get stuff flowing :-)

No actual poetry will be produced, though you may come up with an intriguing line that leads to a poem or a story.

For today, use the structure of the first tabloid headline and generate similar lines of the form:

Food -- Noun -- -ed verb

Cucumber Killer Captured
Bean Bomber Bamboozled
Anchovy Anarchist Annihilated

Top 10 Tabloid Headlines from APRIL 1998
  1. CUCUMBER KILLER CAPTURED! -- WWN
  2. BEN FRANKLIN SHOCKER!He was a Founding Father, a signer of the Declaration of Independence -- AND A SERIAL KILLER! -- WWN
  3. Teens ordered to clean toilets after peeing on theater seats! -- WWN
  4. 10 GIRAFFES HAVE HEADS TORN OFF -- when zoo truck passes under low bridge -- WWN
  5. Kitten drowned by a giant goldfish!  Cat dips paw in tank & fish pulls him in! -- WWN
  6. Exploding grapefruits kill hundreds in Argentina! -- WWN
  7. DEAD HUBBY BURIED WITH WINNING LOTTO TICKET IN HIS POCKET Anxious wife digs up 103 corpses looking for him! -- WWN
  8. FARMER DEVELOPS THE ELVIS CHICKEN! New birds sport slick hairdos & swivel their hips when they walk! -- WWN
  9. Gun-totin' Texan shoots baby kitten. . .   THEN CLAIMS SELF-DEFENSE! -- WWN
  10. VENGEFUL OLDSTER SUES DAUGHTER FOR DEAD WIFE'S ASHES . . . SO HE CAN FLUSH THEM DOWN THE TOILET! -- WWN

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