I’d insert a rim shot here, but that’s a true story. Spider-Man himself is having to hit the unemployment line, and sources say it ain’t gonna be pretty.

I was really interested to hear why Spidey’s alter ego lost his job, though. The Daily Bugle isn’t downsizing or going strictly online or losing advertisers or anything. Peter lost his job because he (SPOILER ALERT, SPOILER ALERT) committed one of journalism’s cardinal sins: doctoring a photo.

Naturally, being a Good Guy, Peter did it for a Good Reason. He was altering the photo to provide evidence that someone was being falsely accused. But all props to Marvel for acknowledging that someone in this profession simply cannot do that, regardless of good intentions.

(Before you Spidey fans all come crawling out of your respective woodworks, yeah, yeah, I know he’s not working for the Bugle these days. But Jameson, even as mayor, is an old-school, printer’s ink kinda guy. The particulars still apply.)

Photographers can try for the best possible angle, use a flash to improve their lighting, sharpen the focus on the screen, but that’s about it. If they arrange a photo in a particular way, it’s called a portrait, or a photo illustration, and it’s labeled as such. In contrast, a news photo better be just that.

Readers and viewers and listeners need to believe that when we publish what we call “news,” it is as true and fair a representation of the situation as we can portray. All we have is our credibility, and if we fake a quote, make up a source, steal a story, or, yes, alter a photograph, that credibility is gone.

Sorry, Pete, but I’m with J. Jonah Jameson on this one. You may never work in this town again.

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Husband subscribes to a forum that posted a section recently about great mondegreens. Those are are misheard lyrics, the term coined by Sylvia Wright many decades ago upon listening to a Scottish ballad. The lyrics really say, “They have slain the Earl of Murray and laid him on the green,” but Wright heard it as, “And Lady Mondegreen,” and we have been blessed with the term ever since.

I was thinking about mondegreens anyway because I happened to catch a bit of that Counting Crows song, “Mr. Jones,” while driving home a few days ago. I know the words are really, “We stare at the beautiful women,” but for a very long time I couldn’t hear anything except, “Hysterical beautiful women,” which actually always made a lot of sense to me. (Beautiful women are rather prone to hysteria, methinks, though I wouldn’t know from personal experience.)

Anyway, Counting Crows came in for some love on this particular forum. Lots of people have trouble with the chorus of, “Hard to Handle,” and even now I’m not absolutely sure of the real words, although I think he’s singing, “Hey little thing, let me light your candle, ’cause Mama, I’m sure hard to handle now, gets around.” My favorite interpretation on this site was, “’cause Mama, I’m Hannah Montana now.”

The usual suspects got good play. Nobody can ever figure out the lyrics to “Jet Airliner” (Big ol’ Jed and a rhino, anyone?) or “Really Love to See You Tonight” (I’m with the rest of the gang, it sure sounds like they’re “not talkin’ ’bout the linen” to ME) and nobody can ever translate anything from John Fogerty.

What I like best are the new contenders. Here are my favorites from that site:

“Mrs. Carmichael’s gonna get you. Gonna knock you right in the head.” (John Lennon, “Instant Karma”)

“Slow-motion Walter, the fire engine guy.” (Deep Purple, “Smoke on the Water”)

“Soup and salad bar!” (INXS, “Suicide Blonde”)

And, my personal favorite, that Joan Jett classic, “Hit me with your pet shark.”

Heard, or misheard, any good ones lately? We’re all ears.

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I think that’s a great idea. I also like the citizen police academies that some of our local law enforcement agencies put on from time to time. When you’re put in the position of having to “be” the officer, you get a whole new perspective on their jobs.

I wish there were a practical way to extend this experience to a few other professions. Teaching, for instance. A requirement for having children should be that every single parent spend a day leading a classroom. Just one day is all it would take, and I’d lay odds they’d never, ever, vote down a tax measure again.

Ah, Media Day! Let’s have a media day here, and invite Joe Public to see how WE do business.

I’d start by bringing in a few hospital people and have them try to report on a multiple-injury car wreck. Some of their colleagues in the health care world will give you a one-word response (”Fair,” “Critical,” etc.) about the patient you’re calling about, which is all you need. Some will say only whether the patient has been admitted. Some won’t even tell you that. It is a total crapshoot as to which answer you get, from which hospital, on which day.

We are blessed with wonderful law enforcement officers who, for the most part, are very good about returning calls and telling us all they can about whatever wreck or chase or arrest we happen to be asking about. But it would be interesting to see them sit on this side of the phone for the evening. Better yet, I’d have them try to write a story based solely on one of their own written reports.

I’d love to get the people who write in corporatese to sit down at my keyboard for an afternoon. Write a story about last night’s city council meeting, I’d tell them. Make it interesting and relevant, but factual and short. The words “utilize,” “paradigm” and “dialogue” are off limits. You have 20 minutes.

Like many readers, I disagree with our editorial perspective from time to time. (Sometimes more often than that.) But I’d like to see some of our louder critics try to write any editorial at all every single day for going on 40 years, let alone two of them, let alone make them interesting, concise, well-researched and well-argued each time.

Media Day! I like it. I learn about your jobs, you come learn about mine. Whattaya wanna know?

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O is for oddities

– “News” covers so many things: Car wrecks. City council decisions. Kids who can blow up balloons with their noses.

As my hero Dave says, I’m not making this up. Back in 2004, a third-grader named Morgan Kepford really did blow up a balloon with her nose, and she got on Letterman to show the world.

I wrote the original story, which of course I can’t find anywhere. Too bad, because the pictures were priceless. I did find this story, which talks about some of her other tricks.

Morgan is a freshman this year, somewhere. I hope whatever she’s doing, she’s doing it with flair.

– “O” can also be for “Olympics,” and “odd” works here, too. I had a wonderful time watching the “luge” and “bobsled” competitions at Sunrise Elementary School last week. My only regret is I didn’t also get to see cross-country skiing, which involved sliding through the gym on carpet-square “skis,” using giant plastic candy canes as ski poles. Way to go, Sunrise teachers, for thinking outside the box – or, in the case of the bobsleds, inside.

– I love doing stories of people who go all-out for their hobbies. (The Mud Festival folks and the First Family of Hockey come to mind here.) When the SCA is in town, or the Celtic festival, or the Civil War fans, send me. Obsessions make for great stories.

One day I got a call from one of our photographers, who was driving through town and saw a man building a masted ship outside his house. The photographer stopped, got the guy’s name and a few pictures, and suggested I tell his story. So I did. That’s another thing I love about my job: I get paid to be nosy.

– These next few really ought to be filed under “P” for “proposals,” but I already have several other stories ready for the “P” category – and really, they fit better with “Odd.” Or, at least, “original.”

I’m talking here about the guy who dressed up like a knight , complete with hobbyhorse, and proposed to his girlfriend on Valentine’s Day at a local Chinese restaurant. And the guy who mowed his proposal into a ryegrass field. And the couple who got married at Walmart. And the pirate wedding. I’m disappointed that AnneMarie Knepper gets to cover a wedding at Station 11 in a couple of weeks, which, reportedly, is going to include an entrance by the groom’s party down the fire pole.

– As “O” can also stand for “Other people’s stories,” I have to share one of my all-time favorites here. A decade ago, our then-business reporter, Brian Bubak, went on a random wonderfest about whether you’d get in trouble for shooting Bigfoot. Being the hard-hitting investigative reporter that he was, he called Oregon Fish and Wildlife to find out. (I’m guessing we’ve been on the blocked-call list ever since.) The result was this story, which I think should be required reading for Hunter’s Safety courses. You never know.

Next time you pick up your Democrat-Herald and wonder whether we’re having a slow news day, just remember: A reporter’s mission is to tell the story of the human condition, pirate weddings and all.

The Bigfoot story? Just consider that a public service.

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I’m only swearing on the inside. It is Lent, after all.

This no-credit-cards commitment is becoming a 40-day-long “teachable moment” for me.

Last Friday was payday, and I hadn’t planned to purchase groceries until then. But on Wednesday, our guinea pig’s hay supply was down to one handful, and we were out of bread because of all the pb&j I’d made the previous weekend. (We also ran out of milk on Thursday because the last bit  in the jug had gone sour. This was four days before its expiration date. Grrr.) So I took a $5 bill – all I had, except for some miscellaneous change – and biked down to Bi-Mart to get hay and bread.

Now, I’ve never bought just a bag of hay and paid with cash. Every time I’m in Bi-Mart, I usually find at least eight or nine things I need, like scotch tape or a birthday card or bargain-priced cans of tomato soup or something. So I’m usually piling a stack of things on the checkout counter, and I’m usually paying with a card. Which is why, when I found myself standing in the pet aisle, staring at this bag of timothy hay roughly the size of a child’s shoebox and realizing that the thing costs $4, I just kept standing there, as if willing the pricetag to change by the force of my stare.

The bread I wanted to get was $1.50.

I finally brought the bag of hay (what do they do, harvest this stuff with gold-plated tweezers?) to the front counter, keeping my eyes peeled for loose change on the floor in the thought that maybe I could get my bread after all. No dice. No bread, either. I took the bag home to the ungrateful rodent and scrounged up 50 cents from my miscellaneous change the next day to buy the loaf of bread. (As for the milk, we drank water with meals until I could get back to the store.)

On Friday, when I got my paycheck, I took $50 to the store to spend on groceries. The rest of the check I’d set aside for gas, a church contribution, music-lesson bills and a trip to the coast I planned to take on Saturday to catch up with some old friends.

I was extremely careful in making out my list: more bread, bananas, grapes, yogurt, fresh spinach, carrots, celery, cucumbers, frozen vegetables, lunchmeat, fresh garlic, mayonnaise, paper napkins, milk (natch), and a box of stuffing and a can of yams because I was thawing a turkey I’d bought back when they were cheap. Husband said he was almost out of Mountain Dew (this is his coffee) and could use a bag of pita chips, which he eats with lunch.

Cost for Mountain Dew: 99 cents per two-liter if bought in groups of five or more.

Cost for bag of pita chips: $4.99 on sale.

Cost for chips and pop, therefore – snacks for one member out of our four-person family – $10, or one-fifth my food budget.

I did get both, but I was sorry I did so when I got home and realized we were just about out of dishwasher soap. On Monday I took back cans and figured I’d pick up a box at that time. Cash from turned-back cans: $3.50. Cost of the cheapest brand, best-value-size of dishwasher soap I could find: $3.49.

Full confession time (again, it is Lent): I also spent $8 of my going-to-the-coast budget to buy two boxes of Girl Scout cookies from the cute kids outside the store. So I actually spent $58, and some of those snacks were for me. But still.

All of this is whispering to me, “See how lucky you are? Think about the people who can’t afford a pet, or a dishwasher, or who never, ever, buy Girl Scout cookies. Think about the person who couldn’t scrounge that 50 cents for the bread, or the cans for that $3.50. Think about what else you wouldn’t have bought if you didn’t already have that turkey in the freezer.”

And to that little voice I say, “Shut up. I’m using my kids’ allowance to buy another box of Samoas.”

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So, with permission from the other Sunday school teachers, I told her she could pick: the “little kid” lesson or a writing assignment of my choosing.

For two weeks now, she’s chosen the writing assignment. And she’s given me some really interesting answers.

Sunday’s focus was Genesis 2 and 3, when God creates Adam and Eve and they commit the first sin.

(Side note: I love, love, LOVE that Internet piece that makes the rounds now and again, the one that says, “God created Adam and Eve and the first thing he told them was, “Don’t.” “Don’t what?” Adam asks, and God tells him not to touch the forbidden tree, and Adam asks why, and God says, “Because I’m your Father and I said so,” and the next thing you know, both his new “kids” are under the tree, munching away and saying, “She made me!” “Did not!” “Did too!” I so wish I had written this, but because I didn’t, you’ll have to read the whole thing for yourself somewhere else. Here, for example.)

Anyway, here were some of my questions for SOP:

– Why do you think God created people?
– Why do you think God created something that Adam and Eve weren’t supposed to touch?
– What was their punishment? Do you think it was fair? Why or why not?
– What do you think you would have done in Eve’s place? In Adam’s?

I had no preconceived notions about her answers. I have no answers for some of these questions. (I really, really hope I’m allowed a reporter’s notebook when I get to heaven, ’cause I think God has some ’splainin’ to do.)

Here is what she said:

“I think God created people because he needed someone to teach his love to.”

“I think God created something that they weren’t supposed to touch because he wanted to see how much they really loved and respected him – whether he could trust them or not.”

“Their punishment was being banished from the garden forever*. Yes, I think it was fair because they disobeyed him.” (This from the kid who threw her pen across the room yesterday and stomped down the hall because I told her I was only organizing a birthday party for her, not a birthday party AND a sleepover.)

“In Eve’s place I would have believed it right away, but in Adam’s I would know that God was not mistaken.”

This last answer puzzled me. If SOP were Eve, she would have believed the serpent over God, but if she were Adam, she wouldn’t? Why?

“Because,” she explained, “Adam was created first, so he knew God better.”

She didn’t take the thought any further than that, but I will. Adam, she was saying, had spent time with God before Eve was created. Adam had a chance to get to know the guy, to see Him at work firsthand. Eve, she thinks, maybe could have been cut a little slack for not knowing better than to trust a serpent, but Adam should have seen his game right away.

Moral of the story: More time spent with God = better knowledge of God = less likelihood of listening to those who speak with forked tongues.

Good lesson for me, too.

* An interesting side note is that, on careful reading of Genesis, we actually learn that God kicked his kids out of Eden not so much for eating from the Good & Evil tree as for worrying that they might also eat from the Tree of Life and live forever (Genesis 3:22). Oddly, God doesn’t say anything to Adam and Eve earlier about staying away from this tree, only that they’ll die if they eat from the other tree. If they had never eaten from the other tree, presumably, they wouldn’t have died – but they also wouldn’t have sinned. Perhaps God was worried about immortal sinners, with unlimited capacity to wreck the rest of his creation? Discuss amongst yourselves.

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I wasn’t sure what to expect from the invitation, especially when it said you could dress like the characters and maybe get a door prize. “Rocky Horror”-style dialogue? Smashing goblets during the wedding scene? People doing squat kicks in the aisles?

Turns out it was much more sedate. We all simply settled down in the darkened theater with probably 100 other people and watched the movie. When the songs came on, someone presumably in a tech booth somewhere flipped a switch and put the subtitles on. I sang – I’ve known the soundtrack by heart since preschool – and I heard other people singing, but none of it was very loud. Not sure if that’s because of the acoustics, or because we’re all used to being quiet in a dark movie theater, or because the movie is so utterly heartwrenching at times that singing, even sad singing, doesn’t seem appropriate.

(Next up:  “South Pacific,” “Oklahoma” and, one I’ll probably squeeze into my schedule, “Mary Poppins.” Admission is $8 and be sure to bring exact change.)

“Fiddler on the Roof” is my all-time favorite musical. “Musical,” really, is almost a patronizing term: It’s a beautiful, sweeping, tender, funny drama that speaks to every aspect of the human spirit. Love, death, faith, romance, persecution, betrayal, redemption, forgiveness – it’s all here. The songs come across as natural expressions of the emotion and dialogue of the moment, not like those setups where people inexplicably break into random bursts of melody. And, I promise you, they will ring in your head for days. This is a good thing.

According to family stories, my grandparents first took me to see “Fiddler on the Roof” at age 4. (I have no memory of this, but I’m betting the graveyard scene tripped me out but good.) What I really remember is that they owned the double-album soundtrack and that I would play it at each visit. Tevye, then and now, reminds me of my grandfather: They have the same combination of wry, resigned wit and slapstick humor; they build their lives around faith and family; their optimism bends but never breaks. They even have somewhat similar smiles.

Just about the best part of parenthood is teaching your kids about the things you love. The Princesses have seen the movie (we prepped them for that graveyard scene) and have the soundtrack on a CD player in their room, where it has been randomly kicking on from time to time because we can’t figure out how to set the alarm on the clock radio.

Best of all, in my opinion, they learned to know and love, “If I Were a Rich Man” long before it was shanghaied by that stupid Gwen Stefani song. If they ever go to “A Grand Night for Singing” with me, they’ll be well prepared.

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It was my turn to guess the word, and Mark Ylen’s turn to give the clues without actually saying it.  He picked up the card and immediately said to me: “Journalists have none of these.”

“Morals!” I shouted. “Conscience! Qualms!” From clear down the hall, my former colleague Mark Peterson hollered, “I know what it is!”

The word, which I never did get, was “ethics.”

That’s a time-honored journalist jab, right up there with cops and doughnuts and sleazy used-car salesmen.

(I didn’t even need to explain that, did I?)

My point today, though, is that while the stories you read may cause you to agree with that adage, the truth is we question ourselves all the time.

Executive editor Hasso Hering read through my story this morning on Bruce Scott Erbs, who became a free man as of midnight last night. After making a few changes, Hasso came to my desk with a question: Are you worried about this story?

I had to admit I was, a little, although not for the reasons Hasso was considering. My boss was wondering if publishing the story about Erbs’ freedom would somehow provoke him into offending again. I was/am more concerned that someone reading the story and remembering his crimes might go vigilante. Vandalize his property, say, or assault him on the street.

I don’t think a story about a convicted felon being released from supervision would cause him to deliberately commit a criminal act. I also believe people are responsible for their own actions, and if they choose to do something reprehensible based solely on a newspaper story, that isn’t the paper’s fault.

But I also don’t believe in falsely shouting, “Fire!” in a crowded movie theater (another journalism adage; look it up). In other words, if you know your words are likely to incite someone to do something potentially harmful, you should have a darned good reason for publishing them.

I think the Erbs piece was right to pursue. The stories about former Sheriff Dave Burright putting him in a tent on the grounds of the Linn County Jail seven years ago made national news. It’s worth noting that even though he was the most stringently supervised felon in memory, for more than six years, he quietly met every requirement and passed every test. It’s worth noting the law has decided he’s paid his dues.

I just hope people can leave it at that.

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The original story, as the followups indicate, was about an Albany resident named Margaret “Peg” Davis and the desk set she had from her father, Joe Healy. A longtime Brownsville resident, Healy had once been a NASA electrical engineer and received the desk set as a gift upon retirement. The pen-and-pencil holder includes a plastic rock containing swirling bits, which Healy’s coworkers told him were fragments from the moon rocks brought back from the Apollo 11 mission (Healy had been present when those rocks were unpacked).

After Healy died, his daughter put the set in a safe deposit box. She was considering donating it as a tax writeoff, but for that, she needed a professional appraisal. When the appraiser told her that moon dust might make the set worth $1 million or more, she decided to sell it instead.

That attracted NASA’s notice. Private ownership of moon rocks is not permitted, the federal agency told her, and initially demanded she give the set back as government property.

That, as you might imagine, is where we came in.

I wish I could find that initial story. I’ve never had the opportunity to call a spokesperson for NASA before. I no longer have the notes or anything, but I distinctly remember the spokesperson telling me they weren’t trying to be the bad guys here. I think they were uncomfortably aware of exactly how bad they looked, trying to strong-arm a daughter out of her father’s retirement gift.

As it turned out, NASA did take the set, to see if it could authenticate the moon particles. Officials there found they couldn’t do so without destroying the set in the process, so they gave it back as undetermined.

Davis ended up putting the set up for auction with a suggested bid price of $50,000. I can find no record, in our archives or online, of whether it actually sold. Anybody know?

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The background: I get paid by the hour, but my job is not quite full time. Ever since our parent company quit putting any money into our 401(k) plans a year or so ago, I’ve been funneling most of my own already-meager-by-most-standards paycheck into that fund. Husband and I used to split the monthly bills roughly equally – he paid the mortgage, I paid everything else – but when we made this shift, he assumed the rest of the regular bills. He now pays for the standards, like utilities, and I pay for the extras, like the Princesses’ music lessons and allowances, and my own cell phone, and any petty-cash stuff.

Here’s the key, though: He also pays the family credit card bill, which is generally how we buy gas and groceries. (And by “we,” I mean, “I,” because if he goes to the store we’ll have 40 gallons of Mountain Dew and a bag of pita chips but no eggs.) But if I’m not using the credit card, I have to buy gas and groceries with cash. And I’m trying very hard to do this with whatever is left of my own cash.

Even though I know, and he says, it’s all “our” money, it absolutely chaps my hide to even think about saying, “Hon, could you slip me a $20 for gas?” That just goes against every particle of my oh-so-independent, got-my-own-job, got-my-own-checking-account and no-I-don’t-need-your-seat-on-the-bus-either womanly mindset.

So instead I find myself just hoping he’ll fill up when he’s in the car. How honest is that?

My love-your-neighbor tank is pretty freakin’ low at the moment, too. I wound up watching three neighborhood kids for most of the day this Saturday (one’s grandma had a memorial service, one’s folks went out of town for the afternoon and one just came over because all the other kids were playing at our house) and I found myself grinding my teeth with resentment because they finished off half a loaf of bread’s worth of pb&j and a giant can of Campbells chicken-rice soup, not to mention a bag of Cheetos, two half-empty bags of pretzels and an entire pitcher of Kool-Aid. Now I have to buy bread before payday, I sulked. I should charge for day care.

“I’m firsty!” the youngest one called an hour later.

“Get a drink of water!” I told her. No way am I getting out the last of the milk, too!

Lord, forgive me, for I know exactly what I’m doing and it ain’t pretty.

The remaining four days until payday look pretty good. I have set aside the $3 the Princesses want for hot lunch on Wednesday and the $2 for the eggs I’m buying tomorrow. I shouldn’t need anything else. Music lesson bills come due this week, but I have a mileage check that should cover those, which means I can spend a good portion of my tiny paycheck on groceries.

I am learning from this. Man, am I learning; all the way from now through Easter (and I am counting Sundays; anyone who doesn’t is just plain cheating and I don’t care what leeway the church allows).

But it’s good. Builds character. I hope.

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