making headlines

When I work out at the gym I frequently turn on a news channel on the little personal TV screen they have attached to each treadmill and watch without sound. As you no doubt have noticed, it is now de rigueur to have a constantly running stream of mini-headlines scrolling underneath the main features. As a linguist I dig seeing the attempted synopses of various stories into such brief snippets; often it feels like you can only understand the little headlines if you're already familiar with the stories anyway.

For instance, today they periodically ran a line that said something like "Comment leads to Missouri standoff." OK...thanks for letting us know! The other day it was "Caylee's grandfather under suicide watch." Who the fuck is Caylee and why do her grandfather's death-wish issues warrant time on the national news? Sometimes the headlines are funny for entirely other reasons; my favorite one from today was "Men see bikini-clad women as objects, scientists say." Shouldn't that be a headline from The Onion? Who are these scientists? I want to know who designed the study protocol for that one. And whether any of my tax dollars were involved.

Speaking of questionable uses of my hard-earned money, the San Francisco Municipal Railway this morning provided yet another notable public transportation experience. I was heading to work on the 38, and an older woman in a dingy hoodie and sparkly but tattered skirt was sitting near me. Her personal odor was not altogether agreeable, but I've seen and smelled a lot worse on MUNI, and since I was reading a magazine I only really noticed her when she started softly and repeatedly lilting "James Brown!" in dulcet tones, followed by the observation "He and I are from the same place." The she looked at me and asked if I knew the time. I was unwilling to dig out my cell phone, so I showed my bare wrists and said "Sorry, I don't."

"You don't know the time?"

"Sorry."

"I have to take my psych meds."

I smiled and nodded sympathetically. Then she asked, "What are you?"

"What am I?"

"Yeah, what are you?"

I hesitated and replied, "I don't understand the question."

"Are you a nurse?"