Back in the daze, the newspaper I worked for had a financial columnist who shall remain nameless but who considered himself an expert, if you will, on mutual funds. So much so that when his son turned 16, did he give his son the keys to a used Volkswagen Bug? On the contrary, he gave his son shares in a mutual fund. I'm sure he told his son "You'll thank me someday."
Said son became a poet whose body of work included numerous references to women's private parts. Whether he thanked his father for those shares in mutual funds I don't suppose we'll ever know. But I was thinking about this financial columnist because on occasion he would use the term "contrarian" to describe a certain type of investor.
I've always considered myself a bit of a contrarian when it comes to writing headlines. Take Jeremy Lin for, oh no, I can't stop myself, Stop! Stop! Whoa, Nellie! for Linstance (slapping self in face), Okay, take a deep breath now, and continue, every headline writer east of the Mississippi has been squeezing every last bit of pulp outof that three-letter name, but how many headlines describing the exploits of the New York Knicks basketball sensation have you seen playing off his first name, Jeremy? That's right. None. So if there are any sports copy editors reading this, I dare you to write a headline like Mamma Jeremy-a, Knicks throttle Pistons, instead of the obvious "Knicks throttle Pistons but Jeremy plays like belly button Lin(t)."
Not to mention, Jeremy is a safe headline word, whereas Lin is a veritable minefield of opportunities to offend a whole culture, as some poor shmo who worked his way up from being an intern at ESPN found out. So why don't more headline writers use it? I imagine it's because they don't want to get fired. Now where did I put that share of a mutual fund? Oh, it's in my Linvestment portfolio (smacking self in face again).
