H is for Humorous Headlines

The other day at the bookstore I purchased a quaint little book that had a menagerie of jokes, funny stories and…you guessed it…humorous headlines. I couldn’t help but muse about the strange images the headlines conjured up in my mind. Here’s an example: “British Left Waffles on Falkland Islands”.

I had to think about this one a moment and then break it down to get the true meaning. Okay – the British Left (liberals), Waffles (waver) on Falkland Islands. And I thought they hired Eggo to make a deposit. Alas no syrup is needed, but maybe some punctuation or a word change or two.

Here’s a few more:

“Enraged Cow Injures Farmer with Axe”
“Astronaut Takes Blame for Gas in Spacecraft”
“Lansing Residents Can Drop Off Trees”

And the list goes on…if you really want to read more, you can buy this charming little book here. Even more recently I looked at my local newspapers webpage for the ever so slight chance of breaking news. My curiosity was compounded when lo and behold there was breaking news and the headline read like this “Naked boy with giant poodle assaults Hart woman”. She’s okay I’d like to mention, but what a zinger of a headline. I see that once the story ran in the paper the headline was altered to match the most current state of these unusual events.

As for me, headline writing is not my forte, but I will do my best to avoid such blaring errors of comical proportions. And now for some parting advice from that little book: “Include your Children when Baking Cookies”. Yum…