You know it’s going to be a rough day when you’re walking to the train station along a suburban street in the icy pre-dawn darkness and you’re suddenly hit by a flying rolled-up newspaper.

Damn you to the fiery bowels of hell, The Age, The Australian, the Herald Sun or whatever the fuck you were!

Oh, and paperboy — you just made The List.

There’s a big story in the news at the moment about drink driving players who belong to a football team commonly referred to as the “Pies”. It’s a sub-editor’s wet dream. Match the headlines…

* Club bans porky pies
* Eddie chucks pies on sauce
* Collingwood drink drive debacle — out for season

…to the newspapers:

* The Herald Sun
* The Age
* The Australian

Just get a load of those puns. Answers over the fold.

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Further to this morning’s post about the American Family Association’s gay filter, I was saddened while reading The Australian over a brunch latte (piss off, it’s school holidays) by the fact that News Corporation sees no need to run the same wire story through a similar gay filter.

So I corrected it for them.

The pen is mightier than the printing press

But hang on — what’s that?

Self-referencing exclamation marks

Deary me. I think there needs to a dick filter as well to ensure that there are absolutely no gaymosexual references at all.

I don’t recall The Australian ever being this critical when the Howard government (peace be upon it) was busy slashing funding to welfare programs and public services:

Labor razor gang slashes carers’ bonus

LABOR will scrap annual bonuses of $1600 paid to carers as its budget razor gang carves deep into welfare programs to cut spending and curb inflation.

It will replace the payments with a higher utilities allowance but will leave the sick and disabled and their carers hundreds of dollars a year worse off.

But I’ll let that slide for the moment and say I agree that this announcement is disgraceful. Full-time carers have it tough enough as it is, and were barely supported under the previous government.

Wayne Swan, get your fucking act together. Or join the Liberals.

Timmeh Blair uncovers leftist disengagement.

This article was the most-viewed by Age readers on Sorry Day.

The article in question is a hard-hitting investigative piece about a dog show.

Now I’m the first guy to criticise The Age for its lightweight bubblegum stories and over-reliance on celebrity news and lifestyle guff at the expense of proper journalism, but if Timmeh’s going to have a crack at The Age for something like this he should also take a look at the newspapers of News Ltd. — his employer.

Let’s have a look at the most read stories within the News stable yesterday.

Adelaide Advertiser and The Australian (with its three dozen readers): Tick!

Daily Telegraph (Blair’s employer): Nope. Story about shark attacks on the rise.

Perth Now (online paper): Nope. Some person named Ward is shunning limelight.

Herald Sin: Nope. Stories about people blowing themselves up are always winners.

The Courier Mail: But Australia’s hardest-hitting newspaper, The Courier Mail, takes the cake with its top story about a Harry Potter star dating a — wait for it — EX JUNKIE!!!!1!!!!111! Which one? Dunno. Didn’t read it.

GrodsCorp has been named Blog of The Year.

It won the prestigious title at the 2007 Grods Awards held in Melbourne last night.

More than 2 guests from across GrodsCorp attended the smart-casual dinner in the dining room at The Editor’s house in Brunswick, presided over by GrodsCorp chairman and chief executive The Editor.

Sound ridiculous? Then try this story from The Australian.

We are Newspaper of The Year

The Australian has been named the Newspaper of the Year for the second time in three years.

It won the prestigious title at the 2007 News Awards held in Canberra last night.

[...]

More than 300 guests from across News Limited attended the black-tie dinner in the Great Hall at Parliament House in Canberra, presided over by News Corporation chairman and chief executive Rupert Murdoch.