I really like that headline. I may just quit there. Write a good headline, call it a day. Leave ‘em guessin’. What I’ve always dreamed of, as a blogger, is the mastery of obscurantism. In college we learn from our literature professors that great writing is incomprehensible to ordinary people, and therefore society must have more literature professors. Only they can possibly understand what Joyce is yammering about. As a blogger I aim for a style that goes beyond enigmatic, into the unintelligible. I want readers to say, “That blog item is so bizarre and convoluted it makes Finnegans Wake look like a Betty Crocker recipe.”Long time readers may remember Mr. Achenbach for his commentary on new media:
In the great Charles Portis novel “Masters of Atlantis,” the allure of the Gnomon Society is its promise of secret knowledge that will never be fully understood by anyone. The Gnomons are few in number, and constantly struggling with dwindling membership, cultural irrelevance, and internecine squabbles over narrowly argued doctrinal disputes, and certainly their fortunes are not aided by the fact that their belief system seems to be built on a foundation of vapor. But they persist, somehow, because they feel the seductive power of infinitely unspooling mystery and teased-out revelation. (As quoted in The Post’s 1985 review: “The Rosicrucians had finer robes and the Brothers of Luxor had eerier ceremonies, but in the way of ideas that could not quite be grasped, neither of them had anything to touch the Cone of Fate or the Jimmerson Spiral.”)...MORE
...When in doubt, go with the most hysterical headline.
(Rule one of blogging is that the End Of The World will be good for page views.)
Or Risk: "Under the world's greatest cities, deadly plates"
Or "Blingnova! The origin of gold"
