I have a friend who sits down every day and reads the newspaper like a novel. The front page, the classifieds, the business, auto and life sections, the ads for long term life insurance, and even the harness-racing results...all of it. He doesn't own a television, and only months ago did he get a computer and an email address.

He (let's call him Reed) is the only person I know outside of maybe my ninety-three year old great-aunt Reba who still receives all of his information from the fish wrapper. The rest of us unconsciously eat our information via the headline. Little, eight word hors d'oeuvres aimed at whetting and seducing the individual's appetite for information. Headlines on the television beneath talking heads, headlines on websites quietly purring 'click here,' on your phone, f***ing everywhere.

Yes, I know that it is inevitable, and I need to get over my reticence to all that is 'progress,' but why, if we are so inundated with all these headlines, do we not get a headline each day that represents the state of the world? I want my daily global headline, damnit! Using four or five headlines, picked at random each day from the world's media outlets, I charge that someone come up with a new headline which incorporates, satirizes, honors the individual words of the headlines into a more macro-headline about a day in the life of our world. This headline could come in the form of a new headline, but also in the form of a literary structure, e.g. a haiku, sonnet, etc.

I respect Reed. I too would love to take the world in at the speed a newspaper affords, but that's not very practical or respectful of progress now, is it? By the way, I just remembered: my aunt Reba has a television, so she is off the list.

Example:
Headlines from Wed. Jan 11, 2006:
Power Has Limits Alito Tells--NY Times (pertaining to Justice Alito's senate confirmation hearings)
On the Wings of a Virus--LA Times (pertaining to the spread of the avian flu virus)
Sharon Moves Left Hand, Showing Improvement--CNN Website (pertaining to Ariel Sharon's recovery from a massive stroke)
Mine Safety Probe--West Virginia Gazette (pertaining to the death of miners last week in Sago, WV.)

Resulting Headline:
The Left Hand of Power Has the Safety of a Virus, Alito Tells
or
Sharon Wings Showing Improvement
or
Power Has a Virus