Can you repeat that in English please?

The best editorials make you think. The worst make you think, “What in the blue hell was that?”
A recent staff editorial in the Monroe (AL) Journal is one of the latter. In Election 2008 sends strong message to other nations, the Monroe Journal takes a stand against those godless foreign countries that had the audacity [...]

Why we write

If anything has proven the importance of small town/small city newspapers, it is the selection of Sarah Palin as John McCain’s running mate. The Anchorage Daily News has been indispensible in helping us figure out just who this woman is.
Still, in some ways, the Anchorage Daily News – as the paper of record for a [...]

New Feature: Behold! A Good Column!

Hi, folks. It’s great to be back. Just give me a few moments to clear out some of these tumbleweeds.
Okay. That’s better.
As you may have noticed, not too much has been going on at our little corner of the web since August. Well, we have a simple explanation for that.
Bosie has been busy as the [...]

Unforgivable blandness

For us, the rich white elitist men who bring you this fine site, fairness is of the upmost importance. As such, this site remains relentlessly non-partisan. We welcome input from anyone regardless of their race, creed, nationality, religion, orientation or political persuasion. Except for women. We believe their brains are too small for the type [...]

Trouble with synonyms

Hey, gang, it’s been a while. As a fledgling blog, we really shouldn’t go three weeks without content, but sometimes these things happen.
What things, you ask? Why, none of your damn business, of course.
(In all, honesty, I had a tough week at work followed by a week of vacation; bosie may or may not be [...]

Stealing from your betters

Whenever a famous writer is interviewed, one of the first questions asked is generally, “Who are you influences?” Most writers seem to immediately name Faulkner because Faulkner for some reason – even if they aren’t Southern. And even if they don’t write impossibly long sentences that may not actually contain a predicate.
This is just something [...]

We do the research so you don’t have to

We, the fine gentlemen who bring you SmallTimeHacks (sorry, ladies, it’s a closed club as sometimes men just enjoy the company of other men named after 19th century homosexuals), do not hate local newspaper columnists. Indeed, we are on their side. We want them to be better people.
Well, we probably care less about them as [...]

Jesus says: No gays!

Our goal with this site is to one day have, like, readers. And those readers would ideally say, “Hey, check out this crazy guy in Wyoming.” (Seriously, if you know of a crazy guy in Wyoming, send his material our way. No, Dick Cheney does not count).
At this point, we have no readers. I asked [...]

So I tied an onion to my belt, which was the style at the time

If you ever wondered why your local paper was so hacky, I may have a simple answer for you. The editorial staff quite likely has an average age of 107 and still thinks the “talkies” are a fad.
Many a columnist at a local paper is a “retired” editor who needs a hobby in between mall [...]

The most pressing issue of our age

The glorious thing about the Internet is, of course, the free porn.
Second to that, of course, is the freedom it provides to writers. Anyone who has written for a newspaper has experienced the joy of compressing the entire history of the Big Dig into 600 words. Online, you can write all you want until you [...]