06 Sep The Onion

While I struggle to produce my next post, stuck between work and a hard place, regular readers may like to stop by The Onion, a newspaper which, like the vegetable namesake, is guaranteed to draw a tear to the eye.

The Onion may look like a serious newspaper—it formatted and, to first impressions, written like such—but delve several layers beneath the surface and you will discover anything but. The Onion is 100% satire—news stories written from bottom to front, down to up, stories which turn upside down all that is conventional and proper, to humourous effect. The Onion is proof that, The Daily Show aside, irony is not completely lost on American shores.

So good is The Onion that, like a favourite poet or author, you want to savour each and every line—afterwards swallow the nagging regret that you didn’t write them yourself.

But don’t just take my word for it—peel yourself an onion and prepare to laugh until you cry.

CIA Realizes It’s Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years

LANGLEY, VA—A report released Tuesday by the CIA’s Office of the Inspector General revealed that the CIA has mistakenly obscured hundreds of thousands of pages of critical intelligence information with black highlighters.

According to the report, sections of the documents— “almost invariably the most crucial passages”—are marred by an indelible black ink that renders the lines impossible to read, due to a top-secret highlighting policy that began at the agency’s inception in 1947.

CIA Director Porter Goss has ordered further internal investigation.

“Why did it go on for this long, and this far?” said Goss in a press conference called shortly after the report’s release. “I’m as frustrated as anyone. You can’t read a single thing that’s been highlighted. Had I been there to advise [former CIA director] Allen Dulles, I would have suggested the traditional yellow color—or pink.”

Goss added: “There was probably some really, really important information in these documents.”

Read more: The Onion: CIA Realizes It’s Been Using Black Highlighters All These Years