Saturday, April 2, 2011

The WTF Headline of the Day

You know I've been missing our periodic Bizarre Newspaper Headline Contest. Is it just my feeling or have newspapers become really stingy with them? But I need not have fretted, for you can always rely on the Express Tribune to chase away those blues...


Express Tribune, 1st April 2011

That's a story from Sukkur (I have yet to figure out why Sukkur stories appear regularly on the "Karachi" pages but that's a separate matter) about how people were upset at Pakistan's loss to India in the cricket World Cup semi-finals. And the headline is:

"From India losing, our nose cutting the team has"

It's placed in quotes in the headline though no one in the story utters those words in that fashion. Yes, someone does say "India se haar ke humari naak katwa di hai" but he says it in Urdu and it is after all a fairly normal idiomatic expression.  And no I don't think it's one of ET's April Fool's jokes today. So all I want to know is, what the eff is it supposed to mean?



18 comments:

  1. after this headline, Kamal Sidiqi ko bhi apni moonch kata leni chahiye

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  2. This definitely has serious WTF value. Also, I'm kinda agreeing with Shahid Saeed that it might be a failed attempt at Yoda-speak. Or, the person who put it together was on drugs. Or, whoever was supposed to proof-read it went for Friday prayers and never came back (as most people do) and somebody else (who was on drugs or under the influence of fanboy-ness) attempted Yoda-speak and failed.

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  3. It's NOT yoda talk. I work at ILM and people here would take a serious offense if they read this headline :D

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  4. Anwar Iqbal, WashingtonApril 2, 2011 at 11:00 AM

    Well, people often do that, using idioms like “what goes of my father” but those are common and people understand and appreciate the joke. Here, it is totally lost between the reader’s nose and the team’s performance in Mohali.

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  5. I know. It featured on the tribune site somewhere I was like, do I seriously need to brush up my 'hip' english n idiomatic crap. Even my SAT sentence correction practice led me nowhere with this expression.

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  6. Brilliantly spotted, Pyala.

    My favorite WTF headline was told to me by Ejaz Haider (no need to corroborate, I'm sure he'll vouch for the authenticity of this one). It concerned the crash landing of a PAF training jet in which the pilot managed to escape unharmed. The headline: "Plane Crashes: Pilot Ejaculates".

    R.A.

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  7. Let us find the brilliant author of this nose-cutting headline. Mahim Mahir, who i think heads the Karachi city desk, seems behind this fireworks.

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  8. Isn't the newspaper itself one giant April Fools' day joke?

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  9. Is this news paper some small time worthless one - we've got millions of them here in India. One of the news channels about the 'match-fixed' news item - it's of that ilk of entities that just don't cut ice with any of the public.
    .
    If Express Tribune is not a worthless news-paper, I'm really shocked (at that excuse of a head-ilne)!!

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  10. Gosh, This newspaper can never be taken seriously! ET, WHEN WILL YOU GROW UP!

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  11. Nope, I don't buy it. April fool is a Western thing. It is not practiced here. and please don't tell me that not knowing Western customs is being ignorant or 'backward' if that had been the case, West would have been the most ignorant.
    this April fool thing that ET came up with was insipid and ersatz.
    PS. By West I mean the developed countries of the West. I don't mean to treat at a monolithic entity.

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  12. Kamal Siddiqi mounchless hai.

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  13. is it a jewish site ? just for propagandia against islam ,patriotism, gherat ? mr xyz, when will u get name ( i know cant get father's name )

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  14. My favourites are still the ones from Dawn about two years ago - 'Cow blows landlord fatally' and 'Six bitten by mad bitch'. Reading the latter, my pal Pasha exclaimed, 'Hey, my ex made the headlines!'

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