Pot, kettle, etc.

Another youth-bashing article about kids gone bad. Yawn.

Except this one is so remarkably smug and arrogant about the whole issue that it was worth me breaking out of my torpor and writing something down.

More than 1500 Facebook users, most of whom appear to be students, say they plan to attend the "Castor Bay Beach Party 2!" on Auckland's North Shore in December.

Students! Here we go:

On the Facebook page, posters do not appear to care about the residents of the area, the police, the illegality of their actions, or grammar.

Adam Ellington, whose profile picture appears to show someone throwing up, is defiant.

"This is win. We will win. Cops wont win [sic]," he wrote.

Laura Petrova Isaac also intends on going.

"ha ha went to the first one... and the next day it was all over the news and i was watching it with mum and she goes 'some children these days! im glad u dont do stupid things like this' lol... uuhhmmm.... [sic]" she wrote.

Weird! These kids are paid professionals, right? I can't believe they submitted that writing to the Herald without fixing such simple grammatical and spelling errors. Don't they have a subeditor to pick up on this?

So it was already unintentionally ironic enough that this article got published in a newspaper that is regularly riddled with the sorts of grammatical mistakes that would make a gardening society newsletter editor blush. Until...

Finding that sentence really made my day, like a ray of sunshine bursting through the self-satisfied smog that is the rest of this piece of 'journalism'.

Also, everyone knows that 'maybe attending' is polite code for 'not attending'.

Trick or.... threat! (sorry)

A new candidate for most outrageously overblown headline and story - "Kids' threats shatter Halloween night". The whole thing is atrocious:

Children trick or treating in South Auckland - some younger than 10 - took the "scary" side of Halloween too far last night by threatening people who did not give them sweets.

Police dealt with more than half a dozen cases of children swearing, intimidating and being aggressive towards people who refused to give them lollies.

More than half a dozen! What, seven? Eight?

One Herne Bay resident told the Herald the inner-city area also had problems with terrifying trick-or-treaters, with up to 150 flocking to the suburb for Halloween. "There are even some shipped in from Glen Innes for the better pickings."

Mr Alofa said police had not received any reports of people being "shipped in".

People from Glen Innes visiting Herne Bay? Christ, why didn't you say this was serious??

Oh wait, you did.