In the buttocks, Bob

My hero Bob Devney -- eight-time Hugo Award nominee in the Best Fan Writer category, and author of the best convention reports ever written -- writes:

One of my favorite headlines is a golden oldie (though perhaps a falsie), supposedly from a British paper during World War II:

Eighth Army push bottles up Germans

Ha!

You remind me, Bob, of the marvelous headline all of us at the Greensboro, N.C., paper so enjoyed circa 1990, mainly because it was published by one of our bitter rivals, the High Point, N.C., paper. During a drug bust, as the offenders scrambled to ditch or hide or otherwise distance themselves from their illegal goods, one brave fellow who had been smoking cocaine in its crystalline form shoved the "rocks" up his own rectum. The police, however, had brought along rubber gloves in anticipation of this ploy, and their search of each suspect was thorough indeed, so the contraband ultimately was found. The newspaper headline read:

Police find crack in buttocks

I can't say how the staff of the High Point paper reacted, but at the Greensboro paper this headline occasioned daylong merriment. Just as the newsroom had quieted down, some newcomer would walk in, be handed the headline, and everyone would erupt in laughter again. I'm surprised we got a paper out that day at all. Finally, after we settled down and got back to work, my colleague Stan Swofford stood, hitched up his pants and muttered: "I don't know what we're laughing about. Greensboro police couldn't even find that." And we all howled anew.

Ah, journalism!