{"id":13379,"date":"2010-10-31T10:05:55","date_gmt":"2010-10-31T17:05:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.kith.org\/journals\/neology\/2010\/10\/31\/the-future-of-pot-is-hazy-get.html"},"modified":"2010-10-31T10:05:55","modified_gmt":"2010-10-31T17:05:55","slug":"the-future-of-pot-is-hazy-get","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/2010\/10\/31\/the-future-of-pot-is-hazy-get\/","title":{"rendered":"The future of pot is hazy. Get it? Get it? I made a joke!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Nearly every major-news-venue article I've seen about California's Proposition 19 (the one to legalize marijuana) has used the word &ldquo;hazy&rdquo; and\/or some other pun about marijuana smoke or getting high. Some samples:<\/p>\n<ul>\n  <li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.fresnobee.com\/2010\/10\/07\/2108183\/the-buzz-would-harris-or-cooley.html\">Details hazy<\/a><\/li>\n  <li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.denverpost.com\/news\/marijuana\/ci_16480529\">California's future under legal pot would start off hazy<\/a>&mdash;note that this version of this AP article says &ldquo;the future gets cloudy,&rdquo; where another version says <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2010\/10\/30\/AR2010103001825.html\">the future gets hazier<\/a><\/li>\n  <li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.bakersfield.com\/opinion\/editorials\/x1970223267\/No-on-Prop-19-Pot-initiatives-issues-too-hazy\">Pot initiative's issues too hazy<\/a><\/li>\n  <li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.signonsandiego.com\/news\/2010\/oct\/31\/prop-19-going-up-in-smoke\/\">Prop. 19 going up in smoke?<\/a><\/li>\n  <li><a href=\"http:\/\/fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com\/2010\/10\/21\/is-proposition-19-going-up-in-smoke\/\">Is Proposition 19 Going Up in Smoke?<\/a><\/li>\n  <li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theprovince.com\/sports\/2010wintergames\/industry+could+smoke+with+California+vote\/3752470\/story.html\">pot industry could go up in smoke<\/a><\/li>\n  <li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.mercurynews.com\/elections\/ci_16408972\">Prop. 19 could flicker out<\/a> (&ldquo;a lot of heat and light without any smoke&rdquo;)<\/li>\n  <li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theprovince.com\/sports\/2010wintergames\/Where+there+smoke+Battle+intensifies+over+California+marijuana\/3717265\/story.html\">Where there's smoke<\/a><\/li>\n  <li><a href=\"http:\/\/today.msnbc.msn.com\/id\/39914211\/ns\/business-bloomberg_businessweek\/\">Reefer sadness for pot growers<\/a> (I kinda like this one, perhaps because it's the only time I've seen this particular joke)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>And so on.<\/p>\n<p>It's like the puns are addictive. It's like the writers (or the editors) are giddy. They can't resist, like a stoner can't resist snacking. It's like the prospect of a pun has clouded their minds. It's like&mdash;<\/p>\n<p>Never mind. You get the idea.<\/p>\n<p>It makes me want to do an ad: &ldquo;This is your article. This is your article on cheap obvious puns.&rdquo; Or: &ldquo;Friends don't let friends litter serious news articles and headlines with cheap dumb jokes.&rdquo;<\/p>\n<p>I know this is nothing new. Headline writers in particular have always loved puns. And articles about sports games and box-office results have always featured puns relevant to the teams or movies involved.<\/p>\n<p>But something about Prop 19 really seems to bring out this tendency in a way that other propositions don't seem to do.<\/p>\n<p>What are these writers smoking?<\/p>\n<p>(PS: Just to be clear: I love puns. What bugs me about these is that they're obvious and ubiquitous and not terribly funny.)<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nearly every major-news-venue article I&#8217;ve seen about California&#8217;s Proposition 19 (the one to legalize marijuana) has used the word &ldquo;hazy&rdquo; and\/or some other pun about marijuana smoke or getting high&#8230;.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[46,29],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-headlines","category-puns"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13379\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kith.org\/words\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}