The column that has fun with the smaller mistakes and missteps of Australia’s mainstream mediocre; that pays homage to those sweet little fishes that individually don’t amount to a full meal but collectively can cause a tummy upset over the overall state of the once great and noble craft of journalism in this country.
Hail the size of a water bottle! Crikey!
One particular member of the Mediocre Bytes compilation crew who has eight decades of experience of south-east Queensland hail storms – several that did a helluva lot of damage to his car and business place – and they were only golf-ball sized!
But there it was on Nine News’ 6pm Brisbane bulletin last night in the lead-in: “Monster hail blasts Gympie in a freak storm!”
And soon after, news reader Mia Glover: “Hailstones have rained down on parts of southern Queensland with water-bottle sized projectiles belting cars and homes.”
Wow!
Reporter Lily Greer then accurately describes the Gympie town centre as looking more like a driving range, with plenty of vision of golf-ball-sized hail pelting down, with this closeup (below) as proof.
Lily told us residents sheltered inside, careful not to be “caught in the crossfire of these icy projectiles”. Once again, the bitter old hacks who compile this column can’t ever recall hail falling in a crossfire pattern but, hey, we don’t want to dampen anyone’s desire for a little bit of colour writing as they hone their craft.
But the question remained: where were these water-bottle sized hailstones? And what sized bottle for that matter. A small water bottle? A large waterbottle.
Finally, the money shot!
But once again can we be just a little harsh? Maybe we need to go to Specsavers but we think that hailstone looks about half the size of the water bottle shown.
Even the weather guy shown in the segment said the Gympie hail was about 4cm and that looks about right, seeing a small water bottle might be around , oh, 4cm wide and 12cm tall?
Just a little bit of a teensy-weensy beatup about what was belting down?
The hailstone also looks a bit “fluffy”, to quote Harrison Ford’s character in Morning Glory, and we’d rather be hit by that than a much denser stone of golf ball or even orange size, the latter being another common way to convey a hailstone’s size to the humble masses.
So, seeing we can sometimes compile an entire Mediocre Bytes on little examples of hyperboles, dangling participles or basic misspeaks in just one Nine News bulletin, could we find something else from last night’s program?
Well, there was a house fire down on the Gold Coast and reporter Isabel Quinlan told us the “blaze was unrelenting, completely guttering a majority” of the home.
We assume all the home’s gutters were destroyed. Or at least a majority of them?
Yes, we know. Picky! Picky! But someone’s got to do it.
Want to be alerted immediately a new blog hits Australia’s longest running and most offensive satire site? Simply click on the Follow sign or the link below to be emailed new yarns the moment they are uploaded! The very second we go far too far – and trust us we will – you can then quickly unfollow via the three dots!
The Bug Online 