This is why it's bad to confuse me early in the morning

I opened the newspaper to the sports section, as I do every morning, and on the cover is the headline: "What's an 8 Letter Word for Mediocre?" This was far too confusing a thing to see first thing in the morning, because clearly the best 8 letter word for mediocre is "mediocre." I'm sure there are other 8 letter words that mean mediocre but it seems hard to believe than any would fit the bill as well.

Of course, what the headline writer (who is, by the way, almost never the same person who wrote the article itself- it's the editor's job) was trying to get at was the the P-H-I-L-L-I-E-S are mediocre. This is certainly true, at least so far, but the wording is just dumb. There is certainly no shortage of mediocre things that have 8 letters- Taco Bell, Lady Gaga, Delaware. My name has 8 letters, but that doesn't make me an 8 letter word for anything.

It's like in one class today, I asked a student what something was, as in "What's a ____?" The student responded, "Well it doesn't have a _____." To which I replied, "When is 'It doesn't have _____' ever answer the question, what is something? What is a pretzel? Well, it doesn't have curly hair and long, pointy teeth. Correct, but not particularly helpful.

Of course, the best example of this sort of non-sequitoriation is the spread called "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter." As the late comedian Richard Jeni noted, that could apply to almost everything in the store.