HUH? Of Crazy Headlines And The Lack Of Gravitational Pull, Or Not

12 August 2026

2000

R. Linda:

I tell ya!

While at work, me fellow British ex-pat Tony came over waving one of those British rags at me.

"You have got to see this."

He slapped it down in front of me. The headline read:

CHEATING DAD WHO KILLED FAMILY AND HIMSELF THEN BURNED DOWN HOME

Tony tapped the paper.

"How do you kill yourself and then burn down the house?"

I took another look at it and shook me head.

"Maybe he was very organised."

Tony snorted.

"Sounds like a story you could get your teeth into."

"It's a good thing me mother-in-law isn't here," I said. "She'd have a field day with that. That is, if she didn't write the bloody thing herself."

I've seen misspellings and botched headlines plenty of times. When one gets into print, the powers that be get rather ticked off, and everybody in the line of fire ducks.

Or tries to.

Tony, however, was now enjoying himself.

"Remember the one about the London Underground? Too much sunshine to blame for Tube delays."

"Sunshine?" I said. "On the Underground?"

"Exactly! Where's it coming from? Is there some enormous window down there nobody's told us about? And more to the point, where's all this sunshine in London? I haven't seen it."

I shrugged.

"And the Pooh one!" he said.

That one I remembered.

SEWER BLOCKED BY LARGE POOH

Underneath was a photograph of a discarded Winnie the Pooh lying across a sewer drain.

We both started laughing.

"Then there was The surprising reason people use umbrellas," Tony said.

"Rain?"

"Apparently this required investigation."

"Do you remember 'Can fish get thirsty'?"

"Slow news day."

"Rain expected to make roads wet."

"Investigative journalism at its finest."

"Headless body in topless bar."

Tony raised a finger. "Now that is a headline."

I sat back in me chair.

"Well, I've got one for you."

He looked interested.

"Yesterday I saw an article online saying that today, at precisely 10:30 in the morning, gravity was going to disappear for seven seconds."

Tony stared at me.

"Disappear."

"That's what it said. Apparently, NASA has something called Project Anchor. Two black holes were supposed to collide and pull the gravitational waves away from Earth. Or push them. Or suck them up. I don't know. There were black holes involved, so naturally it sounded scientific."

"Oh, yeah," Tony said. "I saw that rubbish."

"Did you?"

"Yeah. Didn't happen."

"I know."

I must have sounded more disappointed than I intended because Tony looked at me rather suspiciously.

"What?"

"Nothing."

"Gabe."

"All right, fine. At 10:25 I went out to the parking garage."

He stared at me.

"Why?"

"I wanted to be ready."

"For what?"

"For gravity to disappear."

"What exactly were you planning to do if it did?"

"I got in me car and waited."

Tony was quiet for a moment.

"You got into your car?"

"Yes."

"Why?"

I looked at him.

"I was pretending it was a spaceship."

Gabe

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