Listing to Port

1. Number boffins have shown that over 90% of interview time is devoted to the front of interviewees’ heads. You can improve your coverage by allocating 50% of interview time to the back of their heads instead.
2. Always strive to give a voice to the voiceless, a name to the nameless and a bottom to the bottomless. In the specific case of bottoms, always make sure to provide both buttocks equally. Otherwise the formerly-bottomless may end up leaning too far to the left or right when they sit.
3. Increase balance by carrying out all panel interviews on a large square board which is precariously balanced on a central column above a pit full of wet sharks. Mark one side of the board with gradations from authoritarian to libertarian, and the other with gradations from economic hard-left to economic hard-right. Interviewees must stand on the position on the board corresponding to their political views. Unbalanced panels will be literally eaten alive, although you may run the risk of ending up with a large number of newly-converted centrists who are hugging each other and crying.
4. Why not increase coverage across the veracity spectrum by having one interviewee who always lies and one who always tells the truth? You may ask one question. This will allow more time for advertising.
5. Never forget to devote equal screen time to the existential horror point of view, perhaps by getting a representative from the void to come on screen and howl for a few minutes.

1. Take the bad news outside, tie it to a pillow and punch it
2. Bury the bad news
3. No really, bury the bad news, bury it like the victim of a murder, at night in the woods with a sharp stick through its heart, bury it in black bags or with its organs decanted into nutshells for the squirrels to dispose of, and when the police find the bad news, as surely they must, they will never, never know whose bad news it is or why it was bad
4. Stare unblinking at the bad news for three hideous days and nights, until at last the bad news blinks its wide yellow eyes, turns, and slinks away
5. Take your best red dildo and fuck the bad news until it is sated and sleepy
6. Tell the bad news to everyone, tell it to your friends and your family and to strangers on the bus and to the sky and to locked doors and to the dead silver fishes at the market, tell it and tell it until the bad news is worn thin with telling and flakes apart onto your shoes
7. Hold the bad news close until you find someone else you can give it to
8. Take the bad news by the hand and lead it into the mountains, until it and you are so tired that you are falling asleep where you stand, but make sure that it falls asleep first
9. Drink the bad news, drop by bitter drop, and piss it away into a clean porcelain bowl
10. Teach the bad news how to use language, and to swear, and teach it words it never knew, teach them in English and German and Japanese, teach it to be a poet of the curse, teach it and teach it until it is a tiny buzzing bee of obscenity, then let it loose on the North wind to puzzle lost and distant travellers
11. Hold the bad news gently and tell it that you know, you know not all news can be good, and it is not the fault of the news itself, and let it go free into the world unashamed