Giving Bad News

Tell people bad news
they already know:

Like marauders taking
what little is left,
the days of peak oil
are upon us. We hoard
water and a few precious
cans in cold, dark houses.
We see on the horizon
towers of black smoke,
signalling the death
of the last city.

Repeat bad news
again and again:

The joke is dead:
a man stops walking
into a bar; St. Peter isn’t
waiting at a pearly gate;
the blonde has a Ph.D. now.
Laugh-tracks goad
us to find the humor
in fake-news shows,
wanna-marry-a-millionaire?,
extreme makeovers,
celebrity cook-offs,
and Seinfeld re-runs
we’ve seen a hundred times.

Be sorry about bad news:

With a heavy heart,
I must tell you
That car owners, especially
those who own Hummers,
Dodge minivans
or retro-styled vehicles
and cover them with bumper
stickers, score fourteen points
lower on IQ tests.

Tell people bad news
they’re going to find out
anyway:

When you are retching up
your guts in bloody clumps,
remember that I told you
that seventy-nine percent of
all drugs approved
by the FDA cause nausea.

Tell people bad news
they probably won’t find out
anyway:

Men, while we’ve been busy
killing, pillaging, raping
and causing havoc in the name
of God and country,
an insidious network of geneticists
has quietly spread the word
that the days of the Y
chromosome are numbered.
What makes us male
has recently been described
as “the most decayed,
redundant, and parasitic
of genetic accessories”.

Tell people news that isn’t
bad but might sound
bad to them:

Our eternal dissatisfaction is
a fact of Darwinian evolution.
Soon used to the very
things we once craved—
the sleek new shoes,
the hip new gadget,
the prestigious new car,
the sexy new lover—
they lose their luster,
and we take them for granted.
Their desirability
Wears off, we adapt,
and move on.
Ensuring our survival
for another day,
the thrill of the hunt
returns.

If you haven’t given people much
bad news in the past,
explain the change:

Now that federal agents have
the house surrounded, I want
you to know that one in twelve
Americans over twenty-one
has never paid taxes.


Don’t blindside
anybody:

I have some difficult
news to share with you,
which affects us all, but
I’m confident
we can weather
together,
so here it comes:
The typical kitchen sponge
is home to seventy-five
thousand kinds of
bacteria.

When explaining
the causes of bad news,
consider the stupidity
defense:

By the authority
of the President,
the federal government is
classifying documents
to be kept from the public
at the rate of one-hundred and
twenty-five
a minute.