News You Can Bruise for 2000 June 6 (entry 1)

Tue Jun 06 2000 06:34: I made up and used the throwaway phrase "attack of deadly onions from planet deadly onion" a few days ago in an entry in Jake's notebook, and I can't get it out of my head. I love the redundancy. I love the lack of any articles in the sentence. I love the implication that someone named a planet "planet deadly onion". I love all phrases of the form "Attack of the x from Planet y" (especially "Attack of the Good Ol' Boys from Planet Honky-Tonk").

I'm not too crazy about the actual deadly onions; too much like killer tomatoes. But even that makes the whole thing seem like a goofy, poorly-translated video game in which you are a fighter pilot commanded to "defend attack of deadly onions from planet deadly onion!" and when you beat the game you are told "attack of deadly onions is repelled! but this is not the end of your quest!" and then it makes you do the whole thing again, only with cabbages or something.