Manning desks all around me and far into the distance, there were a lot of full-time journalists slogging dutifully at their mandatory tasks, and for them it was no pleasure to see a part-time carpet-bagger earning the full whack in two hours, hammering away as if being fed his whole piece by dictation through an electrode implanted in his skull. Apparently the least prepossessing element was my tendency to rock with silent laughter at my own jokes. There was a reason for that. The jokes were the last aspect to form on the page.
