OK, here is a purely hypothetical situation. After reading, please select the proper course of action.

It's 1977 and you are fresh out of college, working as a general assignment reporter for $140 a week at a small daily newspaper. Let's call it The Arizona Daily Sun, in Flagstaff.

Someone who knows the publisher calls him and suggests the paper cover an upcoming meeting of self-impressed gasbags. The publisher passes this along to the managing editor. The managing editor assigns you to cover the meeting.

You show up at the appointed time and place. You quickly realize no one is about to commit news.

It's just a bunch of self-important twits who think their meandering brainstorming is brilliant.

This goes on for what seems like hours.

Suddenly a fire truck rumbles by outside, siren blaring.

You...

A) Continue listening to the verbal masturbation and pretend to take notes. B) Stay put and wish someone had invented the smart phone. C) Ignore fire truck and fight with all your might to stay awake. D) Start drafting the story in your head, making sure to get words like "groundbreaking," "visionary" and "launched" into the first couple of paragraphs. E) Mutter something about having to find out where that fire truck is headed and make a mad dash for freedom, never to return.

(Hint: E is not -- I repeat, NOT -- the correct answer.)

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