And the award for least appropriate use of a conditional goes to

If there's anyone in the world who's more desperate for money than Mike Tyson, it just might be O.J. Simpson. He's still $30 million in the hole to the Goldman family, for example. Maybe that's what led him to pitch the idea for the interview he's going to do on Fox (presumably connected to his related book), tentatively called "If I Did It, Here's How It Happened."

Um... what?

First of all, terrible use of conditional there. Unless the person in question was a complete moron with no scruples, no innocent person would ever muse over what it would have been like if they had committed the crime of which they were acquitted. Wouldn't happen. And we all know that if the case had happened in this post-CSI age, the jurors would actually have understood what DNA evidence meant and O.J. would be in jail right now. The only reason he's saying this now is because he knows he can't be tried a second time. Why not just call it "I Did It and Here's How It Happened?" Is he afraid that the lack of the "allegedly" tag on the whole affair would scare people off, or maybe just that the police would find a lesser charge on which to try him if he officially admitted it?

Second of all, I love that the second half of the sentence actually forgets to include the conditional, which reinforces the idea that the "if" was added as an afterthought. It should read something like "If I Did It, Here's How It Would Have Happened." But instead, it says "Here's How It Happened," as though whoever came up with the sentence actually forgot, mid-thought, that O.J. was supposed to be innocent. Which makes sense. Because he's not.

I just wonder who else might come out of the woodwork, on the heels of this and Ray Lewis' Sports Illustrated cover. Perhaps Gary Condit could talk about what it would have been like if he'd had Chandra Levy killed, or something like that. Seems about as appealing to me. Really, who would want to watch or read about this? I suppose there's some morbid curiosity aspect to it, but... really, pretty sick. Though the idea that you could be lining the pockets of this murderer is even worse. Sit in Borders if you have to read it.