|
I read the news today, oh boy
Another night of insomnia. Today is a "boy" day despite myself. I really wanted it to be a girl day but I felt too ragged this morning to try to make the effort. Any girliness is in self-defense; i.e. I am wearing my happy whale earrings in order to cheer myself up a bit.
This will be a real problem later today - I realized after I was already at work that I have a meeting at two. I hate going to meetings when I'm unshaven! Heck, I don't even like talking to people face-to-face when I'm unshaven.
Due to the general mood, this is a bad time for me to be reading newspapers. During this time I go into "anti-news" mode. No, not anti-news in the sense of being opposed to news. Anti-news in the Need To Know sense, where I look at an article and think, "well, duh!" This isn't news; it's too obvious.
Actually, it's not productive to get too deeply into this mindset, because if you take it too far, then you don't have any news to read at all. All the stories could merit that reaction. One should not expect one's news source to constantly surprise them.
But really -
The Austrians don't want to return art that was taken as Nazi spoils. Duh. The people of East Timor don't like the idea of an outside peacekeeping force coming in. Duh again. "Spy's unmasking may prompt scrutiny of Britain's agents." Duh thrice.
Even when news stories do surprise me, in this mood, it's not apt to be a pleasant surprise - it's more along the lines of "what were they thinking?" or "has the entire world lost its mind?"
I was surprised when they announced that they might let divorced women compete in the Miss America pageant. I was less surprised when the backlash occurred and the organizers promptly reversed themselves. Ah, well. I suppose that it's best that the Miss America crowd be restricted to maiden debutantes without portfolio. After all, it's never really had much contact with reality anyway; might as well keep it in its own little fantasy world.
See? Nasty nasty nasty.
Hey, did you hear? Some of the people who fled the North for Florida's mock-paradise now want to move back. They love the weather normally, but those hurricanes are hell. Poor dears. Hey, into each state a little adverse weather must fall. Hurricanes or blizzards or drought; take your pick. There is no perfection.
Of course I have sympathy for all the people who have been hard-hit by Floyd and his brothers and sisters. But I've never had any sympathy for the "snowbirds" who maintain a house in two places to try to escape bad weather at all times. Fair-weather friends, you might say.
Actually, Floyd gave me one of the only two blissful moments from today's news selection. Hurricane news is not normally happy, but to quote some anonymous Liverpudlian songwriter: Well, I just had to laugh; I saw the photograph.
It showed a group of people boarding up the front of their barber shop in South Carolina. Not cheery, no, but they had painted graffiti on the plywood. The boards had been reused several times, apparently. The one on the left-hand window said GO AWAY .... The one on the right, completing the sentence, had the names of four hurricanes - Hugo, Bertha, Dennis, Floyd. Three of them crossed out.
I like a good chuckle in the teeth of adversity, I do.
The other blissful moment was seeing that the House of Representatives has passed a bill to ban soft money from political campaigns. It won't pass the Senate, of course, but allow me to have my brief moment of glee until then.
More later, I'm afraid.
© Columbine
|
|
