I'm Just Sayin'

I have, for the most part, quit watching television. At least I don't turn the damn thing on in the morning and leave it on until bed time. My wife and I watch a few shows in the evening. My claim is that she needs a couple of hours of brain deadness to help get her decompress after her 12 hour work days and that it is my duty to watch TV with her. In reality though,  the less TV I watch, the more aggravated I become when the commercials are interrupted with a three or four minute segment of an actual show. Just when I am really beginning to enjoy listening to all the intriguing  information about my enlarged prostate or some sexy young lady is about to convince me how much better my life would be if I bought a new Chevy...they cut to a show and I have to endure the suspense as I  worry whether or not Jack Bauer will get blown up by an atomic bomb...a dirty bomb laced with enough nerve gas to take out one third of the population of the United States. We'll probably have to watch that episode again...the writers' strike and all. By the way...what are all those TV writers bitching about? Most writers don't even have jobs...at least writing jobs. If it's the money...I'm sure it is, it's always the money...maybe if they wrote better TV shows the networks would pay them more. I'm just sayin'.

In order to make up for the fact that I am receiving very little news via television, I have, in order to keep up with what is going on in the world, subscribed to three or four news blogs. The amount of information I get...the sheer volume of news and world events that flash across my little flat screen...wow...AND...I get to read comments left by other readers...AND..I get to leave my own comments if I want. Initially, when I first started getting all my news and world events via the internet, I thought to myself, "Shit Slim!!! This is far f@#king out! I can be as up to date as I want to be, get everybody's opinion about stuff....I can become  super saturatedly informed!" Be careful what you wish for...or..be careful for what you wish.

All this news is making me sick. As I read all this stuff, it becomes hyper apparent to me how doomed this planet is. I mean it..we are well on our collective ways to hell...with a handbag...a one way street down the slippery slope, past the point of no return. Doomed! I mean it. There can be no other conclusion. I want to give a brief run down of what I read this morning.  I won't even include the world news events. We are f@#ked up enough by ourselves...here in the good ole U.S.

Remember, this is only the tip of the depressing news iceberg (fyi: icebergs were large chunks of ice floating in our oceans before global warming melted them). All the major news organizations errantly reported that Hilary and her gang failed to leave a tip at a diner in Iowa after lunch. For a while, the talk was of a "mini scandal". The story lost traction...I think an NBC Special News Report was being planned...when the manager of the diner revealed, during an interview by the hungry(pun) press, that a tip had indeed been left. May I inject an aside here? Why is it that the paparazzi are the evil ones? Hell, all they do is take pictures. It's the press, the "news" journalists that come armed with something worse than a 20 megapixal camera, they come armed with stupid questions.

The "Liberty Council", a group representing the religious right...some of us think of them as the delusional dummies... are going to monitor ads run by retailers this holiday season. If the retailers use the words "holiday season" instead of "Christmas" in their ads, the council will say bad things about the blasphemous by omission retailers and encourage us all to boycott their unchristian stores. Another group of christian zealots has produced a bumper sticker that reads, "This is America and I'm going to say it: Merry Christmas." By the way...I just can't help making these comments...where does one put a bumper sticker now that cars no longer have identifiable bumpers? Anyway...what's the big deal? Christians can say the word Christmas...nobody is trying to stop them. Why do they need for the rest of use to use the "C' word?

As a result of a huge oil spill in or close to San Francisco Bay,  billions of dollars will have to be spent on the clean up and the environmental damage is incalculable. The Coast Guard failed to report the full scope of the oil spill and for the first 24 hours or so, reported that only minor leakage had occurred...I think 140 gallons was their estimate. Turns out thousands of gallons were leaked. So the Coast Guard is under attack for either lying about the spill or being totally inept. I think the attention should be focused on who ever wrecked the oil tanker and who ever let the tanker try to navigate the bay in full tilt, zero visibility. But what made my stomach turn and my head spin, was a couple of comments left by readers of this news event. It is the opinion of one of the commentators that the Coast Guard "owed San Francisco no favors" because many of the residents of that City by the Sea are anti military and anti religion. The inference was that the Coast Guard dragged their flippers on porpoise...purpose... in order to punish the city of San Francisco.

I've got more...a bunch more..but I'm runnin' long here. My last example of amazing news reports...unbelievable events...hard to believe events...bullshit stuff...hits close to home. I mean really close to home for me.  My state of Georgia has a governor named Sonny Perdue.  Now we Georgians are having an especially hard time with regards to  lack of rainfall...we are in a dangerous situation. Well Sonny has figured out how to get us out of this mess. He has scheduled a rain-prayer service outside the state capital building for this Tuesday. I think he got this idea from a bunch of christian real estate brokers in Florida who have a prayer luncheon every Wednesday in order to ask god for a better real estate market. They vow to continue their weekly prayers until their prayers are heard and the real estate market recovers. I don't need to go into the flawed logic  in this approach......do I? Back to Sonny's prayer meeting. Bert Brantly, the governor's spokesperson stated , "The only solution is rain and the only place we can get that from is a higher power." An interesting "coincidental" fact....the weather forecast for this Tuesday is ....(drum roll)....all together now...RAIN! Some time ago I posted this quote...and I don't have the author..to me it's just plain cowboy wisdom..."timing has a lot to do with the outcome of a rain dance." 

One last comment...please. As of Nov 5, 2007, our president's approval rating is 32%.  Who are these people...the 32%? Hell, I can't find one person who approves of the idiot right now...and I'm so deep in christian territory that I have to carry a towel around with me in case of bunch of them jump my ass and try to baptize me.

What am I to do? It seems I have three choices...I can continue the super saturated e-news approach. I'll just have to read the news blogs before I have breakfast. I can return to watching commercials on TV with a few slanted news reports slipped in between all those great commercials...or I can do neither. You may have noticed that I have not considered reading newspapers. That is not an option and don't even get me started about newspapers. I'm stickin' with the news blogs. What else can I do?