More Ranting

Rant #2: The News

I have been on a news fast ever since I read the most inane "news" story ever about a month ago.

[An excerpt I just found from the actual Seattle P-I story about the "Super Moon":
Superheroes and super villains are all over the news in Seattle thanks to masked vigilante Phoenix Jones, and now the moon is getting jealous.

It’s planning its own “super” appearance this weekend, causing collective Seattle to roll its eyes and feign a yawn. Come on, moon. We are so over super things.

It’s not like the moon even understands what it takes to be a superhero. NASA tipped us off today that we’re in for a “super moon” Saturday night and Sunday morning, but didn’t make any mention of whether it will be wearing a costume or fending off bad guys with a can of pepper spray.

The only thing we can really count on from this weekend’s super moon: It will appear to be really, really big.

Bigger than Superman, who once had a fistfight on the moon and might have inadvertently contributed to the moon’s superhero aspirations.

Can anyone else feel the intelligence draining from them?]

It made me so irate I wanted to just go shake the editor and yell "What is wrong with you?! Is this responsible journalism??!!" I decided it was high time to stop following the news and go cold turkey. My decision made me much happier. I have done news fasting in the past and I find I sleep better and feel better over all without all the sensationalized junk swimming through my subconscious.
For some unknown reason (perhaps a lack of decent coffee?) I ventured into the news today. I really wish I hadn't.
I really just wanted to sit on the sofa all day and be a slug. I really wanted to be able to flip channels and watch silly TV shows. But daytime TV has sunk to some pretty amazing depths and I had to give up... but not before stopping ever so briefly on the local news...
Yesterday there was a crazed gunman on the loose in Seattle. (So happy to be out of that city!) He shot 6 people, killed 5 of them. Tragic, senseless, horrific.  The local news, I suppose for a lack of anything pertinent to say, actually said that today there were five families grieving. Really? Why do they say things like that? Back when I followed the news regularly I wouldn't even have noticed the lack of imagination in news writing. Now it leaps out at me and grabs me by the throat. I had to change the channel.
I turned on the Weather Channel. Sounds harmless enough. I figured that listening to what's happening in the rest of the country weather-wise and then my local forecast every 10 minutes on the "8"s can't be too painful. Boy, was I wrong. Now they have filler shows (because, I guess, the weather isn't interesting enough?). I happened to catch a few minutes of some life or death show in which they had a recreated scene of someone being buried in the sand on a beach and the team of emergency personnel digging frantically. They had the fire chief or someone who had actually been there and he said that he started getting worried after 20 minutes because people can't survive after about 5 minutes without oxygen. Maybe that was just an expression. I don't know. Personally I'd have been worried the minute I found out that someone had been buried deep enough in the sand that an emergency response was needed. Guess that's why I'm not an EMT. Could they not have edited it? Could someone have suggested a better turn of phrase?
Turned to the internet to check on the arrival of my Netflix. On MSN.com (boy, I am a glutton for punishment today!) there was a story about a 3 year-old who had been kicked off an Alaska Airlines flight after refusing to stay in his seat with his seatbelt fastened. The story was in fact an opinion piece disguised as a story (they tease with a headline so you are lured into clicking on the story). In the piece, the author thought it was outrageous that everyone was so impatient with the kid and that the father of the boy was right to be upset with the pilot. Quite honestly, what has happened to child rearing that a 3 year-old is allowed to hold a plane load of 300 passengers hostage to his temper tantrum? And why, exactly, does the world need to be so damn understanding of ill behaved children? This is why China is kicking our ass.
I'm done with TV. No more internet news blurbs sucking me in. I've decided I'll be better off watching some old Hope and Crosby Road movies (and probably better informed as well).