Speaking of my mother, she's got this tradition of buying me one of those Far Side calendars every year for Christmas, though this year is the last year they're being produced. Predictability can be a virtue when it's something as harmless as this, so I shudder to see what she will replace this tradition with this year.
There's really nothing wrong with these calendars, except that I don't really use them. Not for their intended purpose anyway. They're like stickless sticky notes. I tear one off when I need to jot a note down. Or kill a bug. They're good for that too.
Anyway, I went to jot down a note and realized that the date on the front of the thing was September 12th. It's not really significant, like that watch where the hands stopped at the exact moment of the bomb at Hiroshima. It wasn't like I stopped using the calendar the day after the attacks. It simply brought back a more personal perspective on those chaotic days, which have since been co-opted by news organizations and politicians.
Not sure exactly what I'm trying to say here, except that lately I've flirted with the concept of completely shunning the news, which is an odd concept for a journalist. But in the era of 24-hour coverage on more channels than you can count on both hands, I have started to wonder if the constant feeling of unease in my life is somehow partially connected to the never-ending stream of information. Though, honestly, it's unfair to pin it on information, which is by its nature fairly benign, but rather the emphasis should be on the news organizations and their inherent need to get your attention by any means necessary. Information is filtered, reprocessed and reorganized for maximum emphasis on the more salacious aspects, which leads to the type of story that The Daily Show cleverly parodies under the "It Could Kill Your Children" banner.
Not that the news is completely responsible. The world is a fairly unstable place, particularly of late (though I sometimes wonder if the world has always been this way and I am just now becoming aware of it), and part of me simply hopes that by hibernating, it will all go away.
Hardly logical or even sensible, but at least understandable. I hope.
Unfortunately, right now the real problem is that I haven't a clue what it was I tore the page off to make note of in the first place.
There's really nothing wrong with these calendars, except that I don't really use them. Not for their intended purpose anyway. They're like stickless sticky notes. I tear one off when I need to jot a note down. Or kill a bug. They're good for that too.
Anyway, I went to jot down a note and realized that the date on the front of the thing was September 12th. It's not really significant, like that watch where the hands stopped at the exact moment of the bomb at Hiroshima. It wasn't like I stopped using the calendar the day after the attacks. It simply brought back a more personal perspective on those chaotic days, which have since been co-opted by news organizations and politicians.
Not sure exactly what I'm trying to say here, except that lately I've flirted with the concept of completely shunning the news, which is an odd concept for a journalist. But in the era of 24-hour coverage on more channels than you can count on both hands, I have started to wonder if the constant feeling of unease in my life is somehow partially connected to the never-ending stream of information. Though, honestly, it's unfair to pin it on information, which is by its nature fairly benign, but rather the emphasis should be on the news organizations and their inherent need to get your attention by any means necessary. Information is filtered, reprocessed and reorganized for maximum emphasis on the more salacious aspects, which leads to the type of story that The Daily Show cleverly parodies under the "It Could Kill Your Children" banner.
Not that the news is completely responsible. The world is a fairly unstable place, particularly of late (though I sometimes wonder if the world has always been this way and I am just now becoming aware of it), and part of me simply hopes that by hibernating, it will all go away.
Hardly logical or even sensible, but at least understandable. I hope.
Unfortunately, right now the real problem is that I haven't a clue what it was I tore the page off to make note of in the first place.
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