Category Archives: News & Media

The world around us… and the stupid things that are happening in it…

Obsession…

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We Americans have a problem with obsessions. I’m not talking about the good kind of obsessions like washing your hands three times an hour or making sure you have on clean underwear before leaving the house. I’m talking mostly about the kind of “news” and current events that we obsess over. Since one of the major news channels is almost constantly running as background noise at the Rental Casa de Jeff, I feel that I’m completely justified in wondering WTF our national obsession is with the currently unfolding trial of George Zimmerman.

It’s not like homicide is particularly unusual in our society. I don’t want to imply that homicide is common, but with major cities regularly racking up triple digit body counts every year I’m having a bit of a problem figuring out why we decided to single out just once of them for the magnifying glass treatment. The incident involving Zimmerman and Trayvon Martin wasn’t the most deadly, it certainly wasn’t the most unique, or even the most dramatic or high profile. All I’m saying is George is no OJ.

Still, to see the minute by minute coverage on ever news channel seemingly all the time leaves me wondering why anyone other than those immediately impacted by the case really care? Why don’t we collectively show that same level of concern or outrage about every homicide? Why aren’t we more concerned about the ones that took place within 20 miles of our own homes that we’ll probably never hear about? It’s obviously selling advertising for the networks, so maybe I’m the one that just doesn’t get the “so what” of Zimmerman’s trial.

With Egypt imploding, NSA listening in on your calls and reading your email, a national debt continuing to pile higher and deeper, and the regular ephemera of everyday life, I have enough to obsess over without including a trial taking place 921 miles away that impacts my life in no actual way.

P.S. If there’s anyone out there reading this who happens to thinks a jury verdict is a reason to hold a riot in the streets, stop reading this blog now. Seriously. Go away. There is no room for you here.

Conflicted…

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A year ago, hell, six weeks ago I would have called Edward Snowden a traitor. Handing information to the press, especially classified information, goes against the grain and against a decade worth of training and experience. I can’t fathom a circumstance under which I’d do it… I’m philosophically opposed to finding myself in a Video-Surveillance-Usefederal prison or being “disappeared” by some of the more clandestine elements of our government, you see.

Maybe the country would be a happier place if we were all left fat and ignorant of what happens behind the fence line. With reality TV and the celebrity of the moment to entertain us, I wonder how long our collective national focus will remain fixed on what I think we can agree is at best an egregious violation of our collective rights as citizens of the republic. I’m sure it won’t be for as long as it should.

Look, our data is out there. We’re giving it freely to companies like Apple and Google every second of every day. It’s not that I have a problem with Uncle having a peek now and then, it’s that he’s blatantly said for so long that he’s not doing it. If the president or the Director of National Intelligence stood up and said “yep, we’re keeping an eye on phone calls and email and we’ve stopped X, Y, and Z as a result,” I’d probably be on the government’s side of this one without a second thought.

It’s the lie that chafes. It’s always the lie. That’s why I’m conflicted. And that’s why I can’t quite bring myself to condemn Mr. Snowden.

Too exhausting…

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© 2013 Imgur, LLC.

© 2013 Imgur, LLC.

I feel like I should write a post about some combination of the IRS, NSA, privacy, and executive overreach… but honestly it’s just all too exhausting to put into words. This great country was a constitutional republic once and could be still if more than a handful of people were interested in holding the elected representatives of the people accountable for their words and actions. I’m not holding my breath. If anyone needs me, I’ll be downstairs turning the basement into a room-sized Faraday cage so I can have the occasional untapped conversation.

Apparently I missed it…

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Once upon a time a natural disaster couldn’t happen anywhere in the country and escape my notice. A wildfire in Southern California or a Missouri River flood were the high sign that the overtime spigot was about to be cranked wide open. Of course I’ve been out of that game for a while now… and while I don’t miss the late night calls to pack up and be ready to fly away on short notice, I definitely miss the OT.

More than that, I think I might actually miss what’s going on around me. Through a combination of watching Mad Men on demand and running some random sitcoms as background noise last night, listening to commercial-free online radio through AppleTV, and not checking in with the news sites before bed, I didn’t even know that the entire state of Oklahoma had apparently been wiped off the map until I cranked on Channel 13 for my morning dose of local news. That’s a tough confession to make for a guy who prides himself on having a pretty good grip on what’s happening in the world.

I’m not going to get drug into a philosophical discussion about it, but for good or ill, it seems that I’ve more or less stopped paying attention to the news. Maybe I just lost interest. Maybe I’ll come back around at some point, but just now, I’m surprisingly ok with being in the dark about things. Then again, maybe I’ve only got so much bandwidth to deal with news and current events and I’m just prioritizing what makes it through to my frontal lobe… apparently even my subconscious wants the world to stay off my proverbial lawn.

Hometown boy makes good (or possibly evil)…

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It’s not the post I had planned for this evening, but it always seems best to strike while the iron is hot. I’d like to thank the Cumberland Times News for picking up my press release and giving this hometown boy a little bit of publicity today. I’m not quite sure if I’ve “made good” or not, but if nothing else I like to think I’ve “made interesting.” It’s been my experience thus far in life that interesting trumps good on most occasions.

CTN Article - May 17, 2013If you’re looking at the print edition, the article is right there in three short columns on page 2C below the fold. I’ll take all the help I can get and I appreciate them helping me get out the word.

Apparently I’m a slice of life… Who knew?

On Boston…

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Boston, the cradle of the American revolutionary spirit was attacked this afternoon by nameless, faceless cowards. Brave Bostonians did not cower under the cannon fire of the worlds most powerful empire and I have the greatest faith that they will not cower in the face of these craven assaults. My thoughts are with the good people of Boston tonight where the spirit of America is again tested by those who would do us harm.

The difficult right…

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The obvious direction to take tonight’s post is towards a memorial for Baroness Thatcher. The trouble with having a job and not being able to update the blog in real time, of course, is that the major outlets are already doing a fine job of lionizing the only Prime Minister other than Churchill that Americans know by name. Lady ThatcherI’m not sure that I can add much in the way of new information or even original thought. Still, marking the passing of one of the 20th century’s great statesmen only seems fitting.

​For those of us of a certain age, the world we’ve inhabited all our lives was largely shaped by the Cold War trinity of Thatcher, Reagan, and John Paul II. ​Even though she’d been out of the public eye for more than a decade, with Lady Thatcher’s death this morning the one last living thread connecting us to our much younger selves is severed. Through the benefit of 30-years worth of hindsight, it seems she was on the leading edge of a political movement that got a lot more right than they got wrong. In a career that spanned some truly tumultuous times, that’s as much a mark as anyone could hope to leave.

Long after anyone reading this has made their own final exit from the world’s stage, it will be left to the historians to judge the merits, unencumbered by personal memories of their subjects. The historian in me has a lingering suspicion that our successors will be far kinder to them as a group than their contemporaries have been.

Godspeed, Lady Thatcher. The world is a safer and more free because you chose to stand on principle and do the difficult right rather than ​following the path of ​the easy wrong.

Conceding defeat…

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE —- OFFICIAL STATEMENT

I come before you this evening with a heavy heart. A few moments ago, I sent a tweet to Pope Francis, congratulating him on his election as your next Pope in Rome. Your support of my candidacy for these past few days has been a source of strength for me, but tonight we must come together behind the victor and accept that my dark horse candidacy was, at best, a long shot.

I have no intention of letting this sound electoral defeat drive me out of the arena… and if asked, I would happily serve as Vice Pope or in any other position that didn’t necessarily require poverty and chastity as conditions of employment. Unfortunately, tonight was simply not my time to step up to the big chair. It’s a fair bet that we’ll get another chance at the job since the Sacred College has once again chosen someone old enough to be my grandfather (and an actual Catholic) for the job. I do, however, find it suspicious that the ballots were all destroyed before they could be independently validated and the formal announcement was made before appeals could be filed with the court, but I digress.

So in conclusion: Congratulations, Your Holiness. We’ll see how things turn out next time around.

The post in which the author says “I told you so”…

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Fellow Citizens,

If you’re reading this, it’s because the epic snowstorm of doom somehow managed not to result mass extinction or cause catastrophic damage to the state’s electric grid. Well done, and congratulations for riding out the storm unscathed.

In the future, I hope you’ll remember that just because a winter storm is given a fancy-pants name by The Weather Channel, that doesn’t mean it’s going to leave untold mayhem and chaos in its wake. In general, it means that they’re doing their level best to build hype and improve their advertising take. I hope you’ll join me in saying “Well played, weather forecasters. Well played indeed.”

In conclusion, let’s try not to let over-exaggerated reports of impending doom effect our behavior too much in the future. If today has taught us nothing else, it’s that we can all somehow manage to survive a mediocre rain/snow storm without turning to cannibalism, riots, or looting. Good work and carry on.

Warm regards,

Jeff

P.S. I told you so.

Looking on the bright side…

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You know what’s fun about Sequestration? Nothing. That’s what’s fun about sequestration. Now if you’d have asked a slightly different question, the answer would be slightly different. If you asked what’s vaguely entertaining about sequestration, I could legitimately say it’s entertaining to listen to people talk about what they think they know when it’s very obvious that nobody actually knows anything at all… and that whatever plans are put in place can instantly be made pointless should Congress do so much as sneeze. Since it appears to be a given that this thing is going to happen to one degree or another, the only thing left to do is sit back and watch the universe come unglued. Maybe we should make some kind of furlough day drinking game out of it. I haven’t decided yet.

It’s no surprise that as far as I’m concerned both sides are right and both sides are wrong. God knows there’s plenty of fat to cut from government spending, but across the board cuts don’t bother to differentiate it from the muscle and tends to result in cutting “good” government and “bad” government equally. In case anyone is wondering, indiscriminate budget cuts are rarely the hallmark of good decision making. Maybe it’s good politics, but it’s really shitty governance and even more appalling public policy. I’d love to say this is the last time I’m going to rant about this, but the truth is I can’t even promise it’s the last time this week that it’s going to agitate me enough to take up space here.

A cabin in the wilderness, a few solar panels, a couple rifles, and a no trespassing sign sounds better every single day.