The stuff that passes for news these days is problematic. I struggle to understand how a 24 hr news cycle can be filled with nothing meaningful and then, in the sudden face of tragedy (or, rarely, excitement), be filled with nothing but that specific event. I understand tragedy on a personal level. That means that I don’t feel every news channel needs to be filled with my ‘money shots of sadness’.
Because so much of what I put down here is based on what I see and hear and do, Its been hard developing topics now that I’ve largely abandoned the news. So, I turned it on the other day. I checked out a show (New Day on CNN) and a few websites. That led me to some thoughts:
- The Knockout Game, as told by the CNN anchor is a terrible and fairly typical criminal situation. Kids have been jumping random people long before America was a colony. The difference here is the prevalence of social media-specifically through sights like Youtube and What I noticed above all else is the coverage is
- Sometimes you find yourself in situations where you are a completely different type of person than everyone else around you. This rarely bothers me, but once in a while I feel so startlingly out of place that I shut up and just observe the situation with an abundance of curiosity. When it happened this last time I recognized that my life experience and approach to life and how I feel things need to happen is different than the majority of people I encounter in AZ. I’m irreverant. I don’t take things too seriously. It seems immature to some, but maturity seems immature to me most times. Maturity means exhibiting a set of behaviors prescribed by a long dead social leadership sect and continued by all of us in an effort to be accepted by leadership and the majority. That is useless to me. I want to reach through the skin of people and see who they are beyond that veil and interact with them on a real (non-formal) level. Perhaps I ask for too much. It does occur to me that in order to be taken seriously in most settings you must appear to be a very proper and serious person–that or an erratic genius.
- A recent poll I found on a site (and then lost) indicated that somewhere around 40% of polled parents were against contact football up until the high school years. The effect of this could be a reduction in people cultured to handle the rigor of football contact and thus more injuries at the high school level. I also think it contributes to a general softening of America and Americans. This at the same time we are getting heavily into MMA and such…odd that.