In the News

i read the news today, oh boy.

and really, it's the same shit with different titles. a lesser man would be discouraged by all this. not me. i find the subtle humor, ridiculousness and, often, irony in the news regardless of the source.

in the news today, marion jones, the olympic champion, is going to jail for check fraud and perjury. the check fraud case is just dumb. i would guess that with endorsement money and purse winnings, jones was doing okay for herself. naturally, that wasn't enough, so she wanted to cheat people out of cash. stupid. but the perjury charge? that's just gold. like others in her profession, marion lied to cover up her cheating. and her excuse? you guessed it, she made a "mistake."

in the imaginary interview i had with marion jones, i asked her which part was the mistake: accidentally falling onto the steroid needle? mistakenly winning gold medal after gold medal, meet after meet, and earning endorsement contracts? lying about lying, and then lying some more? or was the mistake that she just got caught? and just as you'd suspect, she did it all to "protect her family." of course. those poor souls would just be devastated if they'd known they were related to a fraudulent lying cheater.

on the news today...our weather is wicked cold. like chicago cold. makes me wanna pack my shit and head to phoenix (only to complain how much i hate it there once i arrived) or LA. some place warm. but hell, it's winter. it's supposed to be cold. so why do the newscasts insist on putting one of their "meteorologists" outside to report that it's cold when i could just as easily open my front door and find out for myself? or, like when they post a reporter roadside to tell us that the road conditions aren't great. i know i'm routinely shocked to find out that the roads are slippery after it's snowed and when the temperatures are sub-freezing. of course, i'm simultaneously amused by this as well since half of the newscasts these days already report shit we already know (smoking is bad for you, bad foods make you fat, etc.). high comedy, indeed.

lastly, apparently teacher absenteeism hurts learning. i'm pretty sure that in a million years, i'd never have figured that out. groundbreaking, truly.