Things I meant to comment on...

Ramblings Post #178
Sometimes you get busy. It happens. You don't see it coming, but you turn around and you've been up for 24 hours working on a brief and haven't eaten since that piece of fudge brownie sometime around lunch yesterday. It happens. All you can do is stop, take a deep breath, and keep it moving.

Japan

I loathe to call it disaster porn, but that's what it is. This maybe one of the first disasters to get the full treatment of the internet, and I cannot tell you how many times I've clicked an update and felt compelled to watch one more video of the destruction from some new vantage - while it happened, from the chopper, graphic, I keep waiting for the animation. It is a remarkable achievement, showing the depth of our shallow. I am ashamed to say I have joined the masses and spent inordinate amounts of time watching the wave hit the airport, or destroy a town from ground level, or ticking through the montage of destruction on so many sites. And while it is thrilling, it is then equally heartbreaking when you realize that this is very real, and not a movie or some conjured video game apocalypse. Those are real people, some of whom now only own what they have on. When you add in that we may be seeing a complete meltdown of a nuclear reactor only makes it more dramatic...in the worst possible sense.

Wisconsin

Really? I mean, really? I would really like to see the briefs the lawyers put forth to justify how a idea that was promoted as dire fiscal need can suddenly have its classification changed. Or that they believe this will stand through the next election. There is outcry and then there is Wisconsin. When you get thousands and thousands of folks standing in your front yard indicating they don't like your idea, how can one - in this poll driven age - honestly claim to represent the people? Or worse, be able to stand there and claim the other side isn't listening during some future protest? Politics is strange.

Libya

We need to intervene? Wait, what? Um, do the people who are clamoring for miliary intervention think it will be for free? On one hand we need to cut government spending, except of course unless it means we'll get to shoot some people, in which case break out the American Express cards! We already have two very expensive wars in progress. And while we would like Brother Leader "however you spell his name" gone, opening a third front doesn't strike me as the most fiscally prudent idea right this second. Even the proposed no-fly zone isn't gonna be cheap. Have you seen the price of gas lately? Planes use gas...premium, not that 87 octane crap I put in my car!

Government Shutdown

When I was kid, I learned that since the victors usually get to write the history, a quick trip through the last few centuries will bear evidence that the "good guys" always won. And that the term the "good guys" is very subjective.

The internet is changing all that.

Or it could be. Right now, in the name of ideology, one party wants to shutdown the government. Not over budget cuts, which everyone has been coerced into thinking (for some reason), but over a personal moral agenda. And normally, the one in control of the basic airwaves would explain how they're wearing the white hats and the other side isn't...and prevail. Which side they were actually on is irrelevant. I would fill in the blanks, but the information is out there.


You know, now that I think about it, this really is more of a political post. My bad.