No News is Better News

A headline on MSNBC over a man in front of a weather map declares "Interesting Weather in America".

Among the interesting weather phenomena...wild fires in the southwest. I'm intrigued, but they switched to a firework tent in Nebraska (I think) blowing up. Fireworks in a tent. Did we learn nothing from the misadventures of Merry and Pippen?

Al Gore's son was arrested yesterday in Orange County. What happened to Al Gore? He went from being presidential front runner to Patchouli Puffer in the span of three years, and now he's on about the environment and global warming. It's not that Al Gore's son was arrested for possession of marijuana and Percocet. It's not even that he was driving 100 miles per hour. Don't we expect that of our celebrity children?

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Some dude dressed as a Nazi at a party isn't funny. Unless, of course, it's the prince of England.

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It's the simple fact that Al Gore III was arrested for possession of marijuana and Percocet while driving 100 miles per hour in a fucking Prius.

1. How did he get that car going that fast?
2. How did he get himself, on Percocet and weed, going that fast?
3. Did he have Joan Baez blaring on the MP3 player?

Hillary Clinton received an endorsement from two time Presidential candidate, Dick Gephardt. You may not remember him, as he ran out of funds during his first campaign and had to bail out early, and most recently finished fourth in the Iowa caucuses and promptly dropped out.

In related news, Shaquille O'Neal holds fat camp, not for himself, but for children.

Hillary Clinton and child health have one thing in common...hypocritical endorsement. At least people know who Shaq is.

Barry Bonds is three home runs away from catching Hank Aaron. Everyone wonders if Bud Selig and Hammerin' Hank should show up for the pseudo-historic event because of the taint of steroids. Scandalous as it is, steroid use was not against the rules of baseball, despite the fact that is against the rules of the U.S. Government.

Meanwhile, Chris Benoit killed himself and his family, apparently due to excessive steroid use. His doctor was arrested yesterday for supplying Benoit with large amounts of steroids. Reportedly, the wrestler was going through a three month supply in a matter of days.

No word on whether Bud Selig and Hank Aaron will attend the Benoit family funeral.

New headline: "Do Women Talk Too Much?"

Men and women speak about 16,000 words a day. Thank God for the University of Arizona. Finally the myth has been busted, no thanks to Adam and Jamie. A recent study shows that the stereotype of the chatterbox woman is untrue. Men and women, apparently, speak at the same rate.

I'm not creatively stupid enough to make that one up, so it must stand on its own. Yes, I am reporting the news, as it happens. Not the "news" in the traditional sense of factual, significant events happening around the globe, but the actual news in the sense of "this is what these people on television are telling me, and I'm relaying the message to my reader(s)".

*Update: In fairness to my pseudo-journalistic integrity, I must point out that the study doesn't actually dispel the stereotype. All it really does is show that men talk too damn much, too, and should probably consider avoiding gender equality in at least that one respect.

CNBC has a ground breaking series examining the "dark side of American greed". The gist of the plug is that people in America do devious, unethical, immoral, and dangerous things for lots of money. We'll file this under "NEWSFLASH! SCIENTISTS SPECULATE SHAPE OF EARTH TO BE SPHERICAL IN NATURE!"

I wonder why 24 hour news stations bother to have commercials. So much of the "reporting" revolves around three things.

1. Pop culture. What's new, what to watch, what to wear, what to buy. This is the hot new gadget/look/car/soda/cheeseburger you can't do without.

2. Vanity. Cover Girl and Max Factor must be making a mint off the Fox Morning show alone. The female anchors spend more time talking about how someone looks than doing their reading exercises, rendering teleprompters all over New York completely useless.

3. Money. How many times do we see MasterCard, Visa, American Express cards shown on the news in passing? Banking firms and loan institutions that are offering the best rates? How to manage your money by sending it all to these non-paying (?) sponsors.

If they're going to be showing so many commercials, I want to see some current events with my no-money-down-and-no-payments-until-2008-on-approved-credit living room set offer. Why do we never see a furniture commercial running on a 24 hour news network showing a guy reclining in a Lazy Boy watching Wolf Blitzer report on the financial growth of the IKEA corporation over the last ten years?

Wow. Newsflash for REAL! Pat Buchanan...rather, Pat "Chauvinist, Bigot, Christian Right Conservative" Buchanan says that Arizona Senators John McCain and Jon Kyl are out of touch with their own state. Why? Because Arizona has the toughest anti-illegal immigration bill in the entire country. At the same time, Kyl and McCain are in strong support of a federal bill that offers amnesty and open borders. There is no joke. That is actually what is going on. Arizonans are trying to shut down the border while their representatives in Washington are trying to keep it open (to an extent), and the voice of reason is Pat Buchanan.

The weather is back, and the theme is "Best Weather in America". Hot dogs. The background after the temperature map is hot dogs. And the reporter's opinion on Coneys makes me think of Nathan's Red Hots.

Apparently, we've wrapped around to the half hour. The stories are repeating now, and I wonder if I should have just TiVo'ed it. I feel comfortable knowing that the WWE knows for certain that steroids were not involved in Chris Benoit's family murder/suicide . . . until the tox screen comes back, of course.