“As Bad As It Gets”

I’d say it was a good weekend, all in all. I spent Saturday with Dr. Twenty Cats, Sunday with the Socialist. But it’s Monday, so I spent quality time with my desk and my paperwork today. Oh well. Only five days till the weekend.

Keeping up with the news has ceased to be a healthy endeavor for me. I’m burnt out on war updates, which I’ve been watching at home on CNN and MSNBC and other cable news stations. I find myself sitting in front of the television telling the reporters what idiots they are. “And how does this soldier’s mother feel, after having seen her son being questioned by Iraqi’s on television? Was she frightened, angry, in tears?” Now there’s a well thought out and deeply penetrating question. “I’m here in Baltimore with a father whose only child was one of the soldiers killed in the helicopter crash earlier.” Yes, very clever Mr. Reporter. You tracked them down and broke in on their grief. Give yourself a medal. “I’m here embedded with the troops on the U.S.S. Constitution.” Embedded? Where the heck did this “embedded” come from anyhow? Embedded with battalions, embedded on ships … embedded in what? Sand? Concrete? Why this need for jargon? Why can’t they just leave out the word “embedded”; the sentences work just as well. “Well Peter, I can’t tell you where we are or what we’re doing for security reasons.” Yeah, we’ve got the idea already. You know something we don’t. Neener, neener, neener. It’s hardly necessary to preface every paragraph with that little tidbit anymore. For Pete’s sake, guys, just stop asking them questions you know they can’t answer. It’s like you’ve got your own little secret society going there, and you have to keep proving it by displaying the secret handshake and decoder ring every few minutes.

Like I said, following the news has ceased to be a healthy endeavor for me.

In my continuing effort to play CD’s in my office, I purchased a set of $10.00 speakers for my Sony Walkman. I have to say, I’m quite pleased with the results. Granted, it isn’t the same fidelity that I get out of my stereo system, but it is certainly adequate for my purposes here at work. I get good volume, and they’re small enough to tuck out of the way next to my computer. Today is the first day I’ve given them a workout, and I just grabbed some CD’s off my shelf while leaving the apartment this morning, without paying particular attention to which CD’s I grabbed. On of the ones I grabbed was Christine Lavin’s “Shining My Flashlight On The Moon”, a CD I haven’t listened to in quite a while. It was a shock to rediscover it … this should be on my top ten of favorite CD’s and instead it’s been sitting abandoned for months. One song I never really noticed before jumped out at me as I renewed my acquaintance with this set of music. I think I’m just going to pretend she wrote it just for me, and pull it out on those days that things start looking bleak to me.