Saturday, February 18, 2006

Aftershocks

It usually takes me about 36 hours to recover from a significant shock to my emotional stability, aka, my normal level of obliviousness. It takes longer if there has been more than one. In this case, there have been two over the course of ten days. It accounts, should you wonder, for the generally morose tone of what I've written lately. What I wrote was true, but I don't normally own up to it.
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This morning for the first time in months I actually watched some Saturday morning television. I was startled by the high level of violence (and I do think cartoon violence has an effect) and advertising. I was so taken by it that I started noting the content of channels as I flipped past them. Roughly speaking, there was about 60% cartoons, where the cartoons were about 90% 'we're gonna blast them guys' and 10% were gentler; about 15% shows about becoming wealthy (its amazingly easy); another 15% about losing weight (also surprisingly easy), and 10% miscellaneous, ranging from a CSPAN political interview to movies -- Die Hard 3 was one; I forget the other. Pretty awful stuff, overall.
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I was also amazed to see a program last night wherein they spoke of the Cheney thing in purely spin-control terms. Not whether he was right or wrong to act as he did, but why his response could have limited the political damage had it been executed more along the lines they recommended. They didn't touch on the ideas that Cheney and his puppet/boss basically blow off anything they don't want to hear, or that they never admit error, but even so, I was startled. No ethical conundrums here.

Ah, life. Better than the alternative, I suppose.

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