Making It Up As I Go Along #304

MONDAY...
— Work is normal... not much to talk of. Changes in the office are afoot.
— A few e-mails and some TV after work... all pretty boring on a freezing cold day.

TUESDAY...
— Snowy day means 45 minutes driving to work and an hour coming home from it. Blah!
— Lunch at HQ with Kiyomi and Jonathan is good and work is okay but slow going stats wise.

WEDNESDAY...
— Work is work. Fine but a bit slow going.
— A few e-mails and stuff in the evening.
— I see that St. John’s is about to lose it’s junior hockey team. No more Fog Devils. Hockey has been poorly marketed in St. John’s for many years now. A city that used to prize itself on being fans of “old time hockey” yet the die-hard fans were taken for granted and marketing all went towards 12 year old fans of Britney Spears. In the end, the die-hard fans actually did ‘die’ as fans. And you were left with a stupid name on a team marketed to non hockey fans. And too many people wanted the AHL out and the QMJHL in with the delusion that regular season junior hockey was the same as the World Junior Christmas tournament. When they saw high school hockey, they walked away. I feel bad that my home town no longer has a hockey team... but I’m not surprised in the slightest. The ‘hockey’ people of St. John’s have been doing their best to ditch hockey for a long time now.

THURSDAY...
— All sorts of things going on today. I have a meeting... start feeling like a cold is coming on... and get info on how AFIS will be over the next little while. Cutting down to 3 teams in a few weeks and I’ll take on a new task for a little while. The more variety the better.
— After work I go do some shopping. I had a gift card from a CD/DVD store and decided to add to it with my own cash so I got three CDs and a DVD. Not half bad.

FRIDAY...
— Work is broken up by breakfast for Leslie’s birthday and a new task for me, putting together the latent ident board. Still not feeling great but the cold isn’t beating me yet.
— Hockey pool stuff after work. I get a couple of pretty good players in the mid-season redraft and hopefully it’s enough to pull me away again, as others are starting to catch up lately.
— Home for some TV, naps, and pizza.

SATURDAY...
— Quiet day around the house. Up early... out of bed around 7:00. A couple of e-mails, several naps, and some movies and all-star hockey stuff on TV.


All Your Beliefs Stuck to the Bumper of Your Car
Hillary Clinton regained momentum in the race to represent the democrats in America’s presidential race by shedding a tear. “It made her appear human” was the basic media sentiment of the event. Discussions ensued as intelligent people tried to verify whether or not the tear was real or a staged piece of acting.

A southern citizen told the interviewer that he won’t be able to vote for Obama because the name is too close to Osama and you just can’t be too careful.

George Bush creamed John Kerry because Kerry spent too much time wanting to think through and discuss all angles of issues while Bush pushed for the decisive thirty second sound bite answer.

Iraq had weapons of mass destruction... until it was proven they didn’t... at which time their people needed to be liberated.

The internet is the greatest information tool yet created... and the most popular use of it is to watch minute long amateur comedy clips on YouTube... where we can watch cats tackling each other or babies laughing uncontrollably.

Global warming is the greatest threat our planet has ever seen. Or it’s a cooked up scare tactic used for making money by left wing scientists. Which side you believe depends largely on which type of conspiracy theory you’re most willing to accept as reality.

Democracy works. It does. You vote for the individual or party that you are most comfortable with and, if enough of you are in agreement, that individual or party will represent you and your point of view.

The problem with democracy, is too many people are too willing to shut off their brains and allow easy access to free information to guide us. It just all depends on which information supplier gets to you first... or which one makes it easiest to understand the message.

Fox News is “fair and balanced”... because they say so.

CNN has “the best political team on television” and are working at “keeping them honest”. Again, we know this because that’s what they tell us.

And people are guilted into the process. The media keeps harping that “it is your duty to vote.” It’s just too daunting an idea to suggest the important part... “it’s your duty to understand what you’re voting for.” Those swayed by attack adds and phantom tears only hurt the process.

Our attention span has gotten too short as a society. If a political message goes beyond a sound bite, it’s fighting an uphill battle to even be heard. Feelings of support for causes (be it cancer or fighting troops) are expressed via magnet on the back of your car in the shape of a ribbon. Most who buy these magnets have no idea if the money they spend is going towards the cause. And they feel as though the fact that they have that magnet sticking on the back of their car proves that they are actually supporting something. Perhaps some are. I wouldn’t begrudge anyone who’s doing real things to hope for the welling being of a family member who’s in harms way in a foreign land. But I suspect too many put these things on their cars cause they think it’s how they can do their part.

It’s superficiality, through and through. Too many of us wish to not go beyond it. It’s too easy and comfortable. And too many exploit this for the purpose of making a buck.

It goes from the most important aspects of life, like politics and personal freedoms, to the least important parts of life.

I’ve always been struck by TV commercials for hair dye. They speak about how a man should make sure his true self is seen, that people aren’t caught up by the grey they see. So how would a man show his true self? How do you present yourself to the world in honesty and the most genuine of terms? You cover up your grey hair.

That’s how we do things too often. Be it a political movement, a cause, a military conflict, or personal appearance. We cover up our imperfections and present an image... a superficial mask... and we sell it as what’s genuine and real. It’s happened so much, in so many aspects of life, that even the smartest of people is accepting it as the normal. We nod our acceptance and click the computer over to YouTube again so we can bask in the glory of wrestling kittens.