"A pig in a cage on antibiotics"

I was watching a national news broadcast recently when the anchor breathlessly sent our attention to so-and-so on location at the scene. "What can you tell us?" asked the anchor aping concern. "Good morning" the so-and-so began. "It has been reported that maybe. . ." Now, it really doesn't matter what he said next and I couldn't tell you anyway ~ I'd quit listening. "It has been reported that maybe" is certainly everything that's wrong with the modern news media. A so-and-so speculating on someone else's understanding of a matter that is desperately trivial to begin with.
The more you know.

Hold fast the fellowship

Fences make for good neighbors and awful disciples.

The Life and Times

Alright, so I was having my windshield replaced at a car-care place and the "waiting room" was a few cast-off chairs set against the wall in the cramped payment office. Defense mechanized book in hand I decided to roam down the road looking for a place to park it and wait for the phone to vibrate "It's ready Mr. Tate." I happened upon Mt. Olive Baptist Church. It was a large church on a very large piece of property that was no longer properly maintained. Everything about the grounds was proof that every organism arcs, that no tree grows unabated to the stars. The place was kinda spent. Anyway, I circled the church in click-clackety dress shoes, khaki pants, and a nice button-up collared shirt - I was headed to the hospital first thing. I began to stroll through the church cemetary reading the epitaphs and sketching out what might or might not have been the biographies of the departed under foot. It was then that I noticed a teenage boy and a teenage girl walking carefully toward me - they were creeping, truth be told. They weren't really looking at me - they were actually staring. I wondered to myself if this was an avoid and conquer situation. It clearly was not. I turned and started walking towards the two. They stood perfectly still now - we were all alone. "Are you two members here?" I asked pointlessly. The girl leaned in and with voice quavering asked "Are you a ghost?"
C'mon. Are you serious? I'm being taken for an apparition now? I need to get out more. Shake things up. Something.

What happens in Eden. . .

Why is a meadow or the forest floor always clean and my house always dirty?

On the Meteorological Industrial Complex

I don't know what can be done about it, I suppose, but there has got to be a significant reduction in the amount of weather reporting in this country. There is absolutely no reason for a half-hour broadcasting of the local news to lead with the weather, tease with the weather throughout ("your weekend forecast coming up", "your seven day forecast coming up", "your live doppler radar update coming up", "the entire third grade clase at Lamarr Elementary reads the weather coming up"), spend like eight minutes on the weather, and close with the weather. And have you watched a morning "news" show like the Today show recently? You get a national forecast and the forecast in "your neck of the woods", "your zip code", "the little world outside your front door" at the beginning of every half hour and then the last five minutes of every half-hour is your local studio doing a full five minutes of meteorological improv with a little local cat-up-a-tree, crime, and traffic thrown in. I don't know - if this is what finally gets me back blogging maybe I should just pack up the car and head for Dowling Park already. It's like the line from that Gin Blossoms' song: "They tell the time too often on AM radio".