Wandering Around in My Head

As I may have mentioned before, I visit several news aggregate sites every day: FreeRepublic and DemocraticUnderground for politics, FARK for general stuff, and other boards for various specific interests. What kills me is the people on these boards who show up in the comments threads to note that the story is either a duplicate of one already posted at the site, or has been posted elsewhere online.

What’s the fucking point of posting that? Are you trying to impress us with the fact that you have the time to note every single submission to the site? You need to get out more. And really? It’s been posted elsewhere online? Perhaps you don’t understand how an AGGREGATOR site works. I don’t want to visit every vaguely-related .com every day, so I rely on people with whom I share certain opinions or viewpoints to find topical stuff and post it here. Of course it’s been posted elsewhere, you moron!

Each site seems to acquire its own little group whose only contributions are these kinds of posts. I always picture them as spinsters, with pursed lips and a raised eyebrow, going “Hmmmm?” Tapping their liver-spotted fingers on the offending headline to make sure you see it. It’s the internet, bitch. It ain’t gonna get full because someone double-posted a story about a cat that can tell when someone’s going to die.

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I’m pretty sure I witnessed a multiple homicide on Dora the Explorer the other night. I was wandering through the kids’ room, and noted that Dora & Co. had a group of bad guys tied to a ship’s mast. Our heroes proceed to reclaim whatever it was the bad guys had taken from them, and jumped over to Diego’s Rescue Center ship. As they did the “We did it!” dance, the other ship sank in the background. Even by Rocky & Bullwinkle standards, that’s pretty dark.

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My local paper apparently has a +48 Resistance to Irony when it comes to our economy. On Page 1A, they’ll headline “County Employment at Record Low!” On page 5A, they’ll note that the county government just spent $40,000 for a new tourism campaign, a campaign developed by a company in Arkansas. On page 2B, there’s a story about the contractor from the other side of the state that’s coming in to renovate some city-owned buildings, and page 13B has the story about the number of small local construction companies that have gone out of business.

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We took Kitten and Cub to the local pizza buffet tonight, in hopes that the carb overload might shut them down early. It’s one of those places that has a television on every wall and an arcade in the back. We had three screens in our room – two news stations and Cartoon Network (you know…for kids!). The local news was repeating CNN’s non-news story about how Obama might age while in office, while on another wall, the actual CNN was showing clips from an Obama press conference. I was really surprised that the Cartoon Network wasn’t featuring Obama, too, since he lifted his entire campaign from Bob the Builder. Can we infringe copyright? Yes we can!

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I realize that the English language is constantly evolving, but the current use of “ginormous” irritates me. It’s a completely useless and unnecessary word, because all it does it combine two synonyms without expanding the definition of either. Similarly, the UK term “drink-driving” offends my sense of grammar. Are you steering a cocktail down the motorway? When was the last time you were drink?

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When Frank Caliendo’s career fizzles out (4…3…2…), he should offer to do his voices for the TomTom network. It would be cheaper than getting the actual celebrities (though the John Cleese package is a lot of fun.) I’ve been disappointed in TomTom’s selection of voices, though. They don’t have an Aussie, Kiwi, or believable Irish. They need Amy Walker.