TimWoolery.net Documenting the Journey and the Learning Curve

#92 – The Big Fat Who Cares

#92 - The Big Fat Who Cares

I love the news...

I love the dirt, the dish, the gossip, the word, the buzz and the 411. It's all information, baby! Keep me loaded down with up-to-the-minute updates on TomKat, Brangelina and the marauding hordes of fleshplastic! If that's not enough, we've got more info-noise for you. Articles about blogs about food - about how much Santana Row in San Jose sucks - about how kids are drinking less soda in schools. Keep the data coming folks; we might need it some day!

More news - news about Barry Bonds and his soon-to-breaking-Babe-Ruth's home run record.

In the middle of the maelstrom comes a single news story that reminds of the grim reality just beyond Hollywood and infotainment. A Russian jet liner goes down with almost 120 people aboard. 120 people died, and it's item #4 on a list of 'top stories' that we should all know about. Let's go deeper and farther, because you can never know too much about anything. You can never tell when some knee-jerk liberal newspaper or right-wing wacko cable news network will be swilling in their personal agenda just to distract you from the real issue.

What's the real issue? Quick - read this story about Darryl Hanna and her commitment to the environment. Watch the scrolling text at the bottom of the screen on CNN talk about the Iranian advancement of nuclear technology between stories about rising gas prices and the cost of downloading music from iTunes. Now class, multiple choice…is the issue of today A) the Sago mine disaster B) a warehouse fire in Brooklyn C) a small tsunami in the South Pacific or D) the death of Tiger Woods' dad? Correct answer - none! The real issue is what the government is going to do about the Bird Flu when it happens. Or maybe it's a new stamp. Or maybe it's that people are being tortured in US-run detention centers in Pakistan.

But let's not focus on that. We're busy protecting children from the dangers of carbonation. Let's create a funded program that tells kids how to eat healthy and then send them home where they've got the Kool-Aid man and commercials about the new sugar-laden cereal that displays an egg, an orange, some toast, some bacon and a multivitamin along with the cereal while some guy says "Part of a balanced breakfast!" Yeah, sure it is. Put it next to that spread and Styrofoam fits in that category.

So, ban soda from schools. Have another senior in High School collect signatures to put a ballot measure in place to allow soda. Don't worry kid, if the measure passes, you'll be bagging soda at the grocery store after you graduate by the time the law comes into effect. Welcome to Real World Civics 101A.

Skip around the tube and see what else they're marketing as news that you need to know. Teri Hatcher/Tim Robbins/Charlie Sheen and the never-ending parade of beautiful people. Watch their incessant drama and visits to the telly screen as they set the record straight as to why their marriage failed, or why they were popped for coke possession or why they hate President Bush. Go on Oprah, go on the View, go on the World Entertainment News Network, which is only considered international because it mentions a new David Blane stunt where he spends four days in a vat of cold cream to set the new world record for largest amount of people watching a jackass for 13 consecutive seconds.

Don't stop clicking, don't stop reading…don't stop thinking long enough to realize that you aren't really thinking at all. Don't stop processing data long enough to attempt to give it context because Lord knows that as soon you do, you'll be out of here faster than a white trash family leaves the trailer when they hear about a going-out-of-business sale at K-Mart.

It's cold out there.

This world is not gentle toward the innocent and it's becoming only too common to read many, many stories that are geared toward that sad reality. Turn on the TV or read the paper or the news on the Internet and you see the comical, operatic and artistic amount of cruelty in this world. Feel overwhelmed as you read MotherJones.com and the HughHewitt.com present equally vicious diatribes as they handle the left and right sides of the Titanic - you can see the foam flecks flying from their mouths as they rearrange the deck chairs and shake their fists at each other for being the reason that they're about to drown in the cold North Sea. Feel overloaded by the amount of information and the almost certain knowledge that someone with a reason is keeping you from seeing the whole story. They've locked up the pertinent data tighter than the 18.5 minutes missing from the Watergate tapes. Know that you'll only hear the whole story 20 years from now after the files become declassified or a FOIA lawsuit is finally ruled in favor of unlocking the files.

Somehow - beyond all that - you still have to care enough to put the effort into knowing. Not just reading the paper every day but knowing that to be a considered and informed person is to wade in a steamy morass of information, opinions and factoids. Don't get discouraged because the wave will roll over you like a tsunami in a septic tank. Keep treading filthy gray water and hope that at some point your toes will touch the ground or that someone will throw you a life preserver.

Go through the cyclical process, man - go from ignorant to concerned to informed to overwhelmed to apathetic to ignorant and back again. Go through that enough to become more jaded or callous than a cockroach in a microwave. Become more hard-shelled than a foot-washing Baptist. Scream about the religious zealotry that destroys people's lives without a hint of irony. Devote yourself to a spiritual quest that moves from Eastern philosophy to Western consumerism. Become the little boat on a big ocean that moves wherever the current takes it. Maybe you'll make it to an island paradise - maybe you'll break up on the rocks.

All the while this happens - saturate yourself with things that distract you from your hopeless existence. Buy things - have experiences - you'll care less about genocide in Darfur when you're climbing a fake rock wall or being one of the first people to see Mission Impossible:III on opening day. Assuage your guilt by signing a petition or buying a ticket to a Tibetan Freedom concert. Try to forget that 2/3rds of the world hates you for your lifestyle by buying ecologically friendly clothing and toilet paper.

In the middle of all of that - there's a buzz that reminds you of the dark nasty monster that's hiding in the news rack. Bad news, worse news - click onto Sfgate.com or pay fifty cents to read about some horrible things happening to people in Africa or the Philippines or Myanmar. Read about some government skullduggery that happened 30 years before and know that it's too late to do anything about it. Kind of like standing on the sidewalk behind the police lines and watching your house burn down. That level of loss and impotence just inspires people to fantastic acts of creativity as they swear and scream like a possessed holy roller about the loss of their livelihood - the evil that men do. The hopeless and senseless rage that comes from knowing that you have lost something and that 99% of the people you meet will simply say "That sucks…want to get a Peet's or something?" and move on with their lives. They'll be that indifferent if you're lucky, or if you aren't they'll be moved to make some flip or acid comment because humor defuses tension - even if it's racial humor.

Carried along helplessly by the tides of future history. The only kind of history that you know after you realize that what is going on today has been occurring more or less in the same way for thousands of years. One group goes to war with another, suspects a second group and is alienating a third. Two or three screaming monkeys at the top of a billion monkeys are somehow declared "most competent monkey" and are accorded more power than any monkey could ever imagine possessing or being responsible for. The déjà vu is getting stronger and more powerful until it becomes overwhelming - this sticky sweet feeling in your mouth that pushes up through your nose until you become nauseated from it; it's like you're drowning in a vat of cotton candy.

So to anaesthetize yourself from this grim reality, to find some type of release, some type of escape. Let's go someplace where the bad people aren't - where the gritty reality is tempered with soft lighting and air conditioning. Focus on something besides the little voice in your head screaming like Chicken Little going "The sky is falling! The sky is falling!" It's tempered with another voice, maybe it's Chicken Little's blasé and jaded uncle. He flicks a cigarette butt in his yard and sips from a cocktail as he replies, "Yeah - it's falling. But what are ya gonna do?"

It's at this point that you find focusing on silly things like celebrity marriages and the latest pundit talking point (Like soda, for example) to be very soothing. Yes, it's news but it's not scary news. And since it *is* news, we can feel good about keeping up with current events. It's not like it's pap, it's near the current events, it's almost what we should be paying attention to and it's a lot less painful. Sure, someone should be paying attention but it's pretty hard for the little guy at the bottom of a bunch of screaming, breathing and defecating monkeys to squirm and claw his way out of the pile to some breathable air. Get away from the pile, look up and realize that all he's looking at are some confused and frightened mammals who are WAAAAAAY in over their heads.

So stop thinking, or better yet, feed your need to think by thinking about things that don't matter! It's okay - you can feel intellectually superior about something as you hold ardent debate over the intricate differences between Black Cherry Vanilla Coke and Cherry Pepsi. Or Cherry Vanilla Dr. Pepper. Or the differences between John Mayer and Jack Johnson. Or the differences between Ford and Chevy. Country or Rock or Hip-Hop or Metal. Johnny Knoxville vs. Bam Margera. Think about those things, people because you're so screwed any time you come near thinking about a real problem to find a real solution. We can't find a real solution, we aren't even sure what the problem is. All we are can be explained in that five minutes after the Titanic sank where you had about a thousand people screaming and flailing on top of a very cold, unforgiving ocean. You've got about five minutes, folks and then that's about it.

No - There is No Escape.

- Tim Woolery, 05/05/2006