I’ve commented before on how the news is mostly distant and without context. One Dead, Three Hurt in California Shooting. Shooting in N.S. town leads police on high-speed chase of suspect. Blah, blah, blah. When something hits closer to home, it will knock me on my ass, but I am unable to mourn the deaths of strangers when all I see is a 15 second video clip.

That said, I can remember a few isolated cases where the TV news really shook me. Vegging on the couch one afternoon, flicking randomly through the channels, an odd pattern formed. Every station started to show the same video feed. For the next half hour I watched, live, as armed FBI agents ushered students from a school in which two gunmen were still stalking. I couldn’t tune it out. It was sickening. I had to turn it off. The strange feeling I had that day, that I was seen something I shouldn’t, has stayed with me.

More recently, four junior-high-school kids were killed in a bus accident in New Brunswick. I sympathized with the survivors. Even now, I am uncomfortable thinking of the horror these kids must be going through.

There’s nothing unusual about being upset my school shootings and tragic accidents, but these two cases are some of the only ones I can ever remember having any impact on me at all. Most news to me is noise. A fire kills a family in Boston, a plane crash kills a celebrity. I could care less. I’ve got plenty to worry about with the people I actually know.

My point? Not sure. Just wondering aloud about selective news sympathy. Why is it that I can watch most news without blinking, however horrifying, while a select few stories keep me up at night?

A random collection of interesting things:

• Nasa scientists are going to attempt to fly an 11-pound model airplane across the Atlantic using the Global Positioning System (via Slashdot).
  
• If you are like me, you know very little about Canada’s 1970 ‘October Crisis‘ and you’ll benefit from the CBC’s look into the time the Canadian Government called on the War Measures Act.
• It’s been out for a while now, but a recent listen to The Unauthorized Biography Of Reinhold Messner by Ben Folds Five (who are apparently no longer together) blew me away. I sat down with the record as a moderate Ben Folds Fan having heard only the single and listen from start to finish. I listened to every word (not common for a first time listen). It is a sad and powerful album.

I have taken Dristan© for the runny nose, acetaminophen for the headache, non-descript no-name syrup for the cough, but it is not enough to stop my nose from running, fix my headache, put me to sleep, do the dishes, point out the way, clean my room, darn my socks, help me forget, sew the button back on my pants, pay the bills, write a screenplay, smarten me up, help me remember. The cough is mostly gone though.

I am sorry.

I was shown this this link by a fine young man (older than myself), and I have interpreted it as a sign of the coming apocalypse. Steve was also able to spot #47.

In Thailand, the first Oxygen bar opened. Where humans, frustrated from lack of or poor oxygen, can kick back with a cool drink, 20 minutes of scented oxygen, and relaxing muzak. All that will put you back 3.95.

I’m reminded of that commercial with bum drinking oxygen from a tree-in-a-jar that ran a few years ago. And at Spaceballs where that guy cracks open a can of air for a sniff at his desk. It sure was funny at the time, wasn’t it?

A few years ago my sister helped me with a paper I was having difficulty starting. I thought her words might be useful for all those sad and panicked English majors out there:

Trampolines are quite a bit like Canadian literature
in the sense that both can be used, or abused.
One must not jump too high on a trampoline,
Canadian lit., being of a more fragile nature,
should not be jumped on at all.
One is not encouraged, yet still can,
crease a book of Canadian lit.,
yet a trampoline can not be creased.
Some trampolines do disassemble, however,
for convenient storage.

THE REST, OBVIOUSLY, WRITES ITSELF.

This odd blurb greeted me on the home page of Amazon.com today. See it in context »

I can’t promise that your life will be any better if you don’t watch TV, but I think I can absolutely guarantee that it won’t be any worse than it is now. Its TV Turnoff Week kids.

An earlier debate here on aov (which happened mostly via email since it was pre-replies) was inconclusive about the shame of watching TV. Although it did indicate that TV Turnoff Week would be a lot harder for some than for others.