Hello, my name is Nance, and I am a news junkie. I know...admitting you have a problem is the first step. But, the problem is bigger than that. There aren't going to be enough steps in this recovery program. The problem is bigger than I am. I'm hooked and hooked for good. Just the past few days alone have convinced me of it.
It started with this little tidbit, which I read in The Plain Dealer. Up until this story of the python in the Australian toilet, I totally believed--no, needed to believe--that this sort of happening was purely an urban legend. I have a terrific fear of snakes; I will not even touch a photograph of a snake. Once, when I was a little girl, I was terrified that there was a rattlesnake in our toilet. Horrified beyond measure, I screamed for my mother from the hallway. "Mom! Come quick! There is a rattlesnake in the toilet! I can hear it rattling in there! Come listen and then call the fire department to get it OUT!!" My mother came tearing into the hall. She stopped. She listened. Then she started laughing. She tried like hell not to, but she couldn't help it. Her shoulders were shaking with unsuppressed mirth. I was crying---hard. "Nance," she said, her own tears sliding down her cheeks, "honey, that's the wind through the Venetian blinds."
The next news item that gives me pause is one that I heard on MSNBC today. It is the results of a poll given annually for National Kids' Day. Just about 1500 kids under the age of 10 were surveyed as to their opinion of what would be "The Very Best Thing in the World." Number 1? "Being a celebrity." Number 2: "Good Looks"; Number 3: "Being Rich." Now, I realize that "the very best thing in the world" is really broad, and that these kids are very young, but honestly...Number 9 was "Watching Films"!!! Oh, and all those things beat out "God", who rounds out the list at Number 10. Now that's gonna piss off some right-wing conservative Christians, and right at Christmastime, too. I wonder if they specified whose films... 'cause if it's like Adam Sandler or Lindsay Lohan, then it's pissing me off royally.
Finally, we come to an article AND video, the footage of which I cannot seem to get for you but that I saw on both MSNBC and our local NBC affiliate. But before I discuss it, I must digress. (No! Really? La.) It is with great dismay that I observe and note the proliferation of the Inflatable Holiday Yard Decorations. They are no less than an atrocity. What started out as a mere novelty has now turned into an all-out urban assault of not just the standard secular figures of Yuletide; nay, it is now de rigeur to have a yard full of these airy erections in a variety of forms: Sponge Bob in a Santa Hat, the Grinch, a penguin with a scarf, Santa on a Harley, and this year's newest incarnations, the Sno-Globe and the Christmas Carousel. No. I am not making any of those up. They are all in my neighborhood proximity, I am sad to report. The only one I am even remotely flexible on is the Inflatable Eeyore with Reindeer Antlers and that is because, come on! It is Eeyore. If it were up to me, an enormous inflatable Eeyore would be required on every single street. Just not in my yard.
But, I digress.
This report, which I read and saw the shocking and amazing video footage of in no way involves me. I swear it on my life. There is no way, despite my obvious antipathy toward all non-Eeyore yard inflatables, that I would ever stoop to attacking and stabbing one with a screwdriver in the dead of night. Besides, it is clear that the attacker is a man. And I would not go back four times over. Duh.
There you go, as The New York Times' masthead boasts, "all the news that's fit to print."
V--You, woman, have WAY too many snake stories. I doubt I could even touch you at this point. We don't even have garter snakes around here anymore, a fact that Al Gore probably could get really intense about.
ReplyDeleteToday, a new inflatable sprouted up a few blocks away, a 10 foot nutcracker. I was thoroughly disgusted.
V--I couldn't even look at the package or the deflated one. Which reminds me: the only thing tackier and sadder than those hideous inflated things is when they are DEflated. They look like the Jolly Green Giant flung his used holiday condom in someone's yard. I'm sorry. They started it.
ReplyDelete