Friday, July 17, 2009

 Bliss
I erred on an earlier post when I talked about the chocolate coconut milk ice cream that would lead to world peace. That other brand is yummy, too, but it's this stuff that will make you want to save the world. I saw it when I was shopping this morning and I figured I'd better buy some so I could take a photo and update my story.

* * *

My sweetheart is about 75% recovered from his unfortunate summer pneumonia. He had another doctor appointment this morning and they told him he was on this side of it and just keep taking it easy. He just told me he was going downstairs to watch a German silent film. I said if it was silent, what did it matter what language was in. He sputtered and then threatened to give me a lecture about German film or something. I'm sure he'll write about it later today.

* * *

It's sad how much personal responsibility I'm taking for saving the dying newspaper industry. We get two papers delivered to our house seven days a week.

A few months ago Bob asked me if I was ready to give up the Oregonian. I didn't say no but more like, but we can't give up on it. In the morning I can hear the delivery vehicle and I don't think there's another stop on our street.

However, the Oregonian is getting exponentially more terrible by the day. The majority of the articles are stupid, sound like they were written by a high school journalism class (which is kind of a burn on high school journalism classes, sorry) and generally involve blaming some government entity for everything. Weather. Accidents. Moldy cheese.

In today's Stupidonian there's an article about a small child wandering around by herself in the sheriff's parking lot. An officer saw her and here's the quote: "his police officer's instinct kicked in. He stopped the girl, asked her where her mother was and where she was headed."

His police officer's instinct. Really? Don't you think pretty much any human being with a soul would be concerned seeing a small child wandering around a parking lot alone? Wouldn't that be human instinct? It's a terrible story, the kid was being abused but that doesn't make the article any less worthless. Even the caption to the photo is lame. Later the officer "shrug[s] off praise for helping the child." Isn't that his freaking job?

Here's one from a few weeks ago: a guy caught his own identity thief. Yeah, identity theft is awful but there is no hook in this story. It's like writing a story about your Mom going to the grocery store. "After the meat section, Mom pushed her cart over to produce ... ."

Choice quote:
[The victim] had enough. "To be honest with you, I'm the real [Vampire Lestat]." (aside: made up name)
The voice on the other end protested, "No you're not. I am!" and hung up.

Last item mocking the Oregonian.

The Elks came to town and the article uses 600 words to tell us over and over and over that they were here to spend money.

Choice quote:
Mr. Elk said his wife has gone shopping several times since they arrived Thursday and that the two are considering a tour to Mount Hood. "The Elks spend money when they come to town," he said.

* * *

I was going to use this morning to clean out the giant overflowing email box of doom but I've got an appointment in less than an hour and I haven't even started yet. Since it's been so hot I decided to go out and weed the front yard at 7am when it was nice and cool. I moved these rock-brick things in the driveway and totally crunched one of my fingers. That baby is going to be nice and purple tomorrow. Photo to follow.