Gordaen's Blog

News has to be nearly the worst thing on TV. The most useful part (to the “average” person) has to be the weather guessing, which is essentially the weatherman looking at the teleprompter (which just has a smiley face on it so he can remember to pretend to enjoy his job) and then looking at the blank wall. If the lights are at just the right angle and not too bright, he can see his shadow and that means… well, that means the same as if he can’t see his shadow. He’s going say a guess, and on top of it, it’s going to be a percentage guess. “There’s a fifty percent chance of rain…” Thank you so much for letting me know!

The other useful part is really just useful to terrorists. It goes a little something like this: “Today police uncovered a terrorist bomb that failed to detonate. We’ll tell you what the terrorist did wrong at 11.” You know what he did wrong? He forgot to watch the news channel that told him how to build the bomb, how to escape the police, etc. Fortunately, we have shows like CSI, which convince terrorists that if we have a 100x100px photo, we can blow it up 50-100 times with perfect clarity to identify the molecular makeup of a jacket, detailing the exact fibers used, telling us the quality and thus the country of origin, which leads to evidence that leads to evidence that eventually tells us that the killer was the most obvious person anyway. So don’t buy your jackets from China or Malaysia.

Then there are the semi-local stories… these are generally about violence, because otherwise the news channels would be telling you about good people who do wonderful things in the world so we could feel better about being part of the human race. You get to find out that a few towns over, so-and-so whom you never heard of was hit by a car that fled the scene. By the end of the news cast you won’t remember the type of car and definitely won’t know the victim’s name. They could have just made up the story; it doesn’t really matter. And if you’re on the other side of the story and they are telling the world about your misfortune, you’re probably very mad that they are telling everyone about your business. Anyone who’s been in high school knows that just isn’t cool.

Sports. Do I even need to made fun of sports? Unless you yell a lot at the TV when you watch the game(s), you would get more exercise playing a sports video game. Most people don’t know any of the players, but sitting in a crowd of noisy, stinky people so far away that the players are dots is better than staring at a TV screen from a few feet. If you can’t do either of those though, you have to rely of the sports section of the news where the commentator has had hours or days to come up with lines that sound like he is excitedly watching the clips for the first time.

The news shows will also have some kind of national and/or international stories, which will either annoy you (e.g., the president starting a war, North Korea pretending they have missiles we should care about, etc.) or you’ll be indifferent about (e.g., the pope kissed some kid and he giggled, a country sent a shuttle into space on a mission where it doesn’t land on another planet/moon, etc.). There’s always the off-chance that the story will entertain you, such as when it is yet another government official not knowing anything about the internet(s) or its tubes.

The “news” is essentially a way of having a gossip show with a more glamorous and professional look. Remember, it’s fact if someone else believes it is.