January 28, 2002
I'm not quite sure what to say here. I mean, it's not as if there haven't been newsworthy happenings about which I could rant, or causes I could champion, or public figures I could alternately tribute or malign. It's just that there's so much effort involved in doing any of these properly that I've decided to take an apathetic stance instead.Take the 'hockey dad' for instance (take him to jail): What I saw of the trial coverage led me to believe that he should be reunited with his family. Then I saw the background stuff on him and the guy he killed (the hockey dead?) and decided it would take too much time to properly voice and support an opinion here. It seemed both men had demonstrably violent, antisocial tendencies which led to a fracas in which one of them was dead, and the other in prison.
I could mount all kinds of soapboxes, but I just don't care enough. I'll let an impassioned commentator take this up, and I'll even concede to let said commentator pick whichever soapbox is closest. Me, I don't even like hockey. And I'm not all that partial to ice.
While we're on the subject of dead people and broken families, does anybody have any idea how many people have been killed over in Afghanistan? I could rant for hours about how important I think it is that we get an enemy body count (hey, I wanna keep score, okay?) along with a civilian body count (just how accurate are we, anyway?) but I'm too tired. There's no way to wade into the topic without having folks from both sides of the fence flame me for something. (Just suggesting that there is a fence with two sides will likely result in a flame or two, since attempting to reduce a complex issue like 'what to do in response to a major terrorist attack' to a bipolar argument involves sweeping generalizations in which at least one special interest gets swept under the carpet, and more than one sentence gets drawn out far, far too long, even for a parenthetical remark.)
So I'll just keep things close to home. You know by now that there are auctions on. The first ends on the evening of the 28th (oops... I just maligned everyone outside of my time zone), and the second ends about 24 hours later. Click in and see the pretty pictures. And then have a nice piece of pie. Calm down. Breeeeathe. Count to ten. These activities have little to do with winning the auction, but they might help you live longer.
Except for the pie. (I'm now bracing myself for flames from the proprietors of fine pie-shops, assuming people like that even have email access).