A Welcome Lull in the News

Because I’m a nerd, the first thing I do when I wake up is roll out of bed and into my command station computer desk to check what’s going on the world via my Netvibes RSS feed.  When I checked things out this morning, I was pleasantly surprised to see no screaming headlines about protests, killings, emergency decrees or tanks rolling through the city.  In fact, I was relieved to find that things were relatively boring.  I immediately thought back to a fantastic article from The Onion in October of 2001 with the headline “A Shattered Nation Longs to Care About Stupid Bullshit Again” which sums up my feelings pretty perfectly.

This is what I saw this morning when I clicked on my ‘Thailand News’ tab – a few minor points about the ongoing protests, but you can see that a few feeds about sports are starting to work their way into the top headlines, which is a relief.  When I start to see news about celebrities or another silly lawsuit  by one politician against another politician, I can be sure that things are finally starting to cool down, however temporarily.

A relatively benign news day in Thailand.

The late, great George Carlin beautifully summed up the fact that most people are tragi-voyeurs at heart  when he said: “Sometimes an announcer comes on television and says, ‘Six thousand people were killed in an explosion today.’ You say, ‘Where, where?’ He says, ‘In Pakistan.’ You say, ‘Aww, fuck Pakistan. Too far away to be fun.’ But if he says it happened in your hometown, you say, ‘Whooa, hot shit, Dave! C’mon! Let’s go down and look at the bodies!'” It should be noted that this quote was from before 9/11, so taking it in the right context is essential (this page is an excellent discussion of how and when a comedian should poke fun at tragedy).

But I digress.  At any rate, I do believe that most people are glad when they wake up and see that the world has managed to hold itself together for another day.  Most people.

A classic story from The Onion.