Tag: news

Goodbye 2018

new-years

It’s the end of December, and 2018 is rapidly fading away.  Time moves on, and another year is gone.  Here are just a few WD observations from 2018, a year that will soon be relegated to the dusty pages of history.

Kim Jong-un, the Grand Exalted Imperial Poobah of North Korea, promised he’d get rid of his nuclear arsenal.  Sounds legit!  After all, this is the guy who claims he invented the hamburger, is the best golfer in history and never goes to the toilet.

Rosanne Barr has a big mouth.  Who knew?

The word of the year was “toxic.”  It replaced sexist, racist, homophobic and hater as the go-to word that means: I don’t like it, and you’re to blame.  Thus, “toxic masculinity” became the complete and total explanation for everything that’s wrong with the world.

Bill Cosby went to jail.  (One down; one Weinstein to go.)

Ben Affleck decided to hide out in Detox until his #metoo moment blew over.  God!  That guy is an even bigger hypocrite than I thought.

There were so many resignations and “You’re fired-s” flying around the White House that they installed a revolving door.

The biggest news grabber of the year was the British Royal family.  Prince Harry got married.  So did Princess Eugenie.  The Duchess of Cambridge had a baby.  So did her Royal wanna-be sister, Pippa.  And Prince Charles turned 70.  But when the newly-minted Duchess of Sussex actually closed her own car door, Social Media truly lost its mind.

The scariest news of 2018 is the Age of Merkel is over, and the even scarier news is the Age of Macron might just be getting started.

Speaking of which, the latest fashion out of France is yellow vests.

There was good news, too!  More ordinary people killed virtual people playing the video game Fortnite than all the world’s soldiers combined did on the battlefield.  Who says humanity isn’t making progress?

Canada legalized marijuana, but most Canadians didn’t notice.  They were too busy eating Skip the Dishes chicken wings and watching Sausage Party on Netflix.

Apparently, Bitcoin (Bitcoins?) lost most of their value – again.  (Those things jump around more than a toddler in a Bouncy Castle.)  However, nobody really noticed, so it’s pretty safe to say they probably weren’t actually worth anything in the first place and – oh, yeah! — Mr. Barnum was right.

Mark Zuckerberg got into trouble when it was discovered that Cambridge Analytica had harvested the personal information of over 50 million Facebook users.  This is bad … but … think about it!  Since the vast majority of Facebook is Clickbait, cat videos and sappy homilies, Cambridge Analytica didn’t really get very much, did they?

At the movies, people were still fascinated by superheroes with Black Panther, The Avengers, The Incredibles, Deadpool and Crazy Rich Asians pulling in hundreds of millions at the box office.

In more entertainment news, Scarlett Johansson decided not to play transgender Dante “Tex” Gill in a movie because of a massive Social Media campaign that pointed out she is not transgender.  This might very well be a watershed moment for Hollywood.  Perhaps, in the future, only aliens will appear in Star Wars movies, only the undead in zombie movies, and since Transformers don’t actually exist, this could be the end of that jackass franchise.  We’ll just have to wait and see.

But the biggest news story of 2018 was:

When Stephen Hawking died in March, it actually lowered the average IQ of the entire planet.  And, honestly, folks, I don’t think we have that many points to give away.

 

I’m Totally Tired Of Porn!

WARNING:  Opinions expressed on this blog are so cold you can skate on them.  Reader discretion is advised.

newspaper-1

I’m old enough to remember when journalism was an honourable profession.  (Yeah, I’m that old.)  In those days (and this isn’t just nostalgia) reporters reported the news, good reporters sought the truth and the great ones found it.  Even as I type this, it does sound a little corny and old-fashioned.  However, anyone, who was alive before Phil Donahue and his insipid brand of Jello Journalism f-f-f-fouled things up, will know what I’m talking about.  Edward R. Murrow’s boys (and more than a few girls) set the standard, and typewriters all over the world clattered away, trying to emulate them.  Unfortunately, those days are gone, and they’re not coming back.

These days journalists deal in porn.  It comes in many forms.  It wears many disguises.  But it’s always the same – an artificially arranged scenario whose sole purpose is to stimulate the audience — and any way you slice that, it’s porn.

Disaster Porn – Touring the wreckage has become de rigueur in television reporting.  Filming stunned survivors stumbling through the rubble is gold, and if you can get a shivering puppy on camera, you’re well on your way to a Pulitzer Prize.

Grief Porn – Shoving a camera into somebody’s face and asking, “Can you describe what was going through your mind when the police first told you your daughter had been eaten by cannibals?”

Poverty Porn – Camera crews and well-fed reporters, cruising through a refugee camp like it’s a guided tour of a human zoo of misery.  But the money shot is when they pull over and ask one of the locals just how horrible their godawful, wretched existence really is.

Ain’t it Awful Porn – This is when the downtrodden get an extra kick in the ass.  Journalists particularly enjoy empty foodbanks, old people who get scammed out of their life savings, and single mothers with cancer who lose their jobs a week before Christmas.

Trump Porn – OMG!  Look what the guy did, today!  LOOK!  JUST LOOK!  It’s way worse than yesterday!

It’s Not Really Porn Porn – No wonder feminists are pissed off all the time.  Believe me, Red Carpet cleavage, the wardrobe malfunction, the ever juvenile nip slip, and the full skirt caught by a random breeze are not actually news.  They’re occasions where polite people discreetly look away.

But the worst journalistic porn in the world is:

Inspirational Porn – Clearly, the only reason disabled people even exist is to demonstrate to the rest of us lazy bastards just how petty our problems really are.  Think about it!  The truth is, regardless of how talented, determined or resourceful these people might be on a normal daily basis — without their wheelchairs, journalists wouldn’t give them the time of day.

 

More Summer News

newspaper

I love it when the news cooperates!  Sometimes being a writer is hard work, but every once in a while, the news just falls into your lap like a half-eaten hotdog squirting out of the bun.  It’s messy, it’s not very nice, but everybody who sees it thinks it’s funny.

It turns out yet another US president got played like a cheap violin.  Diplomats all over the world have been duping US presidents since Woodrow Wilson got his ass handed to him by Georges Clemenceau at the Treaty of Versailles in 1919.  This latest fiasco happened at the Donald Trump/Kim Jong-un Summit last month.  Everybody walked away all smiles and chuckles, but come to find out, the only country that got what they wanted was China — a diminished US military presence in Northeast Asia.  Plus ça change!

Some lions in South Africa got pissed off and ate a couple of poachers.  These guys probably had friends and families, but I’m pretty sure most of the world is cheering for the lions.  Just goes to show you that our compassion for the tragic loss of human life is actually on a sliding scale.

According to the UN, a bunch of Syrians have returned home after a de-escalation in the fighting between – uh – God only knows.  (Figuring out who’s fighting who in Syria is like doing a Rubik Cube blindfolded — good luck!)  The point is, however, why?  I’ve seen Syria on TV, and it looks to me as if those people haven’t seen a tree, a bush or a blade of grass in a coupla hundred years.  I can’t imagine how returning home is the best option for anybody who actually managed to get the hell outta there.  But home is where the heart is – I guess!

And finally:

Scarlett Johansson is getting beaten up on Twitter – again.  This time, she’s been cast as a transgender woman/man in a movie.  Apparently (according to Twitter, anyway) only transgender people should portray transgender people in movies.  Oddly, Ms. Johansson, an American from New York, was not criticized for portraying a 16th century English aristocrat (The Other Boleyn Girl) a 17th Dutch servant (Girl With A Pearl Earring) a Russian assassin (all the Marvel movies) a computer (Her) an alien (Under The Skin) or a snake (The Jungle Book.)  Call me old-fashioned, but I’m pretty sure the entire (and only) purpose of “acting” is to “act” like the character you’re trying to portray — and if you do a good job, they give you tons of money and a bunch of awards.  I realize Twitter logic is an oxymoron, but this kinda thinking actually defeats the whole point of the profession.