It was another “get to bed way later than I planned” morning. Not too bad, since I could sleep in a bit this morning. But, not great because the satellite guy was scheduled to be here “…between 12 and 5.” He got here at 11:35. Fortunately, I had awakened at 11:20 and happened to look out the office window and saw him as he was parking. He comes up and informs me that he could move the dish… but I would lose almost all of the channels that I get.

::: braincramp :::

There are only about 20 channels on the other satellite; they just use a slightly larger dish and reposition the unit slightly and that covers both of the satellite signals. He did, however, note that Dish Network and DirectTV have merged and that they would be doing installations for “both” starting in two weeks. This is good because we would have line of sight to the DTV and be able to reposition the dish to conform with the complex’ directives. (“Conform or be cast out…” Subdivisions) So… I get to go to the office tomorning, explain the situation, and see what they say. Whoop-de-damn-doo.

I forgot to mention: I saw our downstairs neighbors last night at the bowling alley. We have lived above/below each other for almost 18 months and this was the first time that we actually met and introduced ourselves.

“And another thing…”
I was doing my morning news-crawl and came across this article on the website for The Guardian, a British newspaper. Did I really need to know this? Did I?!? No, not really. No, I think that it even goes a little deeper than that: I didn’t care about it in the first place. Am I going to sleep any better or worse for knowing? Nope. Is it going to change any of my paradigms? Let’s just say that I have serious doubts about that. Am I going to be a ‘better person’ for knowing it? Umm….. I don’t think so.

What has become of the news – the real news – today? Whatever it is that we are getting now has become innundated with fluff and pablum. Yet, we soak it up like sponges and come back for more. And, it’s never enough. We want more-more-more and we want it NOW! Instantly! As it happens. Thank you, MTV, for teaching us that “Too much is never enough.” And, I think that we also owe them a debt of gratitude for helping us to become a “buzz-clip culture.” What do I mean? We have attention spans that rival those of goldfish. (Note: This isn’t entirely accurate – Goldfish have memories that only retain the past seven (7) seconds… but this example works for demonstrative purposes.)

We seem to have lost the capacity to slow down; we want/need everything to work in fast-forward. We live for sensory overload. Look at CNN. It wasn’t enough for us to just have a newsperson telling us what was happening. What did they do about it? They give us a window with a talking head and then fill the rest of the screen with scrolling, flashing, constantly changing data.

::: PROCESSING :::

::: PROCESSING :::

::: PROCESSING :::

If this is the “latest and greatest,” I can’t wait to see what’s next. Wait… I think I have it! “Subliminal news!” News that flashes past so quickly, it implants itself in our subconscious and then we ‘remember’ the news on an almost instinctive level. Yeah… that’s the way to go. Where are Ted Turner and Steve Case?!? This sounds like the perfect thing for the AOHell Time Warner syndicate to put into R&D.

Now, I need to figure out what to do with the rest of my day.

Peace.