| news | | | recent | | | archives | | | dispatches | | | goods | | | contributing | | | about |
06 May 2008, 22:07
A coworker wrote today that she, like your typical news junkie, has been following the Microsoft-Yahoo! story. The coverage has been downright rigorous and she's had many new points of view to cogitate over every day. There's been a lot to read, anyway.
However, she says, today she stopped to think and it occurred to her that she doesn't care. Whether Yahoo! caves or not, whether Microsoft withdrew its bid solely to destroy Yahoo!'s stock price before returning to the table with what will seem like such a generous offer, whether Jerry Yang and Steve Ballmer get together Friday nights to duct tape hungry beavers to each other's nipples and do the Man's Man Hokey Pokey—it doesn't effect her life and she just doesn't care. She doesn't even like computers, anyway.
The troops backed off the line, for now, anyway, game's done for today, and she feels the same way as she did when Brad and Jen split up. In other words, indifferent.
And it occurred to me that her hounding the MicroHoo story is, in effect, the same thing as millions of Us and People subscribers hounding the Pitt-Aniston split: mindless media consumption. Exalting the irrelevant. No different. Either way, it's a paycheck for the ad men.
I don't read the news as much as I should, probably, but what I read, I care about. I care that customs officials can demand to search your laptop at the border. I care that Homer Simpson earned a spot next to the Cerne-Abbas Giant. I care that a giant Lego man washed up on a Dutch beach, and that there's no explanation.
A giant Lego man washed up on a Dutch beach and there's no explanation. I love life.
At one point two years ago I had a bad yen for the Financial Times and the Economist. Used to book conference rooms at work and lock myself in there reading for 2 or 3 hours (on company time of course). Used to demand utter silence from my girlfriend while I read in the next room. Then one week I was ultra busy and didn't have time to read any media – in the Denver airport on a whim I picked up an issue of the New Yorker and read all the fiction in it. Lost all interest in news after that. In the wake of the emotions stirred up by a certain short story, I realized that financial and political news meant nothing to me. Indeed, it only served to make my life seem tiny and mediocre (after all, who can compete with world leaders?) But Raymond Carver taught me that all our lives are tiny and mediocre. And beautiful.
—Neil, 9:44, 12 May 2008
Feel like commenting?
your name
link?
Who is the current US president?