Thursday, March 24, 2005
Morality Overdose
Looking back at last night’s post it seems a little disjointed and rambling. Tonight’s will probably not be much better, but hopefully have a little more substance.
I have a few new things to say about what is going on with Terri Schiavo, but first a quick note about my love-hate relationship with both Fox News and CNN. I typically watch Fox News for TV coverage, and read CNN.com for web based news. Even mentioning Fox News in a Slashdot.org discussion will almost guarantee a Troll rating, but I prefer seeing news with a little variety. I don’t respect every celeb on Fox, I find Hanity especially excruciating and inflexibly set in his ideology, but you can’t go wrong with the News panel on "FOX News Watch" hosted by Eric Burns. Oddly this weekend week-in-review discussion show cannot be found on FoxNews.com’s front page and I had to do a site search to be sure I was getting the host’s name correct. For critics of Fox News, try this show out. Often the most honest and accurate criticisms of Fox News comes from Fox News itself on this show, as well as criticism for any other media outlet not serving the truth well.
OK with that out of the way I have had to avoid Fox News the last two-days, it having become an all Shiavo all the time network. Worse it seems to have turned into some kind of 700 Club clone with endless footage of people petitioning God and the Courts for intervention. The quickest way to a comma these days would be to watch Fox News and chug a beer every time the word “moral” is used. I could switch back to CNN which I used to watch all the time, but they seem to have become pabulum the last few years, or perhaps passive-aggressive is a better term. Maybe CNN is left leaning maybe its not. If it would just become more in-your-face with their shows I would probably watch them. They seem afraid of offending guests, interviewees, and watchers alike.
On to less blood pressure raising items. If you’ve been here before you may have noticed a slightly changed layout. Should anyone leave comments, the design element of this blog is one of things I most interested in. I started out with one of Blogger.com’s more basic templates, but I have been tweaking, changing, and of course stealing from others to give it a less cookie cutter look. It still has a standard bloggish look, but I’m only aiming to look good enough that you wouldn’t assume it was an amateur endeavor by its layout.
Yesterday I threw a photo in more or less for the hell of it. It may be sometime before I begin posting pictures regularly, which shouldn’t be a big deal, I’m technically competent, I bought a nice digital camera three years ago but found I have hardly taken any pictures with. Then when my cell-phone went on the fritz last fall I upgraded to a new one with camera built in. Again, nada, no pictures taken. This last because a VGA res cell-phone picture would be far less quality than what I can take with my Mavcam, plus I have no one to really trade cell-phone shots with. The Mavcam is too big to lug around, and having spent hundreds of dollars on cell-phones and a digital camera in the past, I’m reluctant to plunk down another 300-500 dollars for a reasonable replacement. Granted today’s 5-Meg pixel models are far better, cheaper, and smaller than the 1.8-Meg Pixel Mavcam I have, but it gets the job done, especially for web publishing. I think I will force myself to carry the Mavcam around this weekend and take some pictures to get in the habit. If you don’t see any photos on Monday or Tuesday, you’ll know I punked-out. Ironically I have no trouble dragging the camera around when I’m shirtless and on roller-skates. But you just don’t see people with cameras slung around their neck around here at the mall or other public areas. What an odd introversion, the reluctance to look out of place with an oversized digital camera, when I’m so extraverted in so many other ways.
That’s all for tonight, I am working on some real content for the other areas. Someone I met last weekend is supposed to give me a call when they get off work. I’m not overly expectant that anything will come of it, but I find her very pleasant. I’ll probably mention this blog when we next speak, so of course I have nothing but good things to say about her in case she should read this. Of course I haven’t mentioned a name, so there could be a dozen women I’m hoping to hear from and they would all think they are the one. But no, tonight it is you Terry (and yes she spells it with a y and not the more common girl’s i or ie) I am thinking of.
