Nobody Read This!

Thus spake the God of his own mind to the masses imaginative!

Really, nobody reads this blog anyway, so there's no command I can be more certain of people obeying. Yeah, it makes me feel like a big man, alright? Whatever, you're still not listening.

I just had a coffee with a friend at work who feels his best writing is already behind him. He's about 30 years old and feels creatively burned out. Yes, yes, this happens to artists and laypeople alike, but isn't it always just a little bit sad when a person willfully kisses goodbye his or her imagination?

No, it's not, you universalistic simpleton (who ever you aren't). That would be the easy answer. If you had cared to probe more deeply into his situation, you would know that he also feels his best writing was a direct result of being depressed. So, allow me to rephrase:

Isn't it always just a little bit sad when a person willfully kisses goodbye his or her depression?

If you say "no" here, I'll accept it as a valid, albeit half-assed, answer. It shouldn't always be sad to leave behind depression, even if it did pump one's creative juices for a time. If you're happy, fuck art! So the theory goes anyway. It makes sense to me, in principle at least.

For me though, a lack of artistry is one of the things that fuels my discontent (fine, call it depression if you want, you non-existent, glib-speaking blackguard). The rest of life, so far as I can see it, is never fully ambrosia, nor ever fully shit. Even if 99.99% of the germs in my life are killed by some cosmic Lysol, I'll always have my artistic discontent to keep me writing... even if it is intermittent and pointless.

Will you just shut up already? Yes, all of you, you invisible and silently critical bastards.

Retroactive

2007 was, all in all, a year full of negativity

  and overwhelmingly bad times in general.  

On a scale of stinky butt to rose-infused peach juice, 

it is definitely more of a stinky butt.

Sure, lots of good things happened, but good things pass.  

That's a bit of a theme for 2007.

Moving forward, allow me to present 2008, 

a year full of promise and hope, yadda yadda.

Cheers!

How the Fox Hounds Us!

So we've all heard it. "Fox News: Unfair and Unbalanced" pretty much says it all. But as someone who has never really watched the Fox News channel before this morning, I was still surprised at the sheer gall and partisanship of their anchors. If you've never watched, please do - whatever your political persuasion, you will be surprised (and possibly pleased) at the blatant right-leanings of their cast.

Tuning in this morning, I heard a commentator rant about the rampant anti-American Marxism of a couple of Seattle school teachers because they banned legos for a brief period as part of a lesson plan, and then the remark that "San Francisco has banned plastic shopping bags...as well as common sense." This was all in 2 minutes, before I changed the station.

Despite the suggestions of its slogans, including, "We Report. You Decide," Fox News is clearly unconcerned with an even-handed approach to the news. This would be fine, if not for the aforementioned war cries. Whatever you have to say about left or right biases elsewhere, in other media outlets, most other major outlets either clearly state their intentions, or else cover up their leanings with a bit more panache than Fox seems capable of mustering. I don't think they even have journalists working there. They have anchors, pundits, commentators, columnists, "fans," and spin doctors, but journalists? I don't think that's their business.

Let's run some quick comparisons here. I'll compare the Fox News website to a couple other major outlets, with similar presentations. Both CNN and the BBC are global news sources with television channels to supplement. On the main news pages for each of these sites, what do we see?

1) On the BBC, we are greeted by the current top stories, spanning the entire globe - from the British-soldiers-in-Iran situation to a a Nigerian village burying victims of a tanker fire. There are 14 pictures in all, representing people, animals, maps and diagrams from all parts of the world.

2) On CNN, there seems to be less information, but equal in scope. The top story is one concerning a storm in middle America, and there is a long ticker of other top stories, with the international and other categories of news nearer the bottom of the page. Only 8 pictures here, including an ad for a TV special with Lou Dobbs.

3) Fox News gives us a headline concerning a former Gonzales aide who plans to defend him in court. A large picture next to it shows us our president, first lady, and Karl Rove (as well as comedian Colin Mochrie, of all people), dressed in evening wear, attending some formal dinner party. In total, there are 28 pictures, the vast majority of which show off the array of young, blonde women (the one exception is Lauren Green) and business-formal-dressed men that write for the outlet. These "columnist's" headlines? "Iran and the American left," "...liberal bloggers...spew hate...," and "...death of Anna Nicole's son."

BBC gives us news of its soldiers being held by Iran, CNN gives us news of a deadly domestic storm, and Fox gives us... conjecture on a court case and our president's night out? Is that even news?

Without beating this too far into the ground, allow me to share another fun section of the website. The subsections under the "World" heading, as opposed to the BBC and CNN's strict regional groupings, include such white-house-accommodating specifics as "Iraq," "Iran," "North Korea," "War on Terror," and, my personal favorite, "Colonel's Corner by Ollie North." My only guess is that, since no serious journalists want to run their credibility into the ground by writing for Fox News, they have to find a man so rife with integrity that he lied to Congress because he thought illegally supporting a foreign paramilitary group was a "neat idea."

NB: While researching (if you can call it that) this article (if you can call it that) I found this website whose name bears a similarity to the pre-ordained title of this entry (that's more accurate): http://www.newshounds.us/ - very entertaining.

Doctor's Note

Please excuse this blogger's absence as of late. He has been trapped beneath a fruit vendor's cart at the corner of Wilshire and Plymouth, in front of the Washington Mutual. He returns to you dirty, but well fed.

Declining Latitude, Attitude

My trip comes to a close. Now, I've never taken any truly long and adventurous journeys, but even after only a week in a city that was my home for three years, I'm waiting for my flight (delayed an hour) in a shallow valley of depression, a floodplain slowly soaking up a sense of something lost and questions about what comes next.

This trip was on the horizon for so long, and now I have nothing like it to look forward to for a long time. Hawaiian organic coffee farm in April 2008? I'm looking forward to that like I'm looking forward to retirement. Tonight I'll get home and tomorrow I'll wake up, assuming I sleep at all tonight, and go to work and start it all over again, my escape thwarted by the all too efficient prison guards of work-a-day reality.

Leaving Vancouver tosses me deep into the throes of postpartum depression. There are problems with the city, for sure, as with pregnancy, but when I leave, I realize that I'm not just leaving my friends there, I'm leaving a piece of myself that has permanently attached itself to the city - a ghost of myself that's been sucked into the enduring cloud cover forever haunting the skyline. Is this what Tony Bennett meant when he realized his heart was still in San Francisco?

Los Angeles, on the other hand, only alienates. Maybe it's just too much metropolis for me to handle. Maybe it's too complicated and too glorified. When the nation, and even the world looks in your direction to be entertained...isn't that a little too much pressure for anyone else? Every time I start to feel close to L.A., it finds a new way to push me away. I don't feel pressured to perform in Vancouver. It allows me to move at my own pace rather than only at the speed of schmooze or the crawl of freeway traffic.

Of course, the longer I remain here in the South, the more attached I become. I have great friends and family here and it seems no matter where I go, I will leave someone behind. This is why people follow jobs, geography, and climate - because people are everywhere and, though distant sometimes, have a tendency to stick with you regardless. Best then to find a city that sticks to you, with or without its inhabitants, so that when you leave to visit those you love, you can return to a home you love just as much.