As I write MSNBC is broadcasting the chase of three burglary suspects in Los Angeles. They were in a red car, and jumped out. MSNBC is following all this, live, as if it were actually news or had any fucking significance at all.
The coverage just goes on and on.
Earlier they broadcast a list of eight major banks that are in danger of failing.
In Afghanistan nine American soldiers were killed when their outpost was attacked by Afghanis. Or Pakistanis. Or some bunch of people with guns, from somewhere.
The economy is swirling the drain and the people in Washington who are supposed to understand it and keep it from going belly up don’t seem to have a fucking clue.
The psychotic in the White House tells us that opening up oil drilling off the coasts will bring down gas prices, despite the fact that the oil won’t be available for years, if its even there, and the fact that the oil companies have millions of acres available that they aren’t even looking at.
The planet is warming, likely on its way to mass extinctions, and the psychotic in the White House and his enablers and cronies in government just skip along singing ‘la la la la’ and refuse to do anything, not even the slightest thing, that might endanger the profits of the energy companies that keep them in office.
McCain and Obama trade lies and deceits in their race to the bottom of the sludge pool of politics.
And at MSNBC Contessa Brewer and Tamrin Somebody-or-Other just sit there oohing and aahing over a trio of pathetic burglars trying to run from the cops.
The media have gone beyond pathetic and are on overdrive in their dive to become the new Loony Tunes.
Grumpy Lion 
What the fuck? They aren’t covering the second day in the lives of the twins of Brad and Angelina? Must be a helluva car chase. You make me want to run over to my TV, turn it on, and then drop-kick it.
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Trivia, chase scenes and celebrity idiocy cost about the same to produce as real news, investigative journalism, and other actual coverage. I think the rating may be higher for the trash, and there is less chance of being boycotted by right-wing idiot groups.
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Oh, well, at least I didn’t miss anything important while I was at work. I’m sure either MSNBC or CNN would have alerted me if I had.
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evo –
What you suggest is unAmerican, antiConsumer, and fucking painful. The TVPolice will be at your door shortly.
() –
Produce? They got a feed from a helicopter of one of their Los Angeles affiliates and put it on the air for about fifteen minutes. Fortunately the burglars were idiots or they’d have gotten a better car and a better driver and then might have extended their coverage for probably an hour or more. And doesn’t any other city in the country have car chases worthy of our esteemed news channels? All we ever get are LA chases. Come on! How about something from Boise or Fargo?
chappie –
Well, you missed the apprehension of three criminal masterminds, one of whom couldn’t manage to keep his pants up while running from the police. Apparently that was a clever dodge to elicit sympathy from the mass audience MSNBC thinks it has for this sort of stupidity.
ric –
Will you please get rid of the goddammed television?
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Ric: Have you BEEN to Boise? Pick any street, drive 15 minutes, and you’re in the country. And Fargo? Fargo? Isn’t that a soda from the 70s?
Oh, and BOCCE, BOCCE, BOCCE (with a Parodi Cigar).
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()-
Why would I go to Boise? I hardly ever leave my house. But, wow, imagine three hours of a police chase through and around and in and out of Boise. Doesn’t that just make you drool? You know, saliva just stringing down off your lip as you stare in complete disbelief.
Bocce? Ha! Bocce balls are plastic. Petanque is played with balls of steel by men of iron! (And women, too, though their composition hasn’t quite been determined yet.)
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Non! Real Bocce balls are wood. Or at least wood chips glued together with, um, glue.
I’ve been through Boise a couple of times headed to or from different forest fires. Couldn’t find a decent Chinese restauarant in the whole town. Three hours in Boise? Well, why not, I spent a week there one day, after all.
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Wood. Plastic. What’s the dif? They ain’t steel!
There’s no Chinese restaurants in Boise because the Idaho Wingnut and Gun Society doesn’t approve of furriners, specially the kind that’ll eat the wingnuts’ dogs.
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There are Chinese restaurants in Boise. Notice the qualifier I had in there. One of the best Chinese meals I ever had was in Butte Montana at the (I think) Shanghai Noodle Company.
But Bocce is a man’s game. Italian, not French. Thhhppt!
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() –
Butte Montana is not in Boise. As for the qualifier, I tend to ignore qualifiers. They get in the way of good rants, though I’ll admit that a restaurant is different from an ordinary rant.
As an educated American of pure Italian Sicilian descent, it pains me to acknowledge that the French (who gave us, after all, Napoleon while the Italians could do no better than Mussolini) have indeed created the superior game. It is far more flexible than the Italian version, which requires a fixed court for proper play, and it’s boules are made of superior material. After all, if you hit a fleeing criminal in the head with a bocce ball, he’ll just shrug it off. Hit him with a petanque boule and he will be stopped cold, if not dead.
So I call your thhhppt and raise you a thhhhpppppt.
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Would it work with a sourdough boule? thhhhhhhpppppttttttttt!!
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Now you’re being silly. This is a serious blog. You didn’t specify whether raw sourdough, or baked.
t
hhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
ppppppppppppppppppppppppppp
tttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttttt
!!!
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Doesn’t matter. I’m gluten intolerant, so unless someone can come up with sourdough rice bread, I’m screwed. ((((((((((Thpt!))))))))))
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Does that count as ten Thpt!s, or one very sheltered one?
You force me to trump it, of course…
[((((((((((Thpt!))))))))))]
The rule is only set of brackets allowed as a tens multiplier.
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()
I see your trump and bid two no trump.
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Crudescence Maximized. That should have come out ({[thpt]})
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My royal flush beats your two no trump. Go fish, bocceman!
|({[thpt]})|
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Bocceman folds. But I will still play Bocce.
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Oh damn, I was just getting warmed up! 🙂
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Deal the next hand. Acey Ducy or Backgammon?
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Backgammon, bocceman, backgammon!
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Dad was a Marine (he grew up, though) so I will always call it Acey Deucy.
Bridge or Hearts?
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Gin.
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And tonic? Can you have a conversation without invoking alcohol? Then again, can a ‘liberal’ media outlet say anything about a Democrat without asking, “Is this a problem for xxxxxxxx” or ignoring the latest idiocy to drip out of McAin’t?
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Gin, a two-handed card game played by people with exquisite taste, sublime intelligence, and go-for-the-throat personalities.
And as for focusing on alcohol I needn’t remind you, but I will, that after your two week hiatus securing a fire zone, you came home and had (((scotch))) before (((wife))).
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Hey. Don’t go using facts. We’re talking about the press, here. Facts don’t matter. It’s the ‘truthiness’ that matters. Besides, it never happened. In my biography, I had (((Wife))) before scotch. Yeah. Yeah. That’s the ticket. Yeah.
(((Wife))) and I like both forms of gin. We prefer Scrabble (R), though.
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Truthiness and Lioniness, an unbeatable combination.
Scrabble? That just leaves me scrabbling for words.
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Loininess? Sounds like overcompensation.
And that’s the point.
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Apparently (((scotch))) may be making you (((cixelsyd))).
Point? What point? Are we slipping into ballet now?
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No. That’s pointe.
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Ah, as in pointe headed intellectuals? Though I did think that in ballet it was toes that mattered. Besides, do ballerinas play petanque? Or bocce? Which do you think they favor? Or perhaps they are all footballerinas?
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You get a ‘d’ in spelling (I think it’s the one you left out of pointed), and my head has so little hair on it (by choice) that if I was a pointe heade intellectual, it would show. I think East German ballerinas play bocce; petanque is too feminine. And is that futball or football?
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No, no, pointe as in pointee, or as the cognoscenti would have it, pointy. Besides, I wasn’t referring to you. You’re too smart to be a pointeey headed intellectual.
I think the only solution to the pet-boc impasse is to invent a new game – boccetanque. It’s played by ballerinas on grass (both kinds), in tutus, using composite wood or plastic balls with a steel core. In Extreme Boccetanque the balls are composite wood/plastique and the tutus are armored. I would, of course, list you as a co-inventor on the patent application.
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