Wednesday, March 11
Woke in the middle of the night, checked the clock: 4:12. Good. That meant I had three hours of REM under the belt, and I’d have three more if I didn’t start thinking. But I wanted to start thinking. I’d had a fascinating dream. I played it reverse, from its complex ending back to the moment where it began: a waiter threw bread at me. The dream had ended up as a mob hit. In the middle it was a TV sitcom. The waiter was the son of a mobster. It was the Sopranos as a sitcom, but it still ended with blackness and death. I laid there for a minute, listening to the pipes sigh in the basement, then
BEEP BEEP BEEP. Three hours later. The requirements of the new position require an alarm that means business, that brooks no vague state between sleep and awake, so the old Andromeda-Strain alarm has been turned off for the duration. I set two alarms; the second is a horrible thing that sounds like someone’s beating a root budgie with a hammer. If I turn off the first one I don’t have to hear the second. UP. I felt rested – it’s odd how you can gauge the quality of time spent unconscious simply by the state you assume upon leaving the previous state. You can be out for eight hours, but if the dreams are full of old horrors or sol-mo quicksand runs up an endless staircase, you know it.
My dreams never worry me. It’s the ones that dissolve a few minutes after you wake that bother me – but that’s probably the mind’s way of keeping you from thinking about all the dreams you never remember. Every morning we awake, we burn a storehouse with thousand movies.
Downstairs. Coffee on. Put the sausage in the microwave, get the paper, pour the cereal, get the sausage, daub some fire-red Rooster sauce on the sizzling patty, wonder why we never call anything else a Patty unless it’s a hamburger, eat, drink coffee. Upstairs to the computer: eight minutes to scan the wire while shaving. Shower and out by 7:39.
I like this. It’s meant the end of the late-night typing session for a while, and it also means I don’t get to walk Natalie to the bus stop. But it’s not every day. En route to work I listen to loud 80s music while drinking coffee from a plastic disposable cup. Problem: the cup does not match the car. The metallic coffee mug did, but coffee tasted like hobo-sweat coming out of that thing, and drinking through the tiny aperture was a guarantee of a blister on the tongue-tip. For some reason this styrofoam cup makes coffee relax. It’s eminently drinkable. And it’s disposable!
You take your small moments of rebellion where you can.
Work! As I noted below, we slam this NewsBreak together at high speed – about 90 minutes between the news huddle to shooting. Frant-o-type extreme. I enjoyed this installment. Afterwards I went out to feed the meter, and saw my old friend Charleston Blueman:
He was my happy anti-recession brainless maniac for a while, but he’s been glum and haggard lately. His yellow hair is ratty, and something’s wrong with his blower.
Man, even the advertising inflatables are assuming metaphorical postures.
Buck up, pal.
Back to work. Later, I picked up Natalie at the bus stop at the appointed time – the KILLER STORM had not struck; I could make it to the bus stop without tying twine to the handrail at the bottom of the steps so we feel our way home. I made her hot chocolate and got back to work. Hit the links. Hmm:
Time magazine has a list of the ten most endangered newspapers.
That’s interesting, because our paper had a list of the ten most endangered magazines named Time. Seems like a duel on a Titanic lifeboat before it’s winched down the side, no?
Or not. I remain enthusiastic about the paper’s survival, for a variety of reasons that have nothing to do with the pleasant sound my whistling makes as it echoes off the tombstones. I do think we’ll survive. Newsmagazines, less so. I can’t remember the last time I bought one. Not even after 9/1l1 – even by then the desire to remember an event with a glossy print recap had vanished, especially since Newsweek has this as its cover the month after the event:
I remember looking at that, and thinking, well, we can convert; that would help a little. I figured it had something to do with supporting Israel, getting involved in Middle East wars, and being infidels. Maybe large rallies formed around a fervent hatred of our tendency to cancel good TV shows before they really have a chance, or because we never apologized for New Coke, or because we went to the Moon and didn’t bring back a present from the airport gift shop for everyone, or whatever other reason, but it seemed unlikely.
Didn’t buy it. Hadn’t bought it for a while. I think the last time I looked at a newsmagazine, it was full of things that were Generally Wrong or Growing Concerns or Worrisome Trends, with lots of ads for acid-reflux pills. The default mode of these magazines a long time ago seemed to be banging the tocsin with a bloody shirt, to horribly mix metaphors, and it’s not surprising; the default position of journalism is reminding us how far we live from the fabled borders of Utopia, and how we might speed the journey through the magic accelerating powers of wise, targeted legislation.
I interviewed a Famous Columnist once who trotted out the “comfort the afflicted, afflict the comfortable” line – he was quite comfortable himself, which made you wonder if he went home and pinched himself until bloody half-moons appeared on his forearms – and he said he had a deep-seated need to throw snowballs at the guys with top hats. So . . . you’re a 30s urchin in Brooklyn?
At heart, probably. G’wan, ya swell! Go eat sum oysters, why doncha? First he writes the story about scrappy urchins who throw snowballs at top hats; the next year the style section writes about the decline in top-hat popularity, because of the snowball problem – which is understandable, given income inequality, and really, they are a bit passe – and the next year the columnist writes a story about the guys who are out of work because the top-hat factory closed. Meanwhile, the business section has a big story on a new straw-boater factory. But it’s the columnist grousing about the factory closing that people remember.
You can’t avoid being tagged as habitual downers when you’re in the news business, because the Truth Hurts, or at least Hurts Someone Else – but sometimes I suspect many people in the news business are temperamentally predisposed to miserabilism, because the idea of an unjust world run by monied smileys explains why the cheerleader turned them down for a date in high school. But I know too many who don’t fit that mold. So ignore the above, except when it seems to explain something. Except when you read someone who seems to think that by afflicting the comfortable, the afflicted are automatically comforted. As if writing is charity.
Later today: Out of Context Ad Challenge, around 11 or so, if I get out of a meeting; an enormous 27 page remake of an old website, with marvellous old photos. Miscreant Round-up at buzz.mn.
Also, this promise: screed and Diner before the week’s over. I can say that because one’s done, and the other’s all in my head. Like a dream.
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Why, surely the attitude of the journalist you interviewed is an anomaly, and certainly indicative of the profession as a whole.
Or maybe not:
http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/business/Who_Foots_the_Bill_for_Wall_Street_Bankers__New_York.html
But I’m not sure whether I should feel afflicted that our tax dollars are going to support my local businesses, or comforted that our tax dollars are going to support our local businesses.
“…we never call anything else a Patty unless it’s a hamburger.”
There are York Peppermint Patties.
What the heck is a “root” budgie? I can’t decipher that, even as a typo.
Diner coming – Yay team! How do he do it?
[...] today’s Bleat. This entry was written by Tim Windsor, posted on March 11, 2009 at 4:25 am, and tagged . [...]
[...] From today’s Bleat. [...]
[...] Read it. You can’t avoid being tagged as habitual downers when you’re in the news business, because the Truth Hurts, or at least Hurts Someone Else – but sometimes I suspect many people in the news business are temperamentally predisposed to miserabilism, because the idea of an unjust world run by monied smileys explains why the cheerleader turned them down for a date in high school. But I know too many who don’t fit that mold. So ignore the above, except when it seems to explain something. Except when you read someone who seems to think that by afflicting the comfortable, the afflicted are automatically comforted. As if writing is charity. [...]
the Seattle P-I, another fine award-winning paper, is taking the ride to the Styx in days, they have ordered the wheelie bins and renewed the web domain name. that’s 4 recently… including Pittsburgh, the Rocky, and last fall, the Christian Science Monitor went web-only.
papers have always started and died, merfed and faded, but we’re losing the giants.
newsmagazines have really been goners for years… even when there’s a good article at the doctor’s office that they don’t let me fnish, it’s a page. nothing in depth, a page or two.
yes, I think I will take my megabank stock to the market, and invest in paper makers. And car companies. I can sure pick ‘em on wall street.
It’s a shame about the Seattle P.I.
They cooked their own goose by going full out lefty. Oh well.
Check out the cool “Daily Planet” signage they have on the building.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/ABPub//2004/04/23/2001911070.jpg
Time Magazine was a staple around the house when I was growing up. I am
not really sure when it happened,but at some point it was no longer a serious
news magazine. It became this odd…news tabloid. Heavy on the photos,with
short and meaningless articles.
I switched to The Economist in college and got my Dad a subscription as well.
He was thrilled that there was still a weekly magazine out there that
wasn’t “8th grade level trash”.
R.I.P. Time Magazine
Was the Post-Intelligencer post-intelligent? It would explain a great deal.
“There are York Peppermint Patties.”
And let’s not forget the staple of school cafeterias everywhere – the chicken patty
‘explains why the cheerleader turned them down for a date in high school’
Which, I think explains some people’s current attitudes. And some rabid feminist’s chip on her shoulder. Or maybe most. A lousy social life in high school predisposes one to a life of resentment or at least congenital grumpiness and envy.
I love your description of the state of journalism. I think you are right about the cheerleader-rejection-syndrome. I must admit I found your final disclaimer rather funny-
“But I know too many who don’t fit that mold. So ignore the above, except when it seems to explain something”.
It sort of matches the attitude people have toward their Congressional delegation. “Throw the bums out of office!” except of course mine, because they’re OK. In their defense I imagine there are plenty of journalists out there laboring to maintain their principles in the face of editorial fiat.
There’s the kind of cow paddies that have nothing to do with beef….
I was in high school in the late 70’s and early 80’s and was a voracious reader of newspapers. Unfortunately I noticed that when a paper did a story on a subject I actually knew about, they were ALWAYS wrong in important ways.
That shot their credibility with me. I didn’t even notice the partisanship until the 00’s.
Ever since HS, when ever i saw a story that i was interested in, in the paper, I took that as a cue to research the subject myself as best I could. Typically they were still always wrong at best, and often misrepresented to skew to a preconceived point.
Maybe the loss of advertising would have killed newspapers anyway, but their lack of credibility is what’s finally doing them in.
_@_v – why do they hate us? because they can. the arab/islamic world has the courage of a lion when it comes to standing up the the straw man know, as us imperialist hegemony™ but shrieks like a little girl with acid thrown in her face when it comes to standing up for themselves against the tyranny of their own government or local mullah because it’s one thing to stand up against someone you know damn well isn’t going to hit you back but quite another to stand up to someone fully prepared to detach limbs of yours or your familiy’s.
Yeah, I traded up from Newsweek to The New Republic and so on a long time ago. Figuring they might be thinner, but there was real inside info/policy meat in those magazines.
Now they’re no longer thinner…
I also grew up with Time magazine. Arrived in the mailbox every Wednesday and I read it cover to cover each week for years. My initial reason for reading it was because it had great combat photos from the Vietnam War. By the time it went all “USA Today” and coverage of important events was replaced by trite four-page pieces on vapid Hollywood stars, I had long since quit reading it. Last time I picked one up, it was about the same heft as a direct mailer for a time share condo. Gotta agree about the left-wing slant being the downfall of many newspapers and newsmags. When you already know what the article is going to say before you read the first paragraph, what’s the point? I also think a little bit of investigative journalism may have staved off some of this economic crisis. Instead, they spent the last two years playing press flak for a presidential campaign.
Thank you, thank you, thank you…for continuing to Bleat, in addition to all the other angles. Splendid to start the day with.
Camping at Bike Week in Daytona one year, our morning chef (and neighbor back here at home) fixed the best scrambled eggs & a new discovery of his – HAM Patties! With a song and dance number (to the tune of Jim Stafford’s “Cow Patty”) that was hysterical.
Thanks for the reminder!
We had a longtime sub to Newsweek until we let it go last year, for pretty much the same reason. The lefty politics seeped into everything. Even Conde Nast Traveler can’t seem to get through an article without some kind of Bush-bashing.
If you want to measure the distance between what newsmagazines used to be and what they are now, hie thee down to the library and pick up the Canadian newsmagazine McLeans’. Perhaps your Canadian readers can detect its biases, but it seems far more readable, far more interesting and far funnier (intentionally I mean) than Time or Newsweak. Except for their love of Obama, but that’s the default nowadays, isn’t it?
Charleston Blueman:
Optimist – It appears to this reader that Chuck is bowing down in homage to the viewer.
Er, well, glass half full I guess.
Just finished yesterday’s NewsBreak with James Lileks. Much, much better than your first one. Hope they continue in this vein, or even get better!
Good observations on journalism today. They just can’t crank out enough bad news to stay in business, can they? Even the good news looks bad to them, because, darn it, it wasn’t done their way.
Newsbreak was laugh-out-loud funny, you have plainly found the right tone.
Only one minor critique — the lid of the Macbook blocked the view of your guests, a little distracting.
“If it bleeds, it leads”. What else is there to know about journalism?
Back when I was thin and had hair it would take me an entire lunch hour to read one of the weeklies. Today I get free delivery of Newsweak, with all the heft and in-depth content of a Kroger circular, and I’m almost ready to pay a pittance to make them stop.
A Friday the 13th Diner? Really?! Splendid! Now if only I can keep the locusts at bay long enough to listen.
Lileks has done it again, coming up with these fine twisted writings that, simple me has to re-read a number of times even though they make simple logical super humorous sense. Except for the cheerleader part. Why they are miserabilists is because the cheerleader turned them down, not the other way around… Or did I misunderstand yet again
Whenever someone brought up the why do “they hate us” type question, I always remember that line from from “Independence Day” with the president talking to the alien through the Brent Spiner scientist:
President: What do you want us to do?
Alien: Die. Die.
Ah, vintage Zakaria swill memories. I honestly don’t know what planet he’s from.
I fled from Time to Newsweek to US News to The Economist as each seemed to settle into comfortable well-to-do liberal viewpoints, oblivous to any other possible view. The Economist is still head and shoulders above the rest, but I can’t quite forgive them for endorsing Clinton over Bush I.
I’ll set aside some beer and beef for the occasion of a new screed. Afflict those who need afflictin’, I say.
All I know is it’s Minneapolis update Wednesday!
Spot on, Mr. Lileks. One of the reasons I decided to leave journalism in 2005 is that, for me, the attitude that afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted without really making sure the afflicted are comforted was eating at me too much.
What about the famous Irish landscape designer, Patty O’Furniture?
“G’wan, ya swell! Go eat sum oysters, why doncha?”
With oysters pronounced “ersters,” of course.
I so miss Look magazine. There was something quite wonderful as a kid to sit on the couch with a big magazine filled with fascinating pictures. I recently started looking at Reuter’s photos of the week, but it is just not the same as curling up with a blankie and a 8 oz. coke and LOOK.
Nal
Good one GardenStater! Maybe Patty will end up in this week’s Lance Lawson — could be Tiny’s cousin, the latest Victim or DorisRazzer.
“root budgie”?
I must say, you have made me laugh so much in the past years I just had to say thank you. The blue inflatable squiggly dude photo put me over the top, and I sprayed some coffee at my computer screen. Anyhoodlers…I grew up in Grand Forks, and now I live in Florida. I’d probably freeze solid and die if I tried to go back now. Thanks again. You are full of funny.
What on earth is a root budgie? And yes, I did a Google search.
Trying to figure out this: “. . . a horrible thing that sounds like someone’s beating a root budgie with a hammer.” I googled and got — the selfsame Bleat. Then I saw this tweet: “I *hate* googling for info and getting my own site as the top response. You feel like Roget looking for another word for thesaurus” and actually factually LOL’d, thank you. But please, please, please where did beating a root budgie with a hammer come from? — I can’t even come up with a plausible autocorrect explanation.