Short and Sweet and Sour

Pure house cleaning today. In the real world I did dishes. I have one final paper to write for this term of school and then it’s off to the Semi-comatose Clock Watching World again. Ah, the summer job, how I hate the already.

In here I completed that latest in a long line of surveys that modern technology has given me: the User Profile on your right. I know I’m supposed to fill these things out in that first mad rush of enthusiasm that’s supposed to follow any initial sign-up period. But, frankly, the things bore me. No, worse…they offend me in some far off, needling way. They’re so asinine these things, and so boringly regular. If I see one more Javascript form asking me to list my “Favorite Music” I’m going to spit right through my annoying neighbor’s open car window.

And lookee here. Fourth question down under the extraordinarily Freudian Extended Info heading. As if I, or anyone in the world, can rattle of some spontaneous list of my “favorite” music. Are we, as Americans, patriotically compelled to keep these lists of (ten? Twelve? Thirteen?) different musical artists at hand in case of terrorist attack? Should I add my old Lenard Cohen LPs to the Emergency Preparedness Kit? They’d fit in great next to the liquor and the spare ammunition.

People are dying as I write this. It’s something I can’t seem to get over. Yet every day I go to campus and see the same kind of urban multitude you’d expect to see at a college. Hundreds of students, if not thousands, going about their lives, seemingly oblivious.

And that’s the hell of it. We keep hearing in this age of rampant technology that we’re better informed now than ever before. Yet in the areas of our lives that so vitally require us to be informed (like, say public policy) we remain woefully in the dark, leaving decisions to be mad by the slobbering idiots who manage to worm their way into our minds and our public offices.

Like Tom Tancredo (R-CO), who said on last weeks 60 Minutes that we should spend “billions more” to wall off the entire border. Or William Jefferson (D-LA) who kept ninety thousand dollars, cash, stashed in tin foil in his freezer. It’s the latest in investment strategies from our nation’s capital.

Better than hiding it in your mistress’ thong.