Eight Feet Deep

My friend Bruce and I were discussing the use of technology — particular the utility of blogging — last evening during a long-distance chat. Bruce was traveling the Great Trail of Broken Tail Lights that is North Central Expressway to the north of Dallas while I was waiting in my Upper Texas Coastal city for my girlfriend to cease being pissed off at me for a few minutes for whatever was my latest transgression. Ah love. Ahem.

I told Bruce that I felt newspapers — in their true newspaper fashion — tend to overdo blogs and technology. The philosophy of most newspaper executives is similar to that of a substance abuser. One pill works, so a whole bottle must work even better. So goes newspapers whose publishers and ad director and editor who feel blogs are the greatest thing since sliced cheese so a whole lot of blogs and techno-hooey will bring sunshine into their readers’ lives and every news exec will get a raise hereafter. Hereafter, of course, their reporters’ old ’92 Accord or ’90 Sentra leaves a tailpipe or a universal joint in the newspaper parking lot. And so it goes.

Today I read of a study that shows newspaper blogs are not significantly increasing public discourse in political matters. That is not wholly an unexpected finding as far as I am concerned. In fact, despite an increase in blog readership in larger newspaper sites:

” … the results of our study call into question whether newspapers are wasting valuable staff resources. The time it takes a reporter to post a blog entry that attracts 10 or fewer comments could be time better spent in other areas. Newspapers might consider spending staff time monitoring blogs as sources of news rather than trying to re-create the blogosphere on their Web sites.”

To a former newspaper reporter, that too is not a significant revelation. That even though newspaper editors will always find a way to piss away their valuable staff resources one way or the other. Three years since I worked full time as a newspaper reporter and I feel like I kicked the habit. Unfortunately, I haven’t been freelancing as much as I would like either.

Take it or leave it, I thought I would throw in a little inside baseball about newspapers and why blogs aren’t enough to save the might ink-stained wretches from the ruin of techno-bulls**t.

Something went awry with the turkey stew my significant other cooked last night so she is apparently trying it again. In the meantime, it is almost mid-afternoon and I am hungry once again, thus I think about those street vendors one would find up and down Magsaysay Drive in Olangapo, Philippines, when I visited there numerous times as a sailor back in the late 1970s.

Specifically, two meals on a stick could be easily found there. One was barbecued hot dog on a stick — kind of like a corn dog without the corn meal wrapping. The other stick meal was monkey on a stick, which tasted either like pork, chicken, frog or one of the Donner Party, depending upon how much you are into evolution.

Here is a monkey meat on a stick recipe I found. It is geared toward pork but if you happen to raise your monkeys to eat — you sick f**k — then I suppose you could substitute. I don’t know if there are any places in America you can get good monkey meat but I suppose if it was in Arkansas it would be served with a high heapin’ o’ cole slaw on top. Oh well, petit!

Yes, I realize it has been awhile since I wrote anything on this infernal contraption. I had a good excuse though, well, maybe not good but adequate.

First I was knocked down by a virus (human, not computer) then I suffered a fall this week and badly bruised my writing hand.

There is more, which delves into my personal life even more deeply, but I shall not travel there for now.

All that I know for sure is that George W. is president and Darth Vader is vice president, so as far as I am concerned the Empire has not changed a whole hell of a lot in the past week.

For those one or two of you who read this blog regularly, yes I am still alive and blogging. It is just that the domesticity in my life has kind of been turned on its head over the last couple of days. I don’t know quite how much of it I should share because, frankly, it would be pretty boring to almost anyone other than me. Of course, I’ve never let something like that stop me from blogging some pretty mundane “drivel, as one of my brothers once called it. Nonetheless, I got to get home pretty soon, so I bid you an adieu for the moment.

Lunch today was a homemade ham sandwich and a bag of Funyuns while sitting in the truck at Riverfront Park. I had planned to get out and sit at a picnic table for a more expansive view of the Neches River in downtown Beaumont, Texas, but Jack FM was playing Blondie’s “Rapture” upon pulling up and I just couldn’t tear myself away.

Wikipedia has an interesting article about the 1981 hit which incorporated a little of several music genres including rap. It remains today probably the only song with any amount of rap music that I truly like. As is always the case with Wikipedia, I caution the reader as to the article’s veracity.

Speaking of Jack FM, almost six months have passed since the “iPod shuffle” station hit the airwaves in Houston. I have to say that I like it for the most part. One gets to hear a lot of songs that would not be heard on your run-of-the-mill rock station these days such as Stevie Wonder’s “Higher Ground” or the B-52’s “Rock Lobster.” Of course, you will hear crap played on Jack but crap — as music goes — reigns supreme on the radio these days just as the music format’s counterpart talk radio does the same. Actually, talk radio would win a crap-off with music radio. But, hey, that’s just me talking.