Eight Feet Deep

Nuance. I dig wolves.

It feels as if you rule over man and beast. And it is all because you know how to tap the “delete” key. An entire universe is gone. Where did it all go when I hit delete? If we ever teach wolves to use computers, we better watch our asses. Because the next thing you know we’ll see whole flocks of sheep deleted. Those crafty bastard wolves might also just throw in a wolf-hater for good measure.

A sub for Coop?

Almost as boring as celebrity news for me is news about celebrity news people. I mean, I am pretty ambivalent about Anderson Cooper replacing Aaron Brown in his CNN time spot. While I thought Brown had his moments, he too often reminded me of some of the horse’s asses I have had as editors who asked questions just to hear the sound of their own voice.

And Cooper? I think he is vastly overrated. He is an okay journalist. But one has to ask: Would a TV journalist who is just okay be the next biggest thing in TV news if his mother’s initials weren’t Gloria Vanderbilt? Perhaps that is unfair. If so, sorry Coop.

Then today, word comes down that Judy Miller and The New York Times are parting ways. Who cares? I have to admit I felt a little taken in by Judy’s righteous battle over the 1st Amendment. But it turns out her saga really doesn’t sound all that appealing.

In this day and age of Internet and blog and podcast and the electric bugaloo (wait, where did that come from?) it seems like all journalists, bloggers and the would-bees on either side do is snipe at each other. It seems like a terrible waste of talent and brain power, not to mention hot air.

Darwin was so complex he had to be created with a higher powder. At least Kansas has a nice state song.

I suspect Dr. Brewster Higley knew of what he spoke. Who knows if he was melancholy or just inspired when he wrote “My Western Home” on a Kansas creek bank in 1872. He reportedly was married five times and Wife 4 was the one who drove the doc to drink, according to a short biography I read by Mary Barr Norris. Of course W.C. Fields supposedly said a woman drove him to drink and he thanked her everyday for it. Doc’s drinking or not drinking is neither here nor there.

What became “Home on the Range” and the Kansas state song always conjured up for me coyotes howling and cowboys sitting around a campfire discussing the latest cow gossip. You would imagine that it got awfully lonely out there on the trail.

Nonetheless it’s a pretty song with nice images. And it would’ve been thrilling to see the buffalo roaming on the range back then. Of course, if you were to see the buffalo roaming you may also have run into some non-too-happy natives out there. Or you might have come down with what is today a very curable infection and died.

Oh well. Sometimes you eat the time machine. Sometimes the time machine eats you.