I'm Back

Paler and wanner (?) than ever, but back. That's what happens when you only go out during the nighttime hours. After checking the readership figures and the comments of this 'ere blog I decided that I'm going to take another week off. The blog does better without me. Just kidding...

But I'm not kidding about the brilliant guest hosts I got for you. Many thanks to all of them: Blue lily, coturnix, hybrid0, olvlzl pseudoadrienne and skylanda. Visit their blogs for further goodies.

My head is buzzing with writing ideas, which was the whole point of the break. If only I had more fingers to type with and more hours in the days. You'd hear my incessant whining in your ears forever.

But I'll spare you of most of it, except for this horrible complaint: Fox News. I ended up being locked in a room with Fox News for the whole Sunday. It's a form of torture; bright flashing pictures going on and off, on and off, old ugly guys and weird looking beauty queens in miniskirts mouthing, mouthing. And around the edges of the screen run letters and numbers. One of the messages asked whether "Dems" are appeasing the terrorists.

Just one example suffices: The cell phone purchases by the two men. I have no idea what the newsreader actually said about it, because the news were on as a sort of background noise, to slowly drain you of your precious bodily fluids, to turn you into a husk, like a happy Republican Halloween pumpkin. But the pictures told the real story. First a closeup of hundreds of cell phones, then a picture of a very long bridge, then another closeup of the cell phones and back to the bridge again.

It doesn't even matter what the words associated with this story might have been. The real story was in the pictures and the real message was fearfearfearfearfear.

Now imagine the number of Americans who live like this every day they are at home, and you may begin to see why we get the governments we do.

Did Fox News tell its viewers that the cellphone purchases might have nothing to do with terrorism? Perhaps, but the damage had already been done. Only Fox wouldn't call it damage.