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Friday, March 16
I've been on Spring Break the past week -- hence the dirth of postings -- and have been spending the time driving hither and yon in the Southeast, checking up on old friends (they're all good), taking the pulse of the American newspaper economy (it's all bad) and getting my forehead horribly sunburnt.
Whilst driving, I've had some odd thoughts cross my mind, the side effect, no doubt, of driving into the sun for many hours. Among them:
- Why can't the Chik-Fil-A cows spell better? They've gotten to the point where they can read -- and they have enough coordination to, apparently, take over a fair number of the nation's billboards. Isn't there some cow who looks back as the herd is sneaking away and says, "hey, wait, we spelled 'chiken' wrong"?
- The ratio between residents of North Carolina and country music stations is approaching parity. Is there really a need for each individual to have their own country station?
- And speaking of music ... The FCC or somebody should step in and start regulating the airtime new pop songs receive. Everytime I go on a long-distance car ride, I end up hearing the same songs over and over as I go from one station's coverage area to another's. The big offender this time was a little ditty named "Yellow," which I hadn't heard before. It was pretty catchy the first time or two I heard it and really began to grow on me the third and fourth times; by the eighth airing of it, though, my head began pounding -- and when, a few minutes later, Cold Play's ducal tones came out of the radio three times in a row as I was scanning, I began looking for a tractor trailer to pull in front of.
- The phrase "Satan is working overtime" is much beloved by radio evangelists. Strange, but I always thought of the devil as more of a salaried employee. Of course, if anyone is going to be monkeying with FLRB guidelines, it would be the Prince of Lies ... but shouldn't he be more subtle about it?
So, what do you think about while driving?
posted at 6:24 PM by Timothy J. Gibbons | link
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Monday, March 12
It would figure that I'm not in New York this week ... the week I'd actually get to see my name in print since, oh, August.
On Sunday, Newsday published a piece I did in December on a lawyer in Jackson Heights, Queens, who is helping immigrants dealing with the same problems she had when she came to the country illegally three decades ago.
Even after years of newspaper work, there's still a thrill that comes from seeing your own byline. Of course, I have to wait 'til I get back to New York to do that ... But seeing it online was cool, too.
What'd you think of the story?
posted at 5:06 PM by Timothy J. Gibbons | link
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Sunday, March 11
In Michel Foucault's book Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison, he relates the tale of a man convicted of regicide who is drawn, quarter, burned with hot coals and, generally, tortured to death. One of the most gruesome parts involves the quartering, in which horses drag the poor unfortunate in four directions in an attempt to pull him apart. Because the horses are inexperienced, it ends up being more painful than even the punishers had intended it to be.
I related all of that to say this: Whoever decided to show movies on long-distance bus rides should turned over to horses that are rank amateurs, who will clumsily and agonizingly tear the person limb from limb.
I took a Martz bus (Martz is a Pennsylvania-based Greyhound-knockoff) from the city to Pa. the other day, getting on the vehicle around nine in the evening. The last time I had such an unpleasant trip involved a boxcar.
This time, I was forced to sit next to a hugely fat man who elbowed me evertime he moved and, once, knocked my glasses off. Combined with no sleep the night before, a driver who took his license test on bumper cars and the general unpleasantness always offered by bus travel, I hit high levels of irritation quite quickly. When the driver flipped on some movie about African basketball players (I kid you not) and native drum music began ringing down the aisles, I checked my bag to see if I brought a baseball bat. If I had, those TV sets would have been coming down.
It wasn't even that bad of a movie, just absolutely out of place. Showing a film on a bus is like having the guy next to you on the subway eat fried chicken. There's nothing wrong with it per se; it just doesn't fit in the context. I mean, are there people who, around 10 p.m. (when the movie came on) didn't want to either sleep or read, who really wanted to see the beginning of a B movie before disembarking? If so, what's wrong with those people?
I spent the three-hour trip passing in and out of consciousness, waking every time the music hit a high note, the man next to me hit me, or the driver hit a bump. It's a miracle I didn't hit anybody.
posted at 2:22 AM by Timothy J. Gibbons | link
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