#397

I'm going to get cynical for a moment, which I hate to do, because cynicism is easy, lazy, and unbecoming. So please excuse me, and excuse this, and mistrust it accordingly, as you should any crabby accusation; I mean my just-stated cynical opinion about cynical opinions, and also the following: Impartiality, factuality, and objectivity in 'news reporting' is about as dead as altruism in politics. And it kind of annoys the shit out of me. I feel like when I was a kid, morning newspapers and the 'nightly news' put forth at least some information commonly agreed upon, even by opposing sides, as factual. Entertainment, extremism, presumption, profit, and outright bullshit were creeping into news reporting, but they hadn't taken over. They've taken over now. It's all tabloid. It's funhouse mirrors and Snapchat filters. It's obnoxious distortion. Utterly, shamelessly, and it sucks (even if our politicians deserve it). Other indecencies, for some reason, annoy me less. Maybe because they aren't masquerading as public service institutions; I think some journalists still believe they're 'informing' us. Cue the laugh track. Thankfully, M 'n' m already know the news media isn't seeking to arm and protect them with information. It isn't seeking to enlighten. It wants their eyeballs for ratings and ad revenue. Period. And it does this by stirring up controversy, conspiracy, fear, hate. Sadly, that grabs more eyeballs than good news. It's an evolutionary / survival thing. I think it's shitty to do this for staggering profit, which is then given to prostituting politicians, among other ill uses, but oh well. Whiners never win, and I am whining. M 'n' m don't read or watch 'news' anyway. They read what they're assigned in school, and they watch YouTubers, hip-hop artists, Fortnite clips (Michael), how-to-make-slime videos (Megan), horror movie trailers (Michael), and so on.

Now, let's talk about something happy, rosy, like springtime or puppies. Here's something: Megan found a baby racoon yesterday. It's eyes were still closed, and limbs curled and unlengthened; it was a newborn. Fuzzy, exposed, abandoned (I think Mama would've come hissing otherwise). It's nose and eyes were cutely colored and ringed like you'd expect, but not as distinct as they will be in adulthood. I thought of my favorite Beatles song. I recalled how raccoons can be fierce fighters. (I've seen it in Iowa, pheasant hunting, when dogs poke their snouts into raccoon nests, typically well-hidden in creek beds but olfactorily obvious to canines, who don't appreciate being swatted and sliced, on the nose of all places, by little razor-tipped hands out of nowhere; raccoons have hands, not paws, in my inexpert opinion. Then a loud and bloody brouhaha ensues, until it's interrupted, after which a louder and bloodier brouhaha ensues, but this time with humans and possibly more dogs getting all they can handle from a single, smaller, but ferociously committed, opponent. It's a mess.) And I recalled how raccoons are comedic actors (see John Candy and Dan Akroyd's The Great Outdoors). Megan's furry baby was safely delivered to a 'raccoon specialist.' I don't know what that means either. Raised and returned to the wild? But then it won't be 'wild' anymore. Oh brother. See, it's hard being a parent, caretaker, rescuer, foster-parent, or any such thing. Every decision can be second-guessed, picked apart, blamed for everything that happens, might happen, or won't happen but was ignited by thought anyway, and will now stressfully burn and spread like a wildfire. But this was supposed to be the happy paragraph. Well, I'm on a metra train in Chicago as I write this, and outside my window the sun is beaming off the glass towers and it's 74 degrees. As Megan likes to say, and I do too, Yay!