"Everybody gets so much information all day long that they lose their common sense." - Gertrude Stein
During the past month or so, I've been out of touch. Chilling in my Lederhosen, watching fulsome Fräulein frolic, I made the Fehlentscheidung of finding CNN one day.
Fuck.
As if glum-looking Martin Savidge, actually inserted in a flight simulator (!) to add his reportage to the Malaysia Airlines Flight MH370 saga, were not enough ... there was also professorial Don 'Is It Preposterous?' Lemon, delighting in his role as head of the class; a sitcom's worth of, so I'm told, recurring characters, offering "analysis" and fielding Twitter questions! There was this weatherman ... thrilled to be part of an actual news something, putting his expertise about radar to use ... and there was long-time CNN friend, weird Richard Quest. Although not nearly as off-putting -- loathsome, really -- as certain of his unnamed colleagues ... Weird Richard is (also) nonetheless no Larry King ... and seemed as uncomfortable being part of the nightly MH370 sitcom, as it made me uncomfortable to be staring at, into, its terrible vacuum.
Thus trembling with empathy, unable to sleep, I step out into the early morning night and gaze upward ... The pierce of the Morgen fills me with all manner of repulsions, as I think about the pain of the flight victims' families: that is, the helpless, being eaten alive, gnawing suffering from being subjected to this cruel ('Savidge') joke ... an early, unending April Fool's gag (a flight simulator? Really??) ... and feeling, as well, the joke's perpetrators' own sense of shame and embarrassment.
Thus trembling with empathy, unable to sleep, I step out into the early morning night and gaze upward ... The pierce of the Morgen fills me with all manner of repulsions, as I think about the pain of the flight victims' families: that is, the helpless, being eaten alive, gnawing suffering from being subjected to this cruel ('Savidge') joke ... an early, unending April Fool's gag (a flight simulator? Really??) ... and feeling, as well, the joke's perpetrators' own sense of shame and embarrassment.
I felt for Weird Richard! Squirming there, the day I tuned in ... and Unsmiling Martin ... both clearly unwanting to be part of the gag, but contractually forced to try and put it across.
It was literally the most wince-inducing 3 minutes I've spent, doing anything, in quite some time.
Now, as somewhere a prideful Hund barks in German ... and feet clop, with purpose, to unlock a parked car ... the stars dim, with my hopes of ever being informed.
* * *
Thoughts with Malaysia Flight MH370 ...
