I went to check the news today....

[conuly]

The first thing I see is that a cop has been arrested after his wife noticed he'd been viewing some really suspicious and weird websites. Turns out he had a whole plan to kidnap somebody (doesn't matter who) and eat her. He talked about this with other people. Can we say ew? But he didn't go through with it, and it's not clear if he can even be tried for anything because nothing actually happened. (That might not be a good thing.)

Okay, well, let's scroll down... the next article is about a girl who jumped in front of a train on Staten Island. I can see that this is a depressing news day, but hope springs eternal, let's look at the next article.

The next article is about a woman on the Upper West Side who took her three year old to swimming and came home to find that the nanny had killed the other two children. WTF?

I don't know why I even *bother* with the news some days. There's literally nothing good at all in the paper! Even the transit information is depressing, we're bound to get another fare hike.

So forget that. Went to google, found myself a video of a baby animal to cheer myself up. It's a puggle, a baby echidna!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/24/adorable-rare-echidna-puggle-rscued-laps-milk-from-nurses-hand_n_2011500.html

Isn't it just the cutest little non-depressing not-at-all tragic thing you've ever seen?

Comments

[redbird]

Sometimes I need to remind myself that the "news" is, mostly, things that are rare and will get attention. (The latter because the actual paying market is mostly advertisers: what they want is something that they can use to convince Macy's or Coca-cola that they have an audience.) So I at least skim those front-page things, some combination of what might be useful (my reading of Jeff Masters' blog over at Weather Underground, for example) and/or that I find interesting (for good or bad: the day before one of the free papers was headlining a large donation to the Central Park Conservancy, and the closest to nay-sayers was "that's nice, but how about giving some of that money to all the other city parks, most of which need it more"). Mostly this means I skip celebrity gossip (if I don't know who they are, I don't care who they're dating).

The tricky part is figuring out which bits might matter, over in what is loosely labeled as political, and which of the health-related news is at all valid (rather than what my friend oursin would describe as "I talked to three of my friends in the pub, and we agreed."

[elenbarathi.livejournal.com]

Ewww! Sheesh, how horrible. I don't read much of the news - not that there's anywhere near the amount of tragedy and horridness happening in our little rural town as there is in the cities, but there is still more than enough, like this case (http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20111021/NEWS/111029991) which has been going on here for over a year.

Check out these adorable kidlings:



... and these tiny white baby bats (http://www.peninsuladailynews.com/article/20111021/NEWS/111029991), that my daughter showed me yesterday. Eeee, the cuteness!!!