Category Funny

Furlough Journal: Here we go…out the door

Pat Ryan 1 Comment

I really didn’t need all this fuss to let me know that my job is “non-essential,” you know.

Since Congress couldn’t come to an agreement on a new government spending plan by the deadline last night, we have a partial government shutdown and that includes NASA and the Johnson Space Center in Houston, where I work as a contractor in television production for the public affairs office.  Since we’re talking about the federal government, that means there’s bureaucratic silliness involved—we had to come to work this morning in order to be told we had four hours to complete an orderly shutdown and go home.  Ah, just enough time for me to change my voice mail greeting and turn off the TV!

When this happened in 1995 the contractor company for which I worked found something for us all to do, and we didn’t miss a day’s pay.  This time around, I am told, we are not on furlough—only the civil servants are—and we can work, but we cannot work in the government offices or use government equipment; we are also allowed to use vacation hours to avoid missing a paycheck.  I have more than a month’s worth of vacation available, so I’m reasonably confident.  Of course, if reason were to be trusted we wouldn’t have a partial government shutdown now, would we?  This conveys the feeling of some of the people at work this morning:

Khangress

The rest of us are a little less stressed.  I’m headed for lunch and then for the golf course…I could use some time off.

America’s cable TV universe: where they turn news and tragedy into gossip right before your gullible eyes

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During their coverage of Monday’s Washington Navy Yard shootings a good portion of America’s national cable news organizations clearly demonstrated just how far out of touch they are with what they’re supposed to be doing, at least if “reporting the news” or “practicing journalism” are what they think they’re doing.  (Hint: they’re not.)  Jon Stewart and “The Daily Show” stepped up Tuesday night to make the point, again, about as clear as it can be made.  Take a look (click the pics to see the clips):

Stewart starts out using their own work to show that the cable networks believe their job is to put people on the air to talk and talk and talk about an event, even when they don’t know what’s going on:

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Then he singles out CNN for special recognition as a paradigm…of regurgitation of contentlessness.  The funny part—and there is a funny part—is that the same people who are on the air, making wise pronouncements that much of the information learned early in a dynamic event like a mass shooting turns out to be flat wrong, keep repeating what they’ve heard without bothering to confirm the information.  (Confirming the information is a practice known as “reporting.”)  As Stewart points out, labeling the speculation as “speculation” doesn’t mean it’s OK to keep speculating…but they can’t help themselves:

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So, of course, “The Daily Show” news team springs into action to report on the CNN angle of the story…and knocks it out of the park:

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Cue Mr. Henley, please:

We can do “The Innuendo,” we can dance and sing

When it’s said and done we haven’t told you a thing

We all know that crap is King, give us dirty laundry

If you need a giggle, try Xinhua

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Official government news agencies are not famous for their whimsy, particularly those whose mission is to convey all the warmth and humanity of a dictatorial regime.  Yet China’s Xinhua agency delivered the goods when it reported that Jeff Bezos had purchased The Washington Post by mistake and was having trouble cancelling the transaction!

Poynter’s Andrew Beaujon reports that Xinhua came across this Andy Borowitz piece in The New Yorker and republished it as fact: Amazon founder Bezos inadvertently clicked on the Post’s website and ended up making a purchase, and customer service wasn’t being too helpful in straightening out the mistake.

Mr. Bezos said he had been on the phone with the Post’s customer service for the better part of the day trying to unwind his mistaken purchase, but so far “they’ve really been giving me the runaround.”

According to Mr. Bezos, “I keep telling them, I don’t know how it got in my cart. I don’t want it. It’s like they’re making it impossible to return it.”

Xinhua does not have an American sense of humor, clearly; it apparently does not have an American sense of plagiarism, either.

A day in the life

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It’s one of those days…you know the kind I mean.  The details of my today aren’t important and I’m not trying to play on your sympathy; just saying we’ve all had those days when the universe makes it clear, again, that your well-laid plans are not binding on anyone else.  A day when you’d agree with the characterization offered by Ned Racine in Body Heat: “Sometimes the shit comes down so heavy I feel like I should wear a hat.”  A day when a lot of frustration gets vented, or distilled out, on the drive home.

If you are lucky enough, you stumble upon something coming out of the car radio that nudges aside the pall, at least for a few minutes, and reminds you that today is just today…there will be plenty of tomorrows that are not today.  For me, today, it was this story on NPR about the positive effect of organized baseball on some kids in a drug-infested neighborhood of Camden, New Jersey, creating safe pockets out of the despair where “kids can still be kids.”

Now, I know that just about any activity for kids that their parents and other adults in the neighborhood actively support could have the same impact on the kids as baseball is having for these particular kids today…and I try not to go all Ken-Burns-and-George-Will on the mystical healing powers of baseball…but on this day—All-Star Game day!—hearing about the mystical healing powers of baseball for some kids in Camden, New Jersey really hit the spot.

And then, there’s this:

Hu on 1

(apologies for the misspelling, Bud!)

I don’t care why he’s doing it, I’m just glad he’s gonna go‏!

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…and I have confidence in you, America; I don’t have to worry about another Texas governor being elected president and screwing things up from that end.  (Don’t let me down!)

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Photo: Politico screen grab      Caption: HIPRB