reasonablenut

Ben's gone to boomershoot, so he's out of the real world for a week or so.
Back in the real world, it just gets discouraging....

Headlines from today (courtesy of Lucianne.com):

WITH GUTLESSNESS TYPICAL OF THE GRATING GENERATION, HOLLYWOOD TAKES UP 9/11 (I can harldy wait!)

WATSONVILLE APARTMENT COMPLEX WILL BAN SMOKERS (What happened to a man's house is his castle?)

POLL: MOST BACK CIVILIAN PATROLS [on the border] (as opposed to what you read in the main stream press)

SADDAM IN GOOD SPIRITS ON EVE OF BIRTHDAY (Why????)

PROTESTERS [13] TARGET US ARMY RECRUITERS AT CMU (Is this news, 13 strong?)

ZIMBABWE TURN TO WILDLIFE AS FOOD SOURCE (Where's PETA?)

ACTIVIST DEMANDS RESPECT FOR CHICKENS [the bird] (Speaks for itself)

JESSE JACKSON URGES BANK CEO TO AID NEEDY (Where's the rainbow coalition?)

DIPLOMATS: US ALONE IN FIGHT TO OUST UN'S EL BARADEI (Alone again, why does that not surprise me)

SURVEY: US TRUSTS THE NEWS BUT SEES BIAS (How can this be? Contradiction in terms?)

2 MORE BOY BOMBERS NABBED IN WEST BANK [ages 15 and 16] (Palestinians are definitely on the right track!)

PANEL OK'S ID MARKS ON BULLETS (Probably about as effective as "gun fingerprinting", although they will spend a butt load of money on the idea while we pay for it)

AND FINALLY:
ZIMBABWE BACK ON UN RIGHTS COMMISSION, US PROTESTS (Alone again, why do we bother with the UN?)

And that, my friends, is just a mere six hours or so.
It just gets pretty discouraging.

On a different note:
My wife teaches fourth grade, I have an employee with a five year old son. With all the recent pedaphile shit on the news, given the wonders of the Internet, they looked up the list of "Sexual Offenders" in their neighborhoods and/or school districts. Both lists went on for pages.

I looked at the paper that spit out and thought "Why does such a list exist? Why do these people live in houses (across from schools and parks), why do they have jobs, how can they have families?) The existence of this list was abhorant. They should be locked up, institutionalized, or dead. If the STATE can kill a Schiavo, why can't the STATE exercise the same perogitave in this case? (Dirty Harry Quote, roughly, "What about his rights under the .....amendments? Harry: "Well I'm all broken up about his rights.)

I guess the longer I live and I seem to be at the upper end of the scale these days (depending on whether you smoke, drink, are too fat or not fat enough, exercise, eat vegetables six times a day, drink coffee or dont, have a lot of sex or dont, etc.) the harder it gets. I really pity a lot of you guys in your 20's and 30's who have a brave new world to look forward to.

Sorry for the rant, but sometimes it just gets to me.