Junkie

Early morning

            News.  Pure and raw.  I go for the hard stuff.  Growing up I ate my breakfast to Matt and Katie, but always loved Ann’s segment of tough news, coarse enough to make my yummy kid cereal tough to swallow. 

            In the sense overload that is CNN, its anchor, its crawl, its weather icons and various Alerts!, I am immersed.  The bias is not there, I draw no assumptions, and I take everything at face value.  Interpretation comes later.

Mid-day

            Here is the interpretation, the noise, the cloudiness of the news I learned this morning.  The purity is gone.  Tainted is the information I met with good intentions, to solely know and to possess the ability to pass on without opinion.  I resent the voices representing this time of day discussing such news.  Headlines of fatal school bullying, the war, and political issues are frayed edges on the knit of celebrity gossip, viral videos, and tips for staying thin this season, whatever season it is.

Afternoon

            Topics are narrowed.  No matter what program, a bit of news from daybreak can relate.  “House Hunters” depicts the trials of our recession, the falling real estate market, and in most cases, the steadily climbing divorce rate.  Dramas like “Law & Order: Special Victims Unit” beg me to toss around my feelings on the death penalty, a rapist’s punishment, and make me want to adopt 19 kids who have been abandoned by their flat character crackhead mothers.  “19 Kids and Counting” makes me evaluate the moral and psychological tolls associated in having such a large household with only 2 parents and God.  It makes me think about God.  Suddenly it’s 4pm and I’m up to my eyeballs in morality, children, and how the hell a freezer can stock 500 microwavable mozzarella sticks.

Evening

            Local news attempts to resell the headlines of the morning, with more fervor and sheer terror in their voices.  If it bleeds, it leads.  (“Then why haven’t we ever had a woman president?” my brother always jokes.)  (That joke makes me sick.)  And after a slue of car wrecks, rogue shooters, and deadly cantaloupe, a feature story on a crazy-ass woman affectionately named by the community as “The Lady Who Never Met a Cat She Didn’t Know.” 

Then come the teasers.  These plague me.  “It’s one of the deadliest pesticides and it could be in your dinner casserole!  That story and more at eleven.”  I stare down at my dinner with fatigue.  I think, well, if I wake up dead tomorrow morning, we’ll know why.  (That was one of my grandmother’s favorite jokes.)

Late Night

            The clip about the pesticide was 30 seconds long, and about a pesticide 1 person found in Bangladesh.  (This person lived.)  (Sickly I find this disappointing.)  I think about all the wasted dinner casseroles, pleading their innocence on the way down the disposal. 

            Alas, the news I woke up to resurfaces.  Only this time, it’s hilarious!  Jay, Jimmy, Conan (though not lately) are a scream!  And my celeb crush, comedian extraordinaire Jon Stewart, lovingly twists the politico bull shit of the day into hilarity beyond laughs.  What began as the straight and narrow view of an issue is now completely off to one side.  I like the idea of agreeing with Jon Stewart.  I spend long, embarrassingly long, periods of time imagining our pillow talk.  I just know that my questions of morality, children, and the matter of the 500 mozzarella sticks fitting in the freezer could be solved by Jon Stewart: a person who watches the morning news.