It’s been a weird couple of days. I haven’t been paying much attention to TV Turnoff Week, which I don’t feel too bad about, but in fact I’m trying to consume and I’m being thwarted at every turn:
I tried to buy coffee at the work cafeteria the past two mornings. On Monday, they were out. Of coffee. Every carafe was empty. This is what happens when you outsource your food services – there’s only one guy working the whole place, and he can’t keep up. This morning there was some coffee, but no decaf, so I decided to wait. I don’t like waiting, but when I’m timing how long I have to wait so I can rant about it for a week, it’s not so bad. The coffee was almost done brewing when I got there, but somehow it took 10 minutes to get my dose of, um, non-caffeine.
I’ve also been on a quest for a National Geographic magazine. I’ve never bought one before, but the May issue has a bunch of stuff on food production, and we need another article for the newsletter that will never die, so I’ve been hunting for the past two days. I can’t even find one copy in the whole downtown. Finally I start asking places if they even carry National Geographic, or if it’s some kind of subscription only thing. It turns out that the April issue was some hugely popular as seen on TV kind of thing, so it sold out everywhere. The May issue that I’m looking for just isn’t out yet. I thought I had a line on a place that was getting it today, but it didn’t show up in their order, so it looks like next week at the earliest, which is too late for me to use actual facts in my article, so I guess I’ll just make a bunch of stuff up and leave it to the next editor to write a “we regret the error” bit if I’m wrong.
Journalistic integrity doesn’t really exist anymore anyway, if my latest scans of the newswires are any indication: studies that show a reduction in some of the symptoms that usually precede diabetes are being hailed as ways to prevent the disease itself, and some scientists have just discovered that starch can cause cancer, and the article says that starch is in foods like bread and rice, which “millions” of people eat every day – um, it’s “billions”, and if starch is the biggest contributor to cancer risk, I guess we’re all screwed. I’m not going to post the links, I just wish reporters would actually read reports instead of making a 300 word story out of a 100 word abstract…
Aside from all that, things are ok. I just need to find a way to get 6 more hours into my day so I can get everything done. Hey – I sleep almost that much, hmm….