Words of Truth

Got this from Doug Ross’s website:

THE NEXT SURVIVOR SERIES

Six married men will be dropped on an island with one car and 3 kids each for six weeks.

Each kid will play two sports and either take music or dance classes.

There is no fast food.

Each man must take care of his 3 kids; keep his assigned house clean, correct all homework, and complete science projects, cook, do laundry, and pay a list of ‘pretend’ bills with not enough money.

In addition, each man will have to budget in money for groceries each week.

Each man must remember the birthdays of all their friends and relatives, and send cards out on time–no emailing.

Each man must also take each child to a doctor’s appointment, a dentist appointment, and a haircut appointment.

He must make one unscheduled and inconvenient visit per child to the Urgent Care.

He must also make cookies or cupcakes for a social function.

Each man will be responsible for decorating his own assigned house, planting flowers outside and keeping it presentable at all times.

The men will only have access to television when the kids are asleep and all chores are done.

The men must shave their legs, wear makeup daily, adorn himself with jewelry, wear uncomfortable yet stylish shoes, keep fingernails polished and eyebrows groomed.

During one of the six weeks, the men will have to endure severe abdominal cramps, back aches, and have extreme, unexplained mood swings but never once complain or slow down from other duties.

They must attend weekly school meetings, church, and find time at least once to spend the afternoon at the park or a similar setting.

They will need to read a book to the kids each night and in the morning, feed them, dress them, brush their teeth and comb their hair b y 7:00 am.

A test will be given at the end of the six weeks, and each father will be required to know all of the following information: each child’s birthday, height, weight, shoe size, clothes size, and doctor’s name. Also the child’s weight at birth, length, time of birth, and length of labor, each child’s favorite color, middle name, favorite snack, favorite song, favorite drink, favorite toy, biggest fear and what they want to be when they grow up.

The kids vote them off the island based on performance. The last man wins only if…he still has enough energy to be intimate with his spouse at a moment’s notice.

If the last man does win, he can play the game over and over and over again for the next 18-25 years eventually earning the right to be called Mother!

For those of you who don’t know, there is a show on HBO called “Costas Now” on which the host, Bob Costas, talks about sports. It being on HBO, there is blue language involved (and no, I’m not talking about the Colts). I don’t get HBO, so I don’t watch it.

Someone in the past several days pointed out to me that the most recent episode included two guests (possibly others, but these are the important ones): Will Leitch of Deadspin.com, and Buzz Bissinger, a Pulitzer prize winning journalist. Here’s the short version: Bissinger went postal on Leitch, spewing forth vitriol about bloggers. I can’t even quote him here because this is a family blog.

I am not saying that I support or endorse deadspin.com, but to condemn blogs in general as sources of information and communication? Sorry Buzz, but welcome to the 21st century. I get the feeling that if Buzz had been born 600 years ago, he would have been one of those priests who didn’t want the peasants to know how to read.

But that’s not all. Bob Costas wrote this back in March: “…it’s one thing if somebody just sets up a blog from their mother’s basement in Albuquerque and they are who they are, and they’re a pathetic get-a-life loser, but now that pathetic get-a-life loser can piggyback onto someone who actually has some level of professional accountability and they can be comment No. 17 on Dan Le Batard’s column or Bernie Miklasz’ column in St. Louis. That, in most cases, grants a forum to somebody who has no particular insight or responsibility. Most of it is a combination of ignorance or invective. It’s just a high-tech place for idiots to do what they used to do on bar stools or in school yards, if they were school yard bullies, or on men’s room walls in gas stations. That doesn’t mean that anyone with half a brain should respect it.”

Here is my response to all this:

A journalist is is a person who practices journalism, the gathering and dissemination of information about current events, trends, issues and people. It galls me as an intelligent person to be told that since I don’t have a degree in journalism, what I say doesn’t matter (or at least should not be trusted).

There are professions that require a skill set that is not commonly learned by the majority of society. Medicine, Nursing, electrical engineering, carpentry, rocket propulsion, and piloting are all examples of professions in which you must learn a specific set of skills and develop a knowledge base (including professional jargon) that by and large is not known by people not in your profession.

There are other professions that pretty much anybody could do with little or no training above what the average person receives in our society. Cashiering, telemarketing, sanitation engineering, nurse aide work.

Someone could argue that journalists belong in the second category (the easy-to-learn category) in a society that contains intelligent people. I had to go to school for years to learn grammar, vocabulary, creative writing, etc. It was called “grades 1-12”. I got even more instruction with my non-journalism bachelors degree.

It seems to me that there are three requirements to be seen as a journalist:
1. Be an intelligent person who is well read
2. Have a basic grasp of language and grammar
3. Be trustworthy with the dissemination of facts.

The Deadspin meltdown on Costas’ show just shows how “professional journalists” view those of us who didn’t graduate from journalism school: we are idiots who need to be told stuff by a professional journalist. Well, excuse me, but I don’t think “Professional Journalists” have a market on facts or opinion. I am allowed to possess and disseminate both. So there.

Ok, so this is National Nurse’s Week. My hospital is giving out small gifts, serving free food, etc. One gift that I found funny, is a pair of nursing scissors with a tag attached that says, “You’re a CUT above the rest!!” Ok, first of all, they didn’t have to capitalize the word “cut” just so I would get the joke. Do they think we are that dim? Second funny thing is that the message implies that I am better than “the rest.” Who are the rest? Certainly not the 499 other nurses who got scissors with the exact same message.

Remember: You are unique. Just like everybody else.

BTW: I found a funny link about this new substance called Hillary. Use with caution, evidently.