Yesterday I Achieved Nothing

Last night I was on a flight that had digital TV service. At first I was excited to watch. What a mistake. There was a story on CNN about drunken pilots. One pilot had poured vodka into his Starbucks coffee cup. Another had to be driven to the airport because he wasn’t sober enough to drive on his own. How is it that my 4 oz of Metrogel gets confiscated because we're only allowed 3.5 ounces (even though it was half empty) but the person flying the plane can get through intoxicated?

Passengers never know what really goes on when they fly. Part of the same story talked about how air traffic controllers often get less than 3 hours of sleep then do back-to-back 8 hour shifts. I switched the channel.

Next was the Weather Channel and the headline was: Severe Weather Alert – don’t fly if you don’t have to.

I changed to E! Entertainment news. Halle Berry has revealed that at one point, she thought about suicide. Who hasn’t? I’m wondering what the thought was that entered her head that stopped her. Maybe it was: What am i doing? I’m hot!

Then there was story on Heather Mills. Every day in America there is something on her and her courage. She was on the Ryan Seacrest show and someone called in and said they had initially made a judgment on her based on what she read in the papers and now that she knows the ‘real’ Heather, she just wanted to apologize to her on behalf of the whole country. Heather breaks down and starts crying and says how all she ever did was fall in love with someone and give up seven years of her life for him. Then, her surgeon talks about the operation she just had to “heroically" allow her to appear on Dancing with the Stars.

What else. On Fox news the big story was on Imus – an American radio talk show host – being fired for making nasty racist comments. So much for free speech.

There was gossip show that reported various socialites had been dancing on tables. Who dances on tables? I can't imagine what it would feel like to think: dancing on the floor isn't good enough. I need to be on top of a table.

I turned the TV off and thought about a funeral I went to recently. That cheered me up. There was a liturgy available for any type of death. Someone who lost a loved one too early or death from old age, or death from an illness or death from loneliness. Loneliness? I didn't know someone could die from that….

Comments

[bendis]

Every day I achieve nothing wathing tv,hearing boring news about matters i don't care.That was the bad news.The good news is that stupid addict called tv keeps me away from danger to die because of loneliness.I use to read having as a backround the sound of tv.I'm ashamed by that but there are many others in my club.(By the way ,i love ur playing with words and ideas,A L)

[Rachel Reese]

I live alone in London, 6 million lonely souls!! It seems to be the singletons dilemma, silence or the background noise of the TV. For my sanity I leave the TV on, it kind of keeps me company, if something interesting is on I will sit and ponder whilst drinking a hot latte, if it becomes boring I will pick up a book and let the noise of the TV fall in to the background. The TV stops the noise in my head telling me “Why the hell are you alone in a city of 6 million people”!!!! Glad to say I am not the only one…..

[Meg]

Life sure is difficult for Heather Mills, being the only person in the world who has one leg. She must be suffering hugely when swimming in her money-filled pool while the butler gets her solid gold leg. She needs to get a grip.

[Danny]

Oh, I am moving to London tonight! But the luck I've been saddled with lately (by lately, I'm referring to the most recent 46 years, five months and eight days) will cause my arriving flight to be forced off the runway whereupon it will crash and melt into a burning form of jelly on the Heathwick (I can't tell them apart anyway) taxiway...forced off by your departing flight, of course, coming back here to NYC. Oh, me. Maybe I should just wait for you here?

You see, the problem is, and I don't know how to tell you this, but the fact of the thing is that, when it comes right down to it the nub of the question - being one which touches on sensitive subjects of post-modern concepts of state-sponsored familial structures as opposed to the sovereign will of two (or more) people to braid their contingent but ontologically stable existences free, as it were, from the hitherto unrequested input of governmental agencies (or of non-governmental agencies, or NGOs, as they are commonly known, for that matter) without, how is it best framed...

I am in LOVE WITH YOU!

Okay. That feels better. There it is, out in the open, for all the world to see...and to comment negatively on, I suppose.

I wish I'd thought this whole email through a little better before starting! But there you are. These damned computers: once you type text into one of them it is nearly impossible to erase or edit it without sending it on. That seems to be a design flaw, don't you agree?

Well, the matter has been plainly put and more than openly stated, hasn't it?

I. Love. You.

I don't know much about you - save from your incredibly fetching and diverting photo on the Times site, and the one on your own site cause me several minutes of unconsciousness - a "seizure" I think it is called.

And then there are the words: they’re good, too.

Do you know how I feel?

Of course you know I feel! I mean, our souls are one, aren’t they? One made from two: e pluribus unum...as it says on our cash! Such a romantic I am, non? (That's a little continental flourish for you!)

And then, Ariel, I saw your headline about dying alone because you are always asking questions - ohhh, my poor heart broke reading the words! I, too, have always thought I would end up alone - for different reasons, of course, mine being attributable to the rash that often breaks out on people I'm talking to...and you because of your natural inquisitiveness...oh, sweet Ariel, worry no longer, because now you have me, and I will have you! Just as soon as we meet, of course. I could hardly expect you to plight your troth (don't ask me, I have no idea what it means) to me sight unseen! No, no, we'll have plenty of time to get to know each other in the cab from JFK to the Marriage Bureau in Manhattan and then to my house - well, it's really a one-room garden apartment - in New Jersey...that will give us hours and hours to really cement our relationship, and maybe
even - dare I say it? - to consumate the "hook-up" as my family like to call such holy joinings!

I look forward to your swift – and of course, positive – reply. Of course you understand that you are under very little obligation – okay, under no obligation – to marry me as I've made plans to do, except that you are my last hope.

[Rehan Qayoom]

Darkness and light are inter-dependant, just as death is an enhancer of life

Harrison expresses this most brilliantly in his film/poem 'Cheating the void'

Oblivion is darkness, Memory light.
They're locked in eternal struggle. Which
of the 2 forces finally shows its might
when death's doors are thrown open by a switch!

[TAR ART RAT]

didn't Johnny Cash die of lonliness?...

[Carlyle Braden]

Hi! I'm back! Of course Johnny Cash died of lonliness, as did my cousins who were still there for each other after millions of years of marriage. My best friend's mother is, i hope, safe out of the woods! She must be in her 90s or almost by now. I still keep in touch because I love her. She was a non-judgemental light in my life as was my Auntie. Broke my heart when she died. Mother, unfortunately lived beyond what she would have wished to do, so in a very real sense, she abandoned me. My father got religion and abandoned me before I could get to know him again. He gave me many gifts as did my Mom. Only now am I beginning to understand them both, but it takes a lot of thought and forgetting of self. Sometimes months in between being busy!