Cattle Class

Some people have accused me of being socially irresponsible because at times I prefer not to watch the news on TV or scan the daily newspaper.

I'm not big on watching the news on TV. At times I steer clear of news websites. And I don't get a newspaper, not even the one where some random wannabe sex symbol bares her breasts for all to see on page three.

In short, there are simply times where I try to avoid knowing what's going on in the world. It's not that I don't want to know what's happening, it's just that the more I know, the less I want to know.

Right now if I turn on the TV and the news is dominated by talk of war. Thousands of United States and British troupes are already in strategic positions around the Gulf ready, or so it would seem, to simply sweep into action against the ghost of Saddam Hussein this time trying to hunt Iran, it doesn’t make much of a difference Mr. Obama getting a Nobel peace award. Then Indo-Pak argument on sharing Kashmir booty and lately resurfacing of Naxalite movement. Oh yeah did I also heard about Pakistan declaring war on Taliban. So now Pakistan is against Taliban and India, India against Pakistan and Taliban and Taliban is against everyone.

These top stories almost push another situation into obscurity too. North Korea. I don't know much about this, and again, I don't want to. But it looks like they've been doing their own mini war dance with America, a dance that Japan recently got involved in saying they would attack North Korea if their was evidence that it was planning a missile attack.

And then, instead of the 'and finally' stories where we usually get a nice inside story about who slept with whom in the big bad world of entertainment (Michael Jackson died …so did the news) we get the usual run of the mill news about the economic downturn and some horrible killer flood or earthquake in some place across the world.

Following this there will be a weather report, which given the fact it's time of Global warming mockery you got to forget anything natural.The weather doesn't spell the end of the news though. No, after the world news and the weather we have the local news. This will consist of a collection of stories about regional slaughters, explosion, scams, and some company shedding x thousand jobs.

This bulletin will however still have time for one of those walk, sit on the couch interviews where some big shot enlightened guy will knock the day light off from your already cramped head.

And after all this, what will we do? We'll sit there and watch a reality game show or an episode of Friends or movie re-run. We'll escape into the make believe world of television for a while, until the next new bulletin, at which point we'll probably say "Ok the body count didn’t rise much." then switch it off and go to bed…And people have accused me of being socially irresponsible!