I'm beginning to think we were all bored...

Remember when people blogged? It was a whole thing. You probably read about it, in a blog, or watched it in the award-winning, highest-rated show on TV, "QuarterLife."

I used to have a blog. A long time ago. And I wondered why I stopped having one.

Oh, yeah -- I've got shit to do.

That's what happened to everybody's blogs, right? We all woke up one day and, instead of writing about how we need to make changes and how good breakfast was, we all decided to just eat breakfast and shut up about it.

For instance, I had breakfast. Yeah. Take that Internet.

The thing is, I have a job. And a wife. And a lot of TV shows to watch. And comic books that I read instead of real books. And my living room is dirty because I keep living in there.

So, you know, I Twitter, which is like blogging, in that I don't do that much any more either, but it's much shorter, too.

Christ. Where was I going? Oh, yeah -- to work. It turns out I have some shit to do.

Because the problem was too little TV...

Saturday afternoon, a nice man from AT&T came to my house. He spent hours setting everything up. When he left, I had U-Verse.

Why I am at work right now, I do not know. There are far too many channels to be watching, Internet to be surfing, even as I type this.

And I feel awful about it. I really do. Because I've never been in a situation where anybody would look at me and say, "You know, you should really watch some TV."

I see my friends. I go to work on time. I shop for groceries and mow the lawn (sometimes) and do vaguely defined "stuff." But I also watch TV. Holy God, do I ever watch TV.

But I was so fed up with Cox Communications -- my friend in the digital age -- that I broke up with them for AT&T. In doing so, because of their packaging, I ended up with all the movie stations. There are just too many to be believed.

And I want to watch them all. But I wish I didn't want to watch any of them.

Sometimes I think about my life and all the things I hoped for. All those goals and dreams I had when I was younger, buoyed by the potential people kept telling me about. And somewhere along the way, I stopped believing them and stopped believing I could do anything, much less those things I once dreamed of doing.

And I am worried that I am afraid of life. Maybe it's because of all the turmoil in the world, but I think that's only part of it. I think I'm afraid that one false move with destroy everything I've worked for and any chance of recovering it.

So I watch TV. Fucking mountains of it. And I'll keep doing it for who knows how long.

I am so depressed right now that it's ridiculous.

Don't call it an upgrade! It's been out for years...

My wife and I are owners of an electronic computing device, better known as an E-comp-dev. It was purchased from the Apple Corporation nigh on 4 years ago and, by and large, it's been a fine E-comp-dev.

Sure, it runs a little slow for my computerized gaming programs, (or comp-ga-pros, I'm sure you call them), and I sometimes have to transfer files to an external memory receptacle, but that's not a big deal. It's still works well. We are happy with it.

Well, we were. Until last night.

You see, in the coming month, my lovely wife will turn 29 for the first time (I swear she still looks 18, which makes me look more lucky and more lecherous as the days pass) and she requested an Internet player on demand, or iPod, for her birthday. Seeking to quell her murderous rage, I got her one. It arrived by post on Tuesday.

But when we went to plug the device in, our E-comp-dev let us know that everything was not, as the kids say, jiggy. It was decidedly un-jiggy. No one was tempted to perform any sort of dance, much less a jig. Because the new iPod requires new software, which requires a new operating system, which requires (in order to keep our already slow E-comp-dev from moving at glacial speeds) more memory.

Being the thrifty sort and being broke, we turned to our friend for advice. And he told me to suck it up. So we're buying new memory. Then we're buying a new(er) operating system. Then we're upgrading iTunes. Then she can use her new iPod.

Hell, it may even get done before her birthday actually arrives.

Stuff keeps happening to people

So, a bunch of people at the local newspaper are being asked to retire and then they'll fire some more people, just to make sure it's shitty all around. It's bad. And not in the way that other people matter, since we know they don't, but in the way that I'm already having trouble finding steady freelance work, so a glut of unemployed reporters won't help any.

Oh, yeah, and the paper's quality will probably drop. What's funny is that if the paper was really serious about saving money and improving, they could cut out a shit-ton of management positions -- or really just about 10 or so -- and save the jobs of 150 people who do actual work. There's a lot of money spent on red tape at that place. There's a lot of money spent on "improvements" nobody wants and almost none spent on giving reporters time to do investigative work.

Hey, you want people to read your paper again? Have you thought about reporting news that actually matters? How many people are in the capitol bureau? Three? Maybe you ought to focus more on the people that make laws that affect us and less time reporting on the northern half of Oklahoma City, Edmond and Nichols Hills.

But what the fuck do I know? I'm just a guy who got the hell out of there at his first opportunity because I smelled death in the air.

Also I'm sick. Also my fantasy football team probably sucks again. Also I'm tired.

So there's that.