sometimes I just get so angry...

Stephanie and I talked recently about how we both tend to channel negative emotions (fear, despair, disgust, etc) into anger. I don't know that this is inherently good or bad--everyone responds to bad stuff in different ways, and being angry about things doesn't seem a lot more or less productive than locking yourself in and just sleeping or whatever else people do to deal with things. I realized today that reading the morning paper, something I've assimilated as part of my daily routine as long as I don't oversleep, is an activity I value even though it consistently makes me angry. So maybe it's exactly because it makes me angry. Like a little bit of morning anger gets just a little bit of adrenaline going, wakes me up some, like having a cup of coffee. Anyway, I thought this morning about linking to a bunch of NY Times articles that really piss me off, but, honestly, this space would just become a long list of little blue hyperlinks and not enough context. There's too much out there.

Sample (on one two-page spread today): Alberto Gonzales, who still has the greatest handshake of anyone I've ever shaken hands with even if I don't think he's done a particularly good job as atty general, defies my prediction that he'll stymie a bunch of Senators with legal language by offering what are basically dumb answers to simple questions; a bunch of old white men and Clarence Thomas decided that they knew what's best for women--i.e. since it's a "grave choice", they and Congress were far better qualified (paternalistically) to decide than any woman could be--which a little ironic when I start to think about all the idiots in government today (thinking back to Representative giving speech when I was touring Capitol who talked about how "our children will have to pay our trade deficit with China"); finally, an article designed to be inflammatory, namely, a listing of all the inflammatory things said in the last couple days by talk-radio hosts, some of which just makes me so fucking angry...

Anyway, that's two pages of one day's issue. It's important, I guess, to know about these issues, because they'll never be solved by our collective ignorance; I just wish there were an easier way to fix the bullshit. I can't blame the Times for this either; in fact, I agree with their news philosophy that we should be reminded every day of the worst happening in our country and in our world. There's no way to hide behind excuses about a paucity of documentation or anything else.