1. There are responsible thinking people whom I’d probably enjoy having a beer with (pregnancy not withstanding) who own guns.

2. Owning a gun does not make you evil.

3. It is far too easy for individuals to procure guns, ammunition, and the ability to kill a lot of people in a short time.

4. Protecting the right of an individual to own an assault weapon or a semiautomatic handgun is ludicrous. Under what circumstances, aside from causing harm to another person, would such a weapon be necessary or even “a right?”

5. Even other countries are astounded that it is relatively easy to procure semiautomatic weapons:

There was harsh condemnation for U.S. gun control laws. In Sydney, Australian Prime Minister John Howard said Tuesday the university shooting in Virginia showed that America’s “gun culture” was a negative force in society.

“It’s not a question of an Indian professor getting killed in the firing. This is related to the American gun laws,” said K. Subrahmanyam, a former member of India’s National Security Council. “We can’t do anything about it. It is something which has happened in the United States. They have got to change the law.” Source: CNN.com

I hate the American television news channels. I hate that the bottom line of eyeballs and sponsors is more important than any so-called journalistic responsibility. I hate blanket coverage of events as they unfold, giving the viewer the idea that the news channel has some idea what’s going on. I hate that naming a source becomes secondary to being first. I hate just about everything about the American television news machine.

On the night of September 11, 2001, when the planes had stopped diving into us, the news was in mass hysteria. Pretty much everyone was in hysteria, understandably. But no one knew what was happening, and even though the actual events of that day ended by 10:30 am eastern time, for the following 24-48 hours, it didn’t matter if the information came from a disheveled man wearing a tin foil hat. The news media would put it on the air. So long as they prefaced it with “sources say...” the news reported anything and everything it heard. It wasn’t so much a filter of information as it was a giant mudbattle, and they just threw everything on the air to see what stuck. Whether or not they’d have to retract it was no big deal; it was in the moment of a developing story. They can say whatever the hell they want.

On 9/11/01, I heard multiple reports of a box truck stopped on the George Washington Bridge, driven by turban wearing men, and found to be filled with explosives. A bombing of the bridge was stopped in the nick of time! Another terror attack foiled at the last moment! I remember hearing that report at least three separate times on three different news stations, one radio, and two television. Was it true? Did it ever appear again? No. And no.

There were rumors of survivors in air pockets of the Trade Center rubble, and even then I knew that was bullshit. Not that I’m a forensic expert, but no one, nobody, no how, could survive that big of a building coming apart and falling down on top of them. It simply defies all laws of physics and the limitations of the human body.

And even as the news media threw whatever it heard on the television and radio, it also censored itself. Well over 200 people jumped out of the World Trade Center before the towers fell. No one talked about that beyond the eye witness reports that day, and the pictures of the falling men and women the next day in the New York Times. The jumpers are never mentioned, out of tacit agreement.

So the news media gets to decide what to say, what not to say, and how to say it, and the driving force behind it isn’t some myth of integrity, or some attachment to journalistic “standards,” whatever the fuck those are. It’s all about the ratings. Used to be if a news establishment had a scoop, they had at least a day to figure out how to present it - the next morning’s paper, or the 6 or 11 o’clock news. Now they have to run to airtime because some other blanket news station WILL beat them to it.

There’s no responsibility in news reporting anymore, and there’s no need for it. Sponsors are salivating that their ad is going to air at a time when every eye in America is glued to the television. The news will say anything, do anything, to remain relevant and competitive, and there’s really no solution to make it better. The news media has to be a private enterprise, because God forbid the government own any of it - not that it doesn’t wield considerable influence already. We’d never hear anything of value if the White House ran the news completely. But because it’s a private enterprise, it’s driven by ratings and the monetary value of each minute. It’s not about accuracy or even truth. It’s about being first with the banner headline, first with the breaking news, first with the random bit of information, inflated until it’s a shadow of its former self, thrown at the viewer over and over until it sounds almost new and newsworthy.

CNN is still red-bannered and growing more awful by the moment, and it’s time for me to stop reading it for awhile, since no one has any concrete information yet and news outlets have reached the point of “Let’s put anything up on our site and verify it later!” I cannot abide that, especially the thought that parents, unable to reach the Virginia Tech website for news from the university itself, might be reading and feeling worse and worse, not knowing if their child is safe. It makes me ill, the irresponsibility for the sake of ratings (but ratings drive advertising, and as Don Imus will tell you, most decisions are made on the back of the almighty ad dollar).

So: other news that’s not violent, sad, heartbreaking or scary:

The origin of the Easter bunny! A Pagan Goddess named Eostre - isn’t it always the goddesses who are fabulous?

Water everywhere doesn’t look like much when what was reported as 1 student dead (tragic in and of itself) turned into 22 casualties a few hours later at Virginia Tech.

Random bullshit violent heartlessness again? Why would anyone do something like that?

The flooding in New Jersey is national news. Hello, folks! We got a shitfuckton of water last night!

The water in our basement receded nicely, leading us to suspect we have drains in places where we can’t see them, or that there’s a big ass crack in the lowest part of the basement where the water all ran out. Either way, less water = Happy Hubby and Me. It’s still freaking raining, of course, and delays are huge all over the area from planes to buses to trains and subways, so the commute in might be worse than the commute out.

I didn’t even try the subway this morning, since the line I use runs through a station in Brooklyn that frequently floods, and my stop is the one right before the flooded one and is therefore likely to be skipped altogether if they reroute the train. By some miracle I got a cab. It’s like parking karma- you know those moments when you find a fantastic parking space? Getting a cab on a rainy, cold morning is the same feeling, half “I’m unbearably lucky” and “Who do I have to thank for this moment of awesomeness?” I was warm, dry, and not as late as I could have been had I taken the subway, which is of course flooded and delayed now that I look at the updates online.

However, we’re more fortunate than some folks, who had measurable feet of water in their basements, coupled with blown boilers, no heat, no hot water, and no pumps left in the Home Depot to get all that dreck the hell out of the basement. After this storm leaves (which now looks like sometime next month, OMGWTFBBQ) we’ll deal with the leakage and the water.

And we’ll come up with some other plan for adding on to the house, since our tiny spark of an idea to refinish the basement and make it into an older kids’ hangout? SO not happening now! 

1. It has been raining steadily and heavily since dawn. We’ve probably received at least 3” of rain. There’s a puddle in the basement that’s not rising at an alarming rate, and the sump pump is working fine, but I’m irritated that there’s yet another leak we didn’t find. And according to Hubby, the water just flowed on into the basement like someone popped a zit and burst the dam.

2. Fukui is yodeling in the kitchen like he hasn’t eaten in weeks, and it’s still a half hour until dinner time. He sounds like he’s dying.

3. It’s cold and wet and will be until Tuesday.

4. It’s April, it’s 40 degrees, and we’ll probably still have the furnace running through June 28th.

Things that are making me laugh:

1. Freebird is working on learning the alphabet, though he can identify a good number of letters already. He just walked up to Hubby with a cut out E and R, to which Hubby said:

“Yes! ER used to be a very good show, and Mommy and I liked it very much. Then it got stupid and some guy got his arm sawed off by a helicopter, and then that helicopter came back a year or two later and ate him, and that’s when it got really really stupid.”

2. I have chocolate chip cookies to eat in the pantry. I can eat them whenever I want. I might have one now.

3. I am warm, inside, and do not have to go outside right now. Also, my feet are dry.

4. The Bird is in a good mood, and wants to play with his letters and numbers, which is a really fun activity. TWO! THREE! SIX! YAAAAY!

5. We went to an indoor playground this morning, where the Bird exhausted himself. If I had to describe it, I’d say it’s like Gymboree, only with a Jersey Perm and stonewashed jeans. A little lower in style but very very fun for him. And a row of rocking chairs for the parents, AND free wifi! 

I have a friend who is an ubermom, in that she works more-than-full-time, and commutes the same distance I do, and also says things like, “And I made lentil stew for the girls yesterday, and with brown rice that’s a complete protein! They loved it!”

This conversation happened about an hour after Hubby and I went to Costco and bought, among other things, a 5lb. bag of chicken nuggets (also, for the record, a protein) for the Bird. The Bird’s dinner has never included lentil stew, though he is a huge fan of PB&J, and will rock in his highchair screeching should he see the Earth’s Best cheese crackers shaped like Elmo and Big Bird’s craniums - prompting our nickname for them: Elmo Heads.

Now, normally I’m a live-and-let-live kind of girl, and what other moms do doesn’t really bother me because no one lives the exact same life I do, and so my choices are made based on what is best for my family. So far, everyone here is happy and healthy and has no complaints. The Bird definitely likes those chicken nuggets.

But for some reason that conversation has really stuck with me, and I’m wondering what more I could do to make sure the Bird gets a diet made up of foods I prepare. So far he hasn’t liked the leftovers of what I make for dinner, and chows down with hearty enjoyment on what we do serve him (though he’s totally turned off by the hotdogs right now).

Could I make lentil stew and other crock pot dishes if I wanted? Sure. Do I want to? Frankly, no. I don’t. I get X number of hours on the weekend to hang out with him, and Y number of hours in the evenings to relax before bed, and I don’t want to subtract any time from X or Y by standing in the kitchen chopping and mixing in the kitchen when I could be hanging out with him. If I were home full time, maybe. If he were older and had a later bedtime, so that I had more time between the moment we get home and the moment he goes to bed, maybe. If I weren’t pregnant and still tired (and hello, it’s the 2nd trimester and I’m looking forward to that return of energy… hellooo? Energy? Where you at?!) and in love with the concept of curling up on the sofa, maybe.

I’m frankly surprised at myself that I’ve fallen into a compare-myself-to-ubermom mode. Usually I’m very much able to brush off those feelings and say, “Ok, great that it works for her, but that wouldn’t work for me.” Lately I’m remeasuring everything I do, and running into feelings of guilt for not wanting to surrender any of the time I have to relax and hang out with the Bird or with Hubby or even just with myself in order to concoct perfect proteins in the slow cooker.

Somehow, though, I think it’s more important that I work on those feelings of guilt about choosing myself sometimes than it is that I start chopping an onion to craft those perfect proteins. Proteins aside, so far we’re doing just fine. I have to remind myself that Hubby, Freebird, and I are all happy. And that’s perfect enough.