Grumpy Me Another day without news and I am still amongst the ambulatory, albeit somewhat grumpy, humans. What else is having a forty odd minute commute good for if not to listen to the thoughtful news and analysis of NPR. You will never realize just how sexy Cokie Roberts is until she isn't there anymore. And I don't want to even think of how much I miss the sound of Sylvia Pugoli's voice purring about labor unrest in Europe.
No matter my desire, today I maintained my news boycott with only the slightest grumbling. Happier? Well, the jury has a long bus ride ahead of itself over that question.
Questions Given the basic parameters of this experiment (will yours truly be more or less happy than at present after a year of no news? You remember, right?) one would think that the questions asked would be along the lines of "How are you going to avoid billboards?" or "What if the news is on in a waiting room?" Well, you would be wrong, a condition I am not unaccustomed to.
One of the big questions is "Doesn't the blog about not watching the news take the place of the obsession of watching the news?" While it is no secret that I do have a teeny problem with obsessive behavior, I can proudly say that the persons asking me this question greatly under-estimate the power of my news watching, reading and listening ability. The same people have obviously not read my blog posts. This little blog is not even in the same league for total expended durations by comparison.
On a typical news day, I would read the paper whilst eating breakfast, accounting for at least a half an hour. Commuting to work with the radio was a minimum of forty minutes of news. Not counting news updates on the web during the day, there was a journal of something at lunch time and ATC on the way home. That is forty more minutes plus lunch. Once home, there was the News Hour with Jim or Gwen and a half hour of the local news if I could stand the commercials. (Yes, yes, I already admitted to being a snob in a previous post). Adding up the main chunks, not counting the updates and links and bits from Facebook sent by news friends, that's a baseline of 230 minutes per day. That is 3.8333333 hours out of the 86,400 SI seconds each day is composed of. Of my waking and sleeping hours, I was spending 15.97 % boning up on current events and the odd feel-good human interest story.
As any discerning reader can see, I do not spend anywhere near that amount of time writing this blog. Of course if you were a discerning reader, you wouldn't be here, would you? Ha! So the answer to those of you who have expressed concern over obsession transference is "No, the blog has not taken the place of the news, thank you very much." Pity.
Tomorrow: The next pervasive question: Readers versus Voyeurs.
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