And, no, I'm not talking about the very awesome Chicago song.

In case anyone wondered, I got the job in Grand Island. It sounds like a challenging and interesting job. I'm going to get a lot of experience in Visual Basic. Finally I will have benefits again, and I am making the same amount of money as I did before, which is great. I don't start until October 2nd, so I still have to bridge the gap in terms of finances, but at least I know I'm not going to be poor forever.

It's been a rough year, but I always felt that as long as I stayed positive and did my due diligence that things would be fine. It is very difficult to stay positive sometimes, especially for me, but the proof was in the end result.

I want to thank Lee and Timika for being in my corner - have no doubt that I drew strength from you, and it is much appreciated. I'm not out of the woods yet - I still have to find out how much I've improved since I went in and out of therapy. There are still things about me that I know have to change if I'm going to continue on this run. I got a call from my Uncle telling me how my family is proud of what I've done since January. I don't tear up a lot but I really had to fend it off during that phone call.

This is just one part of my improvement. It's an important part, no doubt, but I still have to become more of a reliable person overall. I still have to be better. I freely admit there are some ugly things about Jason, but at least I know about them and want to change.

I'm looking forward to PMT's housewarming party. I can't believe it's been almost a year since the Halloween party. Meeting Twisted is going to be cool. Partying with you all is going to be a lot of fun. It is a very humbling and gratifying experience to have people who don't know you so well, but still feel comfortable enough to talk about their lives and experiences freely. It feels great. It lets me know that I'm developing into a better person, instead of remaining the evil son a bitch that I've been on occasion.

I found a really cool piece of software that facilitates the creation of a podcast, and the coolest part is that it's free. It also has a lot of features. I think I'm going to be able to create some interesting things with Josh's help. Larson vs. Larson isn't all that far off.

PEACE.

Roughly translated from what my Uncle told me.

When you walked outside today, did you step on an ant?

You don't know?

If you did, can you say that the ant was a bad ant and deserved it?

You don't know?

If you did, it was an accident, and you can mourn for the ant but you can't say anything so bad about yourself because you honestly didn't know.

Sometimes, people (or other beings) are just in the wrong place at the wrong time.

And something was different. I wish I could put my finger on it.

But all I can tell you is that when I woke up I felt like a different person. It was very powerful, almost as if my personal storm clouds parted, at least for now. I'm very thankful, even if it is only for a day.

Yes, another excursion into poisonous popular culture by the abnormally spot-on Jason.

Madrid banned models with a Body Mass Index below 18 from strutting their stuff in a major fashion show. Here's the link from Yahoo News:

Here's the picture from the article. Feast your eyes on THIS!


Hubba hubba! Notice the stick-like features and the hair! I call it "Bird's Nest Chic."

Now I can't speak for all men, because I do know at least one guy who likes their women this way, but I'm almost certain guys don't like women with the body of a stray animal. I'm just sayin.

Who was the person who looked at a 90 pound model and said "Yeah, that's HOT?" No guy I know would find this the least bit appetizing, let alone subject themselves to the maintenance costs, including the raging cocaine, scotch and cig habits. I can only assume it was a self-hating woman.

And I also have to question whether women REALLY aspire to this. I mean, that's what everybody is saying, that models are looked up to (God knows why), and that they have undue influence on young people. There is being fit, there is looking good, and then there is looking like Gandhi. NOT HOT!

Partisan double standards, and fictionalizing for profit

The current flap over the upcoming ABC docudrama The Path to 9/11 is a textbook case of partisan hypocrisy. And that label applies to liberal and conservatives alike.

Let's start with the liberals -- not all liberals, of course; I am referring to activists and bloggers -- since they're the ones who are ticked off at ABC. Their outrage is directed at various fictionalizations of the 9/11 saga that the Hollywood types have either dreamed up or improvised. These scenes apparently depict Bill Clinton's national security team as being less than vigilant about the growing threat of Osama bin Laden during the late '90s. Infuriated liberal activists are currently demanding that ABC either shelve those scenes -- or cancel the five-hour miniseries in its entirety. (And a new report in Variety says that outright cancellation is still possible.)

Looking at this case on the merits, it's clear that the liberal camp does have a legitimate beef; even ABC has admitted taking some dramatic liberties with the known facts. But I don't recall the liberal camp acting with similar concern back in 2003, when a CBS docudrama about Ronald Reagan was planning to take some dramatic liberties in its depiction of the former president.

Quite the contrary, in fact. Liberals thought that the Reagan show should air just as the miniseries producers intended it to air -- in the name of freedom of speech. And when conservative activists, led by the Republican National Committee, went after CBS and demanded (in the end, successfully) that the network dump the show, liberals were outraged that there could be such an assault on free expression.

People for the American Way railed in a press release about "right-wing thought police," and Barbra Streisand (whose husband was playing Reagan) wrote on Nov. 4, 2003, "I don't believe Democrats often, if ever, try to muscle the First Amendment like this....This (conservative effort) is censorship, pure and simple." But now that liberals are going after ABC for taking similar liberties with Clinton, I don't hear her, or other famed Friends of Bill, sounding any concerns about "censorship."

Most conservatives, however, are also selective in their outrage. They don't seem very concerned that the Hollywood types (whom they generally dislike) have filmed fictionalized scenes that depict a former president in a negative light. In fact, they've barely said anything at all, content instead to chuckle at the liberals' discomfiture.

Yet the scene was very different in October 2003, when they were so outraged that Hollywood had filmed fictionalizeed scenes depicting their favorite former president in a negative light. Back then, when a major network acted in this fashion, it was viewed as fresh evidence of liberal-media perfidy.

As Ed Morrow of the National Review said, "Attempts to distort our history must be resisted. Historical truth is simply too valuable to be made a plaything for biased filmmakers rewriting it to fit their politics." And Ed Gillespie, the Republican party chairman, said on MSNBC that "there's infotainment and docudrama and reality TV and the lines between fact and fiction blur. That's fine when it's entertainment, but when you're talking about...the Reagan legacy formation, I think that it's important that we get things right."

Where's the plea from Gillespie today, demanding that ABC "gets things right" about the Clinton legacy?

Actually, some conservatives have spotted the double standard, and they have copped to it. Commentator Jonah Goldberg: "A pox on everybody...(C)onservatives howled in outrage (in 2003), and got CBS to drop it. Why shouldn't liberals have a go at the same thing?" James Taranto at the Wall Street Journal website wrote the other day, "The Clintonites may have a point here. A few years ago, when the shoe was on the other foot, we were happy to see CBS scotch The Reagans."

I could just leave the issue here, having made the argument about partisan hypocrisy. But that's not the root problem. Actually, it was Gillespie, in the service of his partisan argument, who identified the root problem when he mentioned the rise of infotainment and the blurring between fact and fiction.

The networks have opened themselves up to these kinds of partisan attacks by embracing the docudrama format, apparently in the belief that mass audiences aren't interested in history unless actors read the lines and scripts contain the dramatic "beats" that work best between commercial breaks. There once was a time when vital issues, such as the road to 9/11, would have been explored at length in news-division documentaries that aired in prime time -- I can remember NBC White Paper and CBS Reports; Edward R. Murrow came earlier -- but that format was not deemed sufficiently profitable, so it was dropped.

But now that the networks, in the pursuit of ratings and ad dollars, have embraced a format that necessarily mixes fact and fiction, they have in a sense reaped the whirlwind -- opening themselves up to attack from whichever partisan camp feels aggrieved about the fiction element. One Hollywood producer laments to Variety, "Starting with The Reagans, everything is now political. It's become so divisive and nasty. It's very sad."

Actually, what's really sad is the networks' assumption that, in our polarized era, they can somehow take liberties with history in the pursuit of profits -- and not get any grief about it.

---

MY TAKE:

This article expresses my feelings on the subject very accurately, and blasts the canard that since the media is corporate, then they will always side with Republicans.

Another point to be made is that the networks are VERY interested in playing down their participation in the tabloid journalism which is aimed at playing into the divisive, partisan nature of almost every single discussion. Nope, the media isn't at fault at all! Ahem.

Jason