Newscoma

Watch the duck.

Proof. PROOF I’m telling you that catfish are evil.

It’s Catfish Day here at Newscoma.

They are pretty durn tasty though.

In honor of Shark Week, I’m taking a few days off from the job to work on some personal stuff. Let us discuss Shark Week for a few moments.

Sharks are fascinating because they are killing, eating machines. They have no qualms or guilt about eating.

They are the Chuck Norris of the sea.

I am very odd about the ocean and lakes. I love the water but fish weird me out.

When I was a kid my parents took us to Paris Landing. I had a $1 scuba mask. Now, if you have been swimming at Paris Landing, there are these jagged, angry rocks that are in the shallows that tear the hell out of your feet. But I went bounding in anyway with great enthusiasm and abandon with my little mask sitting atop my face.

And then I went under and saw all the catfish. I have to tell you, I walked on water getting out.

Fish freak me out. It’s their world not mine.

And catfish are UGLY.

You may be saying, “Newscoma, how can you discriminate against catfish?”

I can and I do discriminate against them. So there. Sue me. You also may be wondering why I’m comparing catfish to sharks when there is no known connection.

I don’t know but in some odd yet disturbing way, it makes sense to me.

But I still love shark week.

A therapist would have a field day with me.

Image credit from National Geographic

Mabel has been relaxing since her unproductive run for president. She’s just checking in to say that during her absence from politics, she’s been barking, following everyone into the bathroom when the do their bidness and stealing bites of food off of our plates when no one is looking.

She’s also working on her golf game.

This is my favorite Bluegrass song of all time and the musicians playing with Ricky Skaggs SMOKE it.

All hail Ralph Stanley.

Badger and I watched Barack Obama’s speech yesterday. We livestreamed it and sat in the advertising office. Usually with things like this, I keep one eye on the computer and one eye on tasks that I’m doing.

I didn’t work on the other tasks as I watched Obama’s speech in Berlin. You couldn’t help but just sit and watch.

I cannot recall in my lifetime a speech from a candidate for any office give a speech like that. He didn’t sound like a candidate at all.

He sounded like a leader.

Obama is smart. There is no doubt. He has the world’s stage this week. And he did well.

Squrrel Queen did this for Stewman.

When his widow found out, it was of the good.

Go here.

Amen to Katie Allison Granju.

Interactivity is what online journalism - what today’s journalism - is all about. The problem is that no one is really investing the resources necessary to offer real community moderation for sites, thus you get too much of the crazy, worthless stuff and not enough of the good stuff.

There will come a day when newspapers and other major online publications/news sites will recognize that smart community moderation is a specific job skill, requiring knowledge and training.. You have to hire someone with the skills - or a number of someones - and actually pay them to do that specific job. It shouldn’t be an extra job responsibility tacked on to somebody else’s job.

I’m seeing a lot of burnout due to the fact that people are getting more responsibilities tacked on. And after burnout come apathy.

Burnout=me.

With that said, let me add that this is the reason I’m seriously looking for a job change which has been evolving over the last two years. What kind of change?

With people that get it and deal with the fact that news is changing. Denying that things are changing is a nail to a coffin. It stresses entire news rooms out. Because we get it but sometimes people that aren’t interacting with the community, be it real life or virtual, don’t understand what we folks in the trenches are getting.

Change is here.

This reminded me of Stewman.

I know of few professions where people actually call you and say things like, “Gosh, I don’t know what I’d do if you weren’t there…..”

It isn’t brain surgery or as vital as, say, police and fire officials, but radio DJs are obviously very important to a lot of people in their daily lives and I’ve found that’s even more true in smaller markets

Frank does what Stew did. I tip my hat to him.

I haven’t really been able to wrap my head around all the things that are happening with Barack Obama right now.

Despite the fact that I lean to the left side of the aisle, I am also hesitant when it comes to believing in anyone in office. I spoke to a woman last night who sort of takes care of me and mothers me. She knew my mom very well and she fills the role of being a nurturer when I need it. I find myself seeking her out a couple of time a week.

Everyone needs a place to feel safe.

Last night, she asked me about what I thought of the whole media circus surrounding Obama. (I guess I should say she could give two craps about politics.) I said it was exciting on many planes but on the other hand, I’m still reserved about it all. I told her I like the fact that the world is excited about him and that gives me hope that we can rebuild our standing globally.

I think 20 years ago I would have been elated to the point of the stars settling in my eyes. Now, I sit and watch. New cycles aren’t what they used to be. A story is now not allowed to grow. It’s an explosion these days and then it’s over. Younger people don’t remember the way Watergate swelled slowly with so much detail and revelations. We watched TIME and the papers. We watched the hearings on three channels which was all we had. Same thing with Iran Contra although it was after 24/7 news became available.

These stories were allowed to evolve.

Now we hear it, we talk about it and it’s not news within a couple of days. The world of communication has changed.

We talked about how my mom would feel if she were still alive about this. I think the issue is, and I said this to her, that we are living in events that will be taught to our children as a monumental time of history. In many ways, it was like her Camelot with the Kennedys.

Am I excited? Sure. I like the fact that Obama appears to know what he’s talking about. And that’s good after years of a Texas oilman that was as clueless as a raccoon and has the personality of a cracked bowling ball. Am I going to watch the Berlin speech. You betcha. It’s history.

Just pontificating after an odd week.

Dork Nation gives us this and it’s just wonderful.

I’ve sort of been enmeshed in my own world the past few days. A funeral of a loved one, burn out and wondering what I did to piss Karma off (I’ve narrowed down to that I was rude to a kitten in 1986 or some passive aggressiveness in the past few weeks. I’m human.)

I’ve seen light at the end of the tunnel and things are looking up.

For the past week, I’ve been following the story of Juana Villegas DeLaPaz over at Aunt B.’s, Tim Chavez, Rachel’s but it the story was so horrifying to me and with my own navel gazing going on, I couldn’t even process it.

Let me say, last night I found myself talking over beverages about the situation to a group of people and the horror on their faces mirrored my thoughts on about this woman’s terrifying experience. The dialog on DeLaPaz is a good one though but I think our reaction to her plight is a personal one.

You see, she is us. I am not the most religious person but I am going to talk about my spirituality for a moment. If you are bored with that, go here and look at this picture of this kangaroo.

Do you remember when everyone was wearing those WWJD bracelets? I always was of the opinion that Jesus wouldn’t wear a bracelet with this on it but that’s neither here nor there. The thought behind it was pretty good though.  The one thing in my belief system is that I think Jesus was cool. He hung out with people that were on the fringes and were deemed in that time as being unacceptable. He treated, from the studies of my youth, people the way that he wanted to be treated.

I realize we have laws. But I also believe that sometimes people get so immersed in the law that we, collectively, forget the Golden Rule.

It’s the best one.

My personal thoughts on the situation comes down to that DeLaPaz was treated horribly. But I realized she’s not the only one. We have a system in this country that validates that some people may be treated as little more than animals and that just doesn’t sit well with me. Her story reflects so many things happening in society that are just wrong. Have we lost compassion?

Indeed, WWJD?

I go back to the Sneetches. I think all of our society is reflected for those who have the stars on their bellies and those who don’t.  We are so immersed in mindless details that we have forgotten one thing and that is human decency. Not just for DeLaPaz but for others who have become numbers and not people.

Ginger actually speaks to me about this when she puts a human face on this situation.

Somebody asked me why this story got me so riled up. Why do I care so much about what happened to a total stranger who “shouldn’t have been here in the first place” when there are so many problems needing addressed of our own citizens?

First of all, I am a human being. We all come into this world naked, and we will all return to dust when our time is finished…and it will not matter what nationality a piece of paper said we were when it is all said and done.

It’s like Badger said last night. She is us.

I do not want to see the destruction of basic human compassion. Not for DeLaPaz. Not for anyone.

So WWJD?

I can’t speak for the big guy. I wouldn’t even try. I just know that DeLaPaz is just the tip of the iceberg and that all of the crosstalk doesn’t take away from the sheer fact that what happened to her is a reflection on the great divide in this country.

And she is us.

It’s really not us against them. It’s us. We are in this together.

We must take care of each other. If there is any spiritual lesson I’ve learned on my 40+ years on this planet is that this is the only way.

Sometimes it just takes a picture of a monkey taking a bath to make me laugh out loud.

Image Credit.

I think it goes without saying that John McCain has had a rotten couple of weeks.

I guess that’s why he canceled his press conference, the only one scheduled for this week.

I know these guys get tired. I get tired. I probably need some fruit or something. Possibly a vitamin or a beer.

Maybe I’ll live dangerously and have both.

Anyway, right now McCain is sounding like that weird old guy standing in a dirty wifebeater and plaid golf shorts yelling at kids to get off his lawn while they are sitting on the bikes on the road.

If I were to give any advice to McCain, I’d probably say that the best thing he could do is realize that people have had 8 years of muck. Obama is causing attention because he’s doing things differently. Do something different if all of this is ticking you off.

Oh, and then there is this.

I call the staple gun.

H/T Here

We said goodbye to Stew yesterday.

We spoke about his laughter and his kindness. Our friend Misty spoke of the funny things because he made her promise that basically he wanted to put the fun in his own funeral. (Stew was awesome with the gallows humor.) Misty talked of the time he was on the radio saying a mystery celebrity was going to show up at the local County fair and how he and his cohorts talked about it for weeks. The entire media from the local newspaper and other radio stations simply took it for fact and were wondering who this was and how had Stew scooped them.

Tons of people showed up to see who it was but what they didn’t know was that Stew rented a limo with tinted windows and showed up in the limo and got out of the car.

The local media had been had. Misty and I love that story. We had the same stories and she spoke before me telling his stories which were all of ours. I slowly folded up what I had written and put it back in my purse because the many things she had brought up were in my eulogy.

She was exquisite.

Chris spoke next and for the first time in the 17 years I’ve known him, I heard his voice break. He said the things about their friendship that were honest and so real that I had to put my hand on the arm of the chair and squeeze because I thought I might lose it. His voice broke and I had to go into a zone in my head so I wouldn’t lose it. He talked about when he and Stew met each other, they didn’t like each other. I was around for that one. They were wary as they both are competitive and they both were morning men on the radio and they would both talk to me about the other one that came from a place where they respected the other one but they wanted to be the best. But they found each other and I don’t think I’ve ever seen two men cultivate and enjoy a friendship as much as those two. Through divorces and children and real life, these two loved each other more than I can explain.

But it was Squirrel Queen who spoke of her friend and how she had him to herself for one hour a day, six days a week and then she had to share him with the world when he went on the air that tore us up. You would have been so proud of her because she spoke so deeply and with so much love and passion regarding Stew that it made it hard to breathe.

Then it was my turn. Every one had spoken of the things I’d written down so I had to wing it. I’ll be honest, I don’t remember really what I said but it came from my heart. I talked about how he comforted me. How he was paid to talk for a living but that he was one of the best listeners I’ve ever known. I talked about the time I had covered a terrible car accident where two elderly people had died and how he sat with me on the back steps of the radio station. We sat in silence but he knew I had some pretty awful images sitting in my head. The sign of true friendship is that the space between two people can be that we can communicate without speaking. He comforted me while the bad stuff swirled around in my head just by sitting with me. I wasn’t alone with the ugly images of death. He knew without asking. I spoke that Stew gave us the stars, he loved astronomy and space and that at night, we could look up and know that those bright lights in the sky were I believe him to be. I looked up last night and said hi. I believe he heard me.

It’s funny. Both Misty and I quoted things from his blog. (I think that’s important. His words are forever captured online, archived much like Winston’s although Stew really didn’t understand the whole blogging thing. And after time, as the bone cancer went on the march, it became to painful for him to type.)

His son spoke last and he was speaking to his mother. It was important for him to tell her things that I felt like I was eavesdropping on a private conversation. It was important, probably the most important eulogy given.

And then it was over. The chapel filled with hundreds of people and as I looked out I realized that Stew was indeed the richest man in town with the friendships that he had cultivated over the years.

One of his and my favorite songs is Vienna by Billy Joel. I didn’t know it was going to play. When it did, I smiled within myself. It’s a song about longing. Stew had ideas of the world and he was an amazing man. When I heard the song it reminded me of things left undone. For him, for me and I guess for us all.

He was 48-years-old.

Billie is back at the Knoxville News Sentinel. I‘ve written about Billie before.

Our love affair in this state with Billie has made her an icon.

And, KAG, to answer your question, I’d say Billie isn’t a real person.

I’m thinking something on the line of Ted L. Nancy.

Billieism —–> NOTHING in this life is an accident if it happens for a porpose. I agree. drowning is not a good choice. A baby is to inexperiended to decide.

Every time I read her I laugh so hard tears run down my face.

I’ve sort of been out of politics for a few days, being reckless and cranky and not giving a damn about my very own apathy.

This morning, as I started to feel like a human being again, I was reading about the Obama World Wide Tour Aught Eight.

First of all, I can’t help but agree with other progressives that Barack Obama traveling is a good thing for this country. What’s wrong with talking to our allies? What’s wrong with having a dialog?

Sharon and I agree completely on this. The world is waiting out the Bush Administration as much as we are.

I’d much rather have a leader that talks things through. That thinks about the direction of this country and it’s role globally.

Last week, Homer, Squirrel Queen and I were talking about patriotism. They thought I was the most patriotic one in the bunch. And I am. I believe in the possibilities and potential of each and every one of us not only in the United States but in the world.

The thing about this country in this history-making year is that for those of us who have personally been impacted by the bad decisions of this current administration, we can see some light at the end of the tunnel.

I still concede whoever inherits this country is going to be doing a great deal of cleaning up. No one is perfect and it’s not going to be easy.

But the last seven years of ruling by creating fear has taken it’s toll on so many of us. This is not the country my grandfather taught me about. Hopefully we can move forward.

Idealism is not a bad thing to have.

One last political thought is that I really wish that Al Gore would challenge his former running mate, Joe Lieberman, to an ultimate fighting championship. JoeLie is clueless.  Gore could take him.

As this is somewhat of an intensely private day for the friends and family of Stewman, I wish to tell you that even in Stew’s passing, he played his last joke. I like to think he’s sitting on a cloud somewhere with a mic in front of him laughing his fool head off.

So here’s the story. In smalltown America, we sometimes have to write stories about our friends. I had to write the story about Stew for today’s paper. I’m a professional (for about 10 minutes a day when I’m not being an aging adolescent) so I put my teeth to the grindstone to write the story of his passing.

I asked our community editor if the obituary had come in and she got it for me.

I looked down under the “Ministers” for today’s service and lo and behold Squirrel Queen and my names were under that category.

Ministers?

The entire office howled over this one. Even in death he still had the last laugh.

I don’t know what I’ll say today for his eulogy but I guess that if I’m a minister, I’ll talk about how he made us laugh.

As Reverend Coma, I guess that’s my job today.

I can now add artist to my resume. Of course, I didn’t do very much except act like a 12-year-old boy fascinated with Fangoria but it is of the good.

When you lose someone you care about, it’s hard.

Tomorrow is the memorial for our friend Stewman. He wanted Squirrel Queen and I to speak at his service.

I don’t know what I’ll say. I plan on working on that later today.

This summer has been a violent mistress. I am comforted by knowing this too shall pass but I’m in critical burn out right now. My leg is still sore from the spider bite but it’s better. It could have been so much worse so I’m grateful for that.

With Stew’s passing, I’m, of course, thinking of life and mortality and how everything has a root system. I feel like the world is connected. I’m also thinking because of intense stress that has accompanied these hot months that I may need a break from the world and sleep for a few days. Death reminds you that there is little time on this planet. We must make the most of it. We just have to.

I’m also thinking about being in a pattern that isn’t pleasing me right now. And how that if people are stuck, how do they get unstuck.

I’m working on that.

Stew was always supportive. He was amazing and he never backed down, even if he was afraid. He walked through the fear even when he was terrified.

I hope that I can as well.