HST
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It is, perhaps, something of a measure how little time I have not been working in the last few weeks that I just found out last night that Hunter S. Thompson killed himself almost two weeks ago. I'm sure there are some eloquent obituaries out there. I have nothing, really, to say about it other than it is just another of the icons of my mis-spent youth, gone.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Wednesday, March 02 2005 08:47:47 PM

The Doctrine of Unintended Consequences
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I got a haircut this weekend. I wasn't planning to get a haircut and I don't think I will be going back there any time in the near future. It probably wouldn't be healthy.

Saturday morning I got up early (which, in retrospect, was my first big mistake) and took my truck in to get new brakes. There is a coffee shop across the street from the brake place, so I went over there to get some caffeine and read the paper. I don't go to coffee shops too often, but when I do I usually get a mocha with 3 shots.

So I'm reading the paper, waiting for the brake place to call. Three triple mocha's later, sitting didn't seem like quite as good an option as it had earlier. I got up and walked across the street just for something to do. I ended up back at the brake shop, ostensibly to check on the brakes. I thought I might sit there for a while, but other than my truck, the guys didn't have anything else to do, so the manager was watching "Saw" on DVD in the lobby. I don't do horror/grisly suspense movies. I admit it: I am a horror wimp. I have nightmares.

So I'm chain smoking cigarettes and basically walking around in circles in the parking lot when I noticed there was a haircut chain further down the parking lot. Since I was starting to get a bit shaggy, I thought that might be a decent way to kill some time. In the shop, they had the TV tuned to one of the local stations and their orgy of BTK coverage. (BTK: serial killer, 10 victims, dating back to 1974, caught on Friday in a suburb of Wichita, Kansas.) BTK has been communicating (feel free to substitute the term "taunting") police for the last several months after a long silence. The Wichita stations have been in a veritable feeding frenzy over this stuff, so much so that there was a joke going around that the local ABC affiliate was asking for permission to change its call letters from KAKE to KBTK.

Anyway, the local authorities scheduled a press conference for 10:00 AM on Saturday to make their formal announcement that they had caught the guy. KAKE started their coverage of the event at 8:00. I was in the shop at about 9:00. At about 9:15 I had had enough. The local anchors had said that it appeared the authorities had apprehended BTK and that the families of the victims appeared relieved, and they had said it in about 723 different ways (uninterrupted by commercials, I might add), but that was basically all they could say, because the press conference hadn't even started yet.

So I'm in the chair getting my hair cut when I sort of casually mentioned that they weren't saying anything new and it would be more informative to change the channel to cartoons. OK, maybe it wasn't quite casual and did include the phrases "pompous windbags" and "stale tripe". Apparently I am the only person in South Central Kansas who is bored with the whole thing. After some rather unfriendly comments from the other "patrons" I did what I should have done in the first place: shut up and keep my opinions to myself.

I've come close to getting myself kicked out of two public establishments in the past year. Both times it was over comments I made about news programs. A thinking person might infer a pattern here.

by Cziltang 
Posted: Monday, February 28 2005 08:16:57 PM