The Curmudgeonly Professor realizes that he has been derelict in his duties in informing his faithful readers about what is going on in the world, as gleaned from the daily newspapers. People who write blogs about how to do blogs keep telling us that your blog must be informative, providing information that inspires, informs, educates, and entertains one's readers. I apologize for not living up to this lofty expectation. So here is a summary of the good stuff out of today's four newspapers that I take.
First, from the St. George Daily Spectrum. The best thing in the Spectrum this morning is the Pickles cartoon, which for the comics illiterates, is a cartoon about two geezer retirees, Opal and Earl. The creator is a genius at getting inside the minds of older retired people. Today, Earl gets out of bed, stretches, and reminisces about his former purpose of getting up: to go to work. Now, however, as he goes to lie down on the couch, his purpose of getting up is to go take a nap. You may not understand how true this (this being an indefinite antecedent) is unless you have been there. Other than that, the best feature of the Spectrum is that the daily funnies are printed in color. The obits usually take up a bunch of room since Spectrum obit writers tend to include a full-scale biography of the deceased, starting in grade school and continuing through successions of marriages, divorces, jobs, moves, and finishing often, for ladies at least, with lists of how many quilts and afghans they made for each of their 72 grand children and great grand children.
Now to USA Today. Here is a gleaning of the best of the best from USA Today, one of my favorite newspapers.
- Hallmark has released a themed collection of 48 everyday cards featuring Justin Bieber, who turns 18. I knew he is some teen aged heartthrob, but I'm still in the Sinatra-Spike Jones-Doris Day era.
- Lindsay Lohan will not be "clubbing" any more, as she has learned her lesson doing public service at the morgue.
- Ten shows to watch or skip in TV are listed, which doesn't do me much good since I only watch NBA, NFL, Rio Bravo reruns, and political bloviators.
- According to Craig Wilson in "The Final Word," class lectures may be passe since you can package the stuff on YouTube or iTunes. Having lectured for 45 years, I can testify that the only things my students remembered and recited back to me years later were examples of my classic stories. But not knowing what else to do, I kept at it anyway even though I knew full well many of my students didn't know enough to graduate even though they marched in commencement.
- According to Fashion Forward, Paltrow, Streep, Mara, Bejo (whoever she is) were the best of the Oscar fashion parade. Diaz had the best necklace, a $560K Tiffany emerald cut diamond right up there with Newt's half million $ jewelry bill, and Jolie had the best lips. Jolie's slit skirt was not mentioned.
- The top ten TV shows in viewer counts were listed for each day. I scanned these quickly, realized I had never watched any of them.
- Subway is giving away a free chocolate chip cookie today to celebrate Leap Day with any purchase.
- If there were no leap years, the calendar would be 'scrambled', according to Dan Vergano.
- The Dow closed above 13,000, for whatever that means to the unemployed, the homeless, and the GOP.
- On the political front, Santorum is throwing up, Gingrich is promising $2.50 gas if we elect him Prez, Romney is "sighing with relief," as the GOP marathon stumbles wearily on to its inevitable conclusion. No mention of what Ron Paul is doing today.
- In sports, a remorseful Dwayne Wade says he didn't mean to break Kobe's nose.
- Nascar continues to befuddle me.
- In Salt Lake City, a massive Gun Show is advertised at the South Towne Expo Center in Sandy with, get this, "a SEMI load of Wholesale AMMO and Thousands of Guns." Holy Cow! Just what we need to stimulate the economy! A SEMI load! Thousands of Guns!
- In Wyoming, the legislature (which I worked for for three years once upon a time) "shot down the doomsday bill" which would have "set up a task force to create a strategy for a replacement state currency and a military, complete with an aircraft carrier." Turns out the aircraft carrier was injected as humor in attempt to kill the bill. But isn't the people's democracy wonderful?
- Utah Jazz working for high position in the lottery.
We've used up too much space already. But just ask yourself, how many of these valuable tidbits would you have known about without this wonderful commentary and summary of the day's news? Freedom of the press is an anchor of democracy, no matter whether we like what is printed or not, and so we cherish this gift. People who threaten to cancel their subscriptions when they read something they don't like, or which angers them, miss the point.
