So trivial, yet it really ticks you off.

[Trenchfriend]

My understanding is that Larry the Cable guy is a character-based stand-up comedy act, riffing off certain stereotypes of the Southern US hillbillies and rednecks. I'm guessing the point is that someone with "hillbilly teeth" for want of a better way of putting it - wide gaps between them, many teeth lost, could use that particular size!

@KILO NOVEMBER
Lost teeth would mean size 8. That would make sense.

 

[Ticklishchap]

Big coverage globally; royalty, after all, are the original celebrities.

While I have some (but not total) sympathy for the couple, I think their timing is awful, given that so many people have died from Covid and many more have lost their jobs and are financially insecure. Meghan and Harry do not have any of those worries.
Meghan’s mother, Doria, seemed very dignified and quietly elegant at the wedding and would have been a great asset to the royals. Her white father and half-siblings (to link to another theme today!) seemed like hillbillies and I can see why she wouldn’t want to have anything to do with them.
I’m not a strong royalist but on balance prefer a constitutional monarchy to a presidential system. However I would rather have a skimmed-down monarchy on Dutch or Danish lines.

 

[LizzieMaine]

My mother, who until recently thought of royalty only when somebody handed her a Canadian nickel, is now officially a fan of Harry and Meghan, and thinks that William is a wormy scheming weasel, Charles is "probably a dirty old man", and that the Queen ought to kick the whole bunch of them right out into the street.

As far as I'm concerned, though, "royalty" is that $20 check you get once a year for something you forgot you even wrote.

Meanwhile, there are today two things that REALLY TICK ME OFF:

1. Internet news sites, especially internet news sites that just give you a stupid talking-head video of some thryroid-eyed bottle-blonde flack reading a statement that would be much better conveyed BY JUST PRINTING THE ACTUAL TEXT OF THE FRIGGIN STATEMENT.

2. Bathroom doors that pull out of the frame and fall off the hinges when you open them while emerging dripping wet out of the shower and nearly fall on you as you flail around in the laundry basket trying to find your stupid glasses.

 

[Harp]

Are other countries experiencing Harry & Meghan overload? It's in every newspaper, on every TV channel in the UK and is taking up much of the internet. I'm no royalist and I find it surprising the amount of interest, or would that be fascination, that this pathetic little soap Oprah has generated.

The fault is not in our stars but in ourselves. Shakespeare

 

[Tiki Tom]

2. Bathroom doors that pull out of the frame and fall off the hinges when you open them while emerging dripping wet out of the shower and nearly fall on you as you flail around in the laundry basket trying to find your stupid glasses.

Did that happen to Meghan!? No wonder she's complaining. That palace is a dump.

 

[Edward]

1. Internet news sites, especially internet news sites that just give you a stupid talking-head video of some thryroid-eyed bottle-blonde flack reading a statement that would be much better conveyed BY JUST PRINTING THE ACTUAL TEXT OF THE FRIGGIN STATEMENT.

I've been howling at this particular moon for a very long time. When I go to a newspaper website, I want to read the news. If I was looking for video, I have the television news for that. It's got to the point now where most newspaper websites take forever to load up the actual newspaper bit because of the endless ads and video content that comes up first. I'd settle even if they published a 'lite' version where I could opt out of the videos. It's a very rare story where they add anything to the report except for those too lazy to actually read it.

 

[Hercule]

I've been howling at this particular moon for a very long time. When I go to a newspaper website, I want to read the news. If I was looking for video, I have the television news for that. It's got to the point now where most newspaper websites take forever to load up the actual newspaper bit because of the endless ads and video content that comes up first. I'd settle even if they published a 'lite' version where I could opt out of the videos. It's a very rare story where they add anything to the report except for those too lazy to actually read it.

That goes for the internet in general anymore it seems. There are a few blogs I'd like to read but they're rendered all but inaccessible by all the ads and popups. On various news feeds ads are always covering the content, and when you click on "stop seeing this ad" and indicate that it is covering content, it keeps the window blocking the content open with a notice from google. Trouble is the owners of the sites/blogs and what have you, are probably not aware their content is being blocked and hijacked.

I spend too much time online anyway, and am trying to wean myself off of it. So far I've identified the problem. (I'm purposely and carefully moving in small steps. Yeah, that's it.)

 

[Harp]

The Rebel Stakes run tomorrow, tried to do some handicap last nite while watching Kansas v Oklahoma
and North Carolina v Virginia Tech; some papers brought home from the office. Reveille at 04.00, can go
forty-eight without sleep if absolutely necessary. That's Las Vegas time, not Chicago Central Standard when
cruise control isn't standard operating procedure. Miss those younger days when sleep was more the option.

 

[Zombie_61]

Are other countries experiencing Harry & Meghan overload? It's in every newspaper, on every TV channel in the UK and is taking up much of the internet. I'm no royalist and I find it surprising the amount of interest, or would that be fascination, that this pathetic little soap Oprah has generated.

The news program we watch seems to be far more interested in the fallout from Piers Morgan walking out rather than the "Harry and Meghan" drama that instigated it.

 

[Zombie_61]

...Internet news sites, especially internet news sites that just give you a stupid talking-head video of some thryroid-eyed bottle-blonde flack reading a statement that would be much better conveyed BY JUST PRINTING THE ACTUAL TEXT OF THE FRIGGIN STATEMENT.

But that would require someone somewhere on the staff who actually knows how to, y'know, write.

 

[Edward]

The news program we watch seems to be far more interested in the fallout from Piers Morgan walking out rather than the "Harry and Meghan" drama that instigated it.

As a journalist, Morgan is an interesting character. I believe since his time in the US he has adopted the approach of creating a personalised 'brand' - like a columnist, but on television. This tends to work rather less well given the great difference between the cultures (and legalities) of broadcast and print journalism in the UK. In the end, ultimately I think he made his position untenable because, per the old adage, the journalist should never become the story. The only real question is whether what we have been allowed to see is more for show or if he's behaved the same within the industry. You can push the public much further than the heads of industry before it becomes career ending, imo.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It really does bug me a lot that there's a ton of people making obscene amounts of money in broadcast news today that I wouldn't have hired to cover weekends if they showed up with the kind of writing I hear now. Never mind the specific content, it's that so much of the way that content is written is just ridiculously, offensively stupid without even obeying the basic rules of how to write news copy.

 

[Edward]

It really does bug me a lot that there's a ton of people making obscene amounts of money in broadcast news today that I wouldn't have hired to cover weekends if they showed up with the kind of writing I hear now. Never mind the specific content, it's that so much of the way that content is written is just ridiculously, offensively stupid without even obeying the basic rules of how to write news copy.

Sadly true. News seems to be a fast dying industry here at the hands of news as 'infotainment'.

 

[Harp]

Never mind the specific content...

Content is germane as well. And it is not only broadcast journalism but paper cousin columnists, editorials,
correspondent and reporter elements tossed in the mix. Too often the caldron is enflamed, erroneous, one-sided
simpleton pablum too nauseating to read, much less so to actually pay for the privilege.

 

[tonyb]

I’m not entirely pessimistic re: the future of journalism. Ad revenue is moving online at an increasing clip, or so it appears, judging from the grumbling about it. (Remember when TV was novel and the grownups griped about how they liked it except for all those damned commercials?) So now that there’s maybe a little money to be made from online news, serious people with serious talent and serious bills to pay just might take it seriously.

I wouldn’t know diddly about what’s happening in municipal government if not for The Aurora Sentinel. It’s a print publication, but I usually “consume” it online. The digital edition is updated pretty much constantly. It’s on the AP wire, so there’s national and world news, but it focuses on the local. The reporting is solid. The writers are mostly young, and it sometimes shows in their prose. But it’s really the best source for being brought up to speed on what’s happening in the halls of city government and in the schools and what all is getting built or torn down and who shot who and what’s the body count now. It’s a good “paper,” and I’ve thrown some money their way. But I’m among they few who have, I’d bet.

 

[Harp]

Sadly true. News seems to be a fast dying industry here at the hands of news as 'infotainment'.

My granduncle started as a beat reporter and climbed the rungs to become editor of the Chicago Tribune.
His tenure followed the McCormick era at the paper, a time of transition for both paper and nation, but he prized
experience and old school shoeleather journalism. The street, gutter, and alley dues pay he considered essential
for a reporter, and he believed in starting rookies at police station and morgue beats. A man of conviction,
he enlisted in the Marines after Pearl Harbor as a private and discharged a lieutenant colonel with two years
spent in the South Pacific. He returned to the Tribune and resumed his career, always convinced that journalism
was a profession not merely an occupation. It took guts to be a reporter because Truth demanded nothing less.

 

[LizzieMaine]

When I was an active reporter, late-eighties, early nineties -- our town was covered by two daily papers that kept local bureaus here, a local tri-weekly, a weekly, an "altnerative weekly," and two radio stations. There were usually more reporters at a city council meeting than there were people actually serving on the city council, and as a result, local affairs were meticulously covered. Nobody got away with anything, and the town was a better place to live because of it.

Now we have one local paper, a weekly, with one reporter covering muncipal affairs. And the people who run this town get away with murder.

 

[Harp]

I looked around last night and could not find a Chicago Reader. A town staple, very chunky four sections
chocked full of high quality writing, solid, very well covered reporting. Amazing standards.
The slim-downed cut is not quite what it ustabee, yet still worth a look around, and, if found, looked.
Got on the Net this dawn to check it all out and nowze itzza every-other-week weekly. Take what I can
get and not complain but not so long ago, The Reader was tops.

 

[Touchofevil]

Trying to put mail back in the envelope in which it arrived. Maybe I just lack the dexterity/hand-eye coordination, whatever you want to call it, but it is often pretty annoying how it seems to be a tighter or awkward fit going back in than it was on its way out.

 

[Touchofevil]

Xfinity’s (Comcast) ondemand navigation is pretty annoying. It seems kind of archaic compared to Netflix and AmazonPrime; not that they are great. I am sure that if xfinity were to to update and organize ondemand so that it was more user friendly, I would see my bill go up by another ten dollars.