One morning in a very ordinary life ... I awoke with a terrible hangover from a party last night, the familiar case of Chardonnay over-indulgence. Yet I seemed to recall a familiar journalist talking of lay-offs in the local press, misdirected editorials, the sudden rise in importance of bloggers, and a rapid decline in the status of printed news. The last thing I heard before blacking out was the sound of tears hitting the bottom of an empty wine glass, and then found myself next morning fully dressed on the couch trying to focus on the meaning of life.
Thump! The paper is being delivered, rolled up and encased in a bright orange plastic sleeve. On mornings like this it is like being hit in the face by a 400 lb heavyweight angry boxer, but we all know in reality that it is just a very manic, probably socially disturbed individual carelessly throwing the aforementioned object in the general direction of the house whilst also maintaining a highly excessive momentum in his vehicle down the street. This is not accurate USAF logistics in action, but the inherently dangerous execution of a maneuver which could by all accounts cause the destruction of garden ornamentation, furniture, glass windows, and damage to anything or anythingincluding small pets. Once my entire collection of medicinal herbs was wiped out in the skid path of a particularly violent newspaper landing.
The paper is usually delivered between the hours of 3 and 6 a.m. This inconvenient shadowy time can leave the news prone to several natural disasters of the type which insurance companies resolutely refuse to provide recompense; rain (leaves the paper soggy and unreadable), snow (in which the paper disappears completely until springtime), wind (blown away like Dorothy's little house in the Wizard of Oz), animal infestation (squirrels find the taste of paper enchanting), and other '
acts of God' to include thunder and lightening, crushed by Colorado State road-diggers, buffalo/elk/moose stampeded, and of course the occasional and intentional burning by stray zealous fanatics.
Oftentimes it is like a paper-chase trying to discover where the news has landed; and I have found it lodged between the upper branches of the nearest tree, lying nonchalantly on the roof, beneath our car or sitting provocatively on top of dog poop. Any attempt to pick up the Sunday edition without careful consideration can result in an excruciating physical injury, like the profoundly painful hernia or a dislocation of a spinal joint; such is its weight caused by the unwarranted addition of completely useless advertising inserts, mysterious companies attempting by any means necessary to sell the innocent householder a swarming host of imported decorative plastic objects of bright and fantastic dimensions whose origin can reasonably be guessed to be from China. All with the sole devious intention of extrapolating every last cent from your bank account. The mental pain is equal to the physical exertion needed to transport the paper onto the breakfast table, whose legs likewise appear to buckle under consumer pressure!
Of course there are the days when either no paper is delivered at all, giving a strange sense of relief or two identical papers come at once without any logical reason. This cosmic inconsistency can lead to paranoid and delusional thoughts; that the neighborhood is filled with pranksters, plain miscreants and/or thieves.
Once inside the humble home the real purpose of daily news rears its head; there have been occasions when my children would use the conveniently sized plastic sleeve and attempt to suffocate or strangle one another with it. That aside the front page story is perused and considered; the distinction between fantasy and reality, frivolity and objective journalism becomes severely blurred in many respects. The lead article or story may often resemble the action of digging a large hole in the ground for the sole purpose of seeing what a large indentation looks like; for example, 'how 12 year old Marvin from Littleton has the worlds largest collection of Barbie shoes' or 'the increasing trend and growth in text messaging.' Personally I like my main stories to come from the political, social, environmental or economic spheres of the world rather than a wayward theme belonging to a dizzy headed character in Marvel comics!
Once the paper has been used to clean up the mess left by our anarchically influenced brood of kids it is unconsciously thrown into the corner of the room. After several weeks of aberrant and repetitive discardation in this manner the pile of papers becomes more than their worth in recycling; and their short lives come to a tragic end ... eventually being converted into the type of flimsy cardboard that is currently being used to build modern and expensive homes on desolate plots of land on the Colorado plains. And here, the cycle of frustration and dismay will continue as yet more newspapers are delivered with aggressive enthusiasm. Couldn't we save ourselves a lot of bother and simply read the newspaper online?
Other seasonal questions for consideration;
We all know that Santa Claus has relocated to Beijing and now uses the Great Wall as a take-off runway, but does this also mean that our snow is being made in China ... and does it contain lethal levels of lead?