Chad's spot for various thoughts, musings, poetry, ideas and whatnot

Tuesday, April 13, 2004

Curmudgeonly

That's how I'm feeling. Likely the reason lies in my training schedule (this week is the recovery week for build phase II, so I'm a bit wornout from the last three weeks of intense raining) but that knowledge doesn't help my frame of mind. Little things are bothering me more than I'd like and I really want to go out and pick a fight with some poor unsuspecting soul who has done nothing more than not live up to my arbitrary expectations in some way.

Everything I read in the media makes me grumpy. The conflict in Iraq being compared to the conflict in Veitam, Barry Bonds hitting the home run that ties him with Willie Mays, the complete suspension of racing by the Cofidis cycling team due to doping allegations, people still poo-pooing "The Passion of the Christ", delayed PowerMac G5 upgrades, all of it. I feel like the "media establishment" is going out of its way to find every bit of negative, depressing news it can publish and taking long looks at every negative angle to even the positive stories. I read a story the other day in an national newsweekly were the writer talked abou some really great piece of charitable work a person was doing and then finished off the half-column story with a single line better suited to an opinion column that served only to call the individual's motives into question and thus the "goodness" of his work. Sigh...I won't go off on yet another media rant here but only because you've heard it before and it's just too easy to do.

My students make me grumpy. Yes, I made bad choices in my first two years of college but, by golly, I didn't have some semi-wise mentor trying to help me see that making the choices would lead to bad consequences (at least not one I listened to-probably I had really wise mentors that understood that nothing teaches quite like the school of hard knocks). The hardest part is having to watch the train wreck slowly building momentum knowing that you've told the conductor that the train will jump the tracks at that speed and having the train conductor say, "Yeah, I know but...at least I'm having fun. That counts for something doesn't it?" I always want to respond, "Hitler probably had some sort of pleasure center response to ordering the death of millions of Jews, but nobody seems to think that counts for something..." but I don't. Why antagonize things when it won't do much good? I just wish I would stop hearing about all the stress that comes from the choices. To use the example above, it's like the train conductor saying, "Boy, I hate it when the wheels skip around like that, I sure wish it would stop. Did you say that if I push this lever forward I'll go faster?" I'm sure if we used my "salt-mine/hog-farm" method of behavior modification things would change. Of course, I'd likely have individuals from the Hague wanting to talk to me about various human-rights abuses if I was allowed to put my plan into place. Oh well.

Thanks for reading, I'll try to see if I can find were I put my better mood next time.

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