Okay, so I'm new to this daily web surfing thing, having only been IV'd to the 'net for about a month now, but I must say that I am really enjoying the ability to get more news than was available to me on the seven channels that I can pick up with my TV antenna. (Yes, folks, I have an actual antenna by which I receive free broadcasts through the atmosphere). I had long ago given up on the Big Three (ABC, NBC, and CBS) and depended on PBS' NewsHour and NPR to get my news updates. This was all well and good - as far as it went.
Unfortunately, NPR (at least here in the mountains of North Carolina) only has five minutes/hour of news, and the NewsHour is only on once a day. Granted, there is Morning Edition, All Things Considered and BBC Overnight, but... what if... what if Britney did something at 3:37pm or Anna Nicole came back to life at 10:46am? I wouldn't find out for minutes! And what if Ann Coulter called John Edwards a faggot? I wouldn't know for hours and then I would only have Carl or Scott or Corey's word for it.
Ahh, but having the tubes warmed up and being part of the internets, I can find these things out nearly instantaneously! No more anxious wondering at five minutes before the hour what Earth shattering thingy may or may not have happened! At any time day or night I can click on my bookmarks and go to Huffington Post, or Wonkette, or even the Washington Times (if I want to view the opposing viewpoint). And there it all is, in 12 point arial script, for my perusal.
And thus, we come to my actual topic. Once I read an item, I scan through the comments. This, I have discovered, is my favorite part. As an ingenue misanthrope (or is that misanthrope ingenue, I don't parlez the francais), I get a warm feeling in my loins whenever I follow any comment thread past the first few (normally) relative comments and reach the loony bin cries of "Troll!" and "Moonbat!' and "STFU!!!" Ahhh, constant reinforcement of the fact that most people on this Pale Blue Dot are dumber than a pile of warm cow dung. And these pea-brained people, both left and right, always take over the thread and scream at each other for page after page of comments. Then there are the (presumably) sane posters who try, to no avail, to return the 'discussion' to the topic, only to be buried in the offal of the bouncing off the wall crowd.
Now, don't get me wrong, I'm all for a good cuss now and then (okay, all the time). I am, after all, a person who used to wear a button that said "Fuck you, you fuckin' fuck!" everywhere I went and who has to be constantly on guard when speaking to my elderly parents (both of whom have master's degrees in religion - in fact my mother was the first woman [thanks to alphabetical order] to graduate from the Duke University School of Divinity), lest I let slip with an expletive. But, come on, folks! It's one thing when you're sitting around smoking a bowl or sharing a glass of Chardonnay (to use two extreme examples) with your peeps/chums, but there are people actually trying to engage in civil discourse!!
So, please, all you people whose only contribution is to rant... STFU!!!!!!
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