The Kiwi Is Surprisingly Stylish, Itself

Before I get started I want to make an announcement from the News You Can Refuse Department. On January 20th at 11pm RCTV is scheduled to have its first airing on community access television. That's RC as in Real Change, but it will be created, produced and hosted independently of Real Change by Steve Schrock.

Now, a couple of days ago Steve came by the office and taped interviews with yours truly and fellow editor Anitra "On Whose Kitchen Floor I Have Sometimes Slept" Freeman. I'm afraid those interviews may form the basis of the first show, even though I might have let slip some things about my sordid love affair[s] or what I may have initially thought of Timothy "Our Glorious Founder" Harris, and even though Anitra may have discussed whether I have ever been infested with invisible insects.

So what I'm saying is, this is News You Can Refuse. If you get the community access channel, you don't HAVE to watch RCTV that night. No, you can watch the Daily Show on Comedy Central instead, in spite of the fact that they rerun it the next day at 7 and it wouldn't hurt you to watch Jon Stewart a day late for once. Or you could watch, say, News at Eleven on Eleven 'cause you were too busy watching Whose Line reruns to see News at Ten on Thirteen, but you still have to get your news fix. Hey, nobody's holding a gun to your head, you know? Sheesh.

Speaking of me getting started, in our last column I ranted a bit. I know that ranting isn't pretty, so I thought I'd get ahead of the game and warn people what sorts of things start me up. In other words, let's talk about MY pet peeves!

1. People who just discovered Mars. "Mars is sooo interesting! Did you know that Mars was closer last year than it ever was in 60,000 years? Isn't that AWESOME? Don't you want to go look at it right now?" No, I want to chew beef jerky in front of a space heater. Go away for another 60,000 years.

2. Repetition. For example, her/his very clever joke at my expense was hilarious the first time I heard it and mildly amusing the next 20 times but after the 100th time she/he could be replaced with a neurotic self-abusive parrot and the world would be a far better place.

3. DSHS caseworkers. What are these people paid for? They don't know anything. They don't have any evident education into the challenges that their clients face. They don't even know how DSHS works. If you want to know a rule and ask three different caseworkers about it, you'll get three different answers. Paris Hilton knows more about poverty than these people.

4. Overused rhetorical devices. "Can you tell me what a rhetorical question is?" Well, I know that choking can prevent them.

5. Script speakers. These are people we have all known that compose and rehearse the conversations they will have with us, expecting us to follow their scripts even though we haven't seen them and don't care anyway. No matter what people like this say, I like to turn the subject to flightless birds or traditional oceanic art, or both. "I had a great time this weekend." "Maori depictions of Kiwi were rather stylized." "Don't you want to know what I did this weekend?" "The small repeated triangle is seen most often in Micronesia." "Aren't you listening to me? I thought you would ask about my weekend." "Emus?"

6. Pedestrian tailgaters. You get on a bus and someone gets on right behind you. Not only do they follow too close, but apparently they think your plan is to walk all the way to the end of the bus and walk out the imaginary back door at the very end, because when you stop to sit in a vacant seat it comes as a total shock to them and they run into you.

7. Weapons of mass destruction and the people who create and use them. Regarding weapons of limited destruction, many earnest people have told me that those have military uses, and that's a qualified Good in the Face of Evil. But weapons of mass destruction target civilians, including innocent children, an unqualified Bad. So people shouldn’t have them. Hello? That means us.