On location

It's brutal. The coldest winter in these parts in decades. Snow is falling; the temperatures are sub-zero for days with wind chills that rival times in Antarctica.

Well, that's what the news channels are telling us. We hear it every day this time of year. Don't leave your pets out. If you're cold, they are cold. Bring you pets inside. Do you have a neighbor? An older neighbor? Go check on them. Make sure they are warm and have food. Bundle up, you could suffer from frostbite within minutes. Keep your skin covered.

Don't go outside if you absolutely don't have too. If that's the case, why the hell do all the local news programs then send their reporters OUTSIDE to stand in the bone-chilling weather to tell us its too cold to go OUTSIDE in the bone-chilling weather? And, it's not just for weather related news. The other night on the eleven o'clock news, one reporter was doing a live remote in front of the courthouse about a story related to a criminal trial. Why? No one was there. It was 11PM. There wasn't a single light on in the building. Why the hell are you standing out in the cold in the middle of the night in front of a dark courthouse?

I know it's cold outside, I just don't need someone out in -10 temps hammering a nail into the ice with a frozen banana. Yes, they actually showed that. If you think the world is in such a bad shape, and we will never recover from all the turmoil the world throws at us, then they should be able to fill the five, two-hour news programs on every channel, every day with something more than frozen banana hammers.

I think it's time we send the news programmers out in the cold with a toga and a banana. Maybe they'll find something more important to show us the next time.

And that's the way it is...