Friday, March 28, 2014

Multi- Writing AADHAS


A few days ago I felt very comfortable writing two blogs within the same post.  Or is that two posts within the same blog.  No matter,  however you say it, it is distracted thinking. I have spent a life time training myself to focus on one thing at a time,  maybe it is just time to let the mind go. After all it seems to be all about multi-tasking theses days.  So here goes. The italics will be one post and regular lettering is another story all together.   Or it could be the other way around.  Or contray-wise.

In the early 80's there was a movie with Burt Reynolds. The title is unimportant, it is just a scene that I am thinking of from that film. It is a comedy.  Reynolds character falls and hurts himself in a department store.  A sales clerk and several shoppers gather around him to help.  The clerk says, "This man needs a tranquillizer.  Does anyone have a Valium?" Every person in the area grabs for their purse or pocket to hand the clerk a Valium.  It was the upscale drug of the time and the movie played on that fact. I am amazed that the news is still so myopic and focused on the disappearance of MH370, even after all the speculation, theories and other filler stories, they still have not recovered anything that would confirm the flight truly crashed in the Indian Ocean. I was suddenlyYou see the joke here is that every one was holding drugs but no one was aware of it until there was an emergency and strangers were asked to help. It is a timing joke that takes several levels of linguistic sophistication to understand.  It is not a prat fall which is just an action that evokes a knee jerk reaction of laughter, it is laughter that requires more than what is given. It seems as though any quack theory no matter how far fetched, was taken as fact and all sides of the speculative scenario reported on until it reached a preposterous conclusion or more information inspiring more quack theories. It seems we have explored the gambit of possibilities from alien abduction to lithium battery fires and yet we have not recovered a single item from the plane.  Like in the disappearance of flight MH370 when the world said, "Does anyone have a spy satellite that could take a look at the ocean to see if we have a crashed airplane?"  At first it was just the countries we knew had satellites, like USA and China, even Russia. In fact China was the first one to publish a "debris" photo from space, only to retract it after a few days of searching in the photographed area.  It seems like every time a picture surfaces from some satellite they immediately make that the search area.  Another picture and the recovery effort switches to that place.  And now everyone has a spy satellite. France spotted some white specs on the ocean... send the planes... Commercial satellites see some floating debris and they send the planes.  Australia has a satellite, they see something... send the planes. Thailand even reported it saw some debris on its satellites photos.  Thailand has spy satellites?  Who knew Thailand had satellites? And of course every time they change the "search area" that is "breaking news".  I think if I knew some one on that plane I would destroy all mass media platforms and rely on more standard forms of communication. In the coverage of Flight MH370, like in the Burt Reynolds movie, when some one says, "Does any one have a satellite that could take a look?" every country said, "Yeah we are spying on the world."  Funny because, oops they just admitted to spying on us. I am never sure my metaphors are completely clear to anyone but me.  But it seems clear that, like in the Burt Reynolds movie, in a moment of trying to help, even little countries like Thailand admit they have satellites that can focus any place on Earth.  It also seems like a global game of CLUE. With every new satellite picture the search area moves, and some Prime Minister says, "I think it was Col Mustard, a fire in the cargo hold and it crashed in the Mediterranean." Seems to me we need to wait until there is some really credible evidence before we move the fleet to another area.  Maybe this is how we win the war on terrorism. We make up a crisis,  when everyone gathers around to help, some one says, "Does anyone harbor a terrorist organization? We need to borrow it." When the countries reach in their pockets to offer up a jihadist we go after them. Perhaps in the mean time we will just wait until we have solid information and speculate from there.  I am struck by the  cruel roller coaster ride this has been for the families of the missing passengers. The news media seems to take any rumor or innuendo as a fact worth of charts, pundits and prime time coverage. Hopes are raised and the search area changed for each new discovery. What an exhausting existence for those family members. 
As you were,
Oh would you look at that,
Jay

2 comments:

P. Grecian said...

A contrapuntal duet with yourself. Bravo! :-)

Bob Conrad said...

What Phil said.