when i was a kid i used to hate the news. i thought news was about the most boring thing conceivable. most kids do, & to an extent we were right: the news never has any space aliens, talking animals, superheroes, pirate ships, fairy realms, or anything else too fantastic. most local news, especially, is so dull it's been used as an effective anesthetic in brain surgery.

even in college i avoided most news subconsciously. i tried to subscribe to the st louis post-dispatch (motto: "currently ranked 12th stupidest name!") my first semester but never read it. most of the guys on the floor weren't exactly into watching cnn in floor lounge. so i was often the last to hear about any news that was not school- or campus-related. i did pick up the school newspaper most weeks (even before i was on the staff); the interest was there perhaps because i'd been on my high school paper, but even then i'd preferred editorials.

but since graduating i've discovered a hunger for news i hadn't known existed. it's not a daily craving like for food or sleep. you won't find it on maslow's triangle. but every so often i will simply grasp out for information on the current state of the world around me. i will come home from work to find channel 8 local news already blaring, & sometimes i find myself seriously upset by what i'm being told (not by human tragedies, mind you; those tend not to bother me too much. i get aggravated mostly by political or corporate news [though these days they're one & the same]). i watch comedy central's the daily show as often as i can (proving their slogan: "the daily show, where more people get their news than probably should"). & sometimes i find myself searching out more details on a daily show story or some other soundbite i heard which piqued my fancy.

just this evening while brainstorming for this sermon i got lost reading news online for almost 2 hours! apparently i took a crazy pill with dinner because the first news site i went to looking for ideas was slashdot.org. (if you've been there, you realize how hard it could be searching for topics of general interest. what am i going to write about, pgp security holes? the new mandrake kernel beta? some of the stuff there interests me as a small-time geek, but damn!) after too long there (i was pretty sure i wasn't finding anything worth sermonizing, but my enquiring mind wanted to know! i had to read the articles anyway) i went to yahoo! news. i started to read about gwbush calling a new york times reporter a "major league asshole" in an aside which blew up his face as it got picked up by microphpone, & the next thing i knew i was reading a detailed analysis of "pseudo-scandals", or false accusations that tarnish reputations without even a shred of evidence... actually a rather interesting article with many examples of untrue accusations against gore (but none against bush... bias, or more evidence that bush is the antichrist?).

but none of those would make interesting sermons. hell, i probably lost half my audience just in the previous paragraph. i get these periodic pregnancy-like cravings for news, but the information's like trivia. most of it has no utility (or usability, for those slashdotters who think "utility" means "tool"), & the bits that do are either little more than icebreakers or are way too detailed for everyday conversation.

that is, unless you consider "survivor" to be news (which most of the media seemed to for awhile).