Try as I may the past couple days, I have been unable to properly waste time.

The cause for this is ELECTIONS.

That special time every year when normally good people turn into evil gossip-mongering beings from other planets with a propensity for putting little signs in your yard.

It’s currently 10 p.m. on the night of my newspaper’s deadline and we’ve all been at it for too long. We’ve laughed, we’ve cried, we’ve eaten a lot of Halloween candy, leftover, cold fried chicken and store-bought macaroni salad. I have banned my unfocused and apparently ADD-afflicted co-worker to her cubicle and done everything short of actually strapping her to her chair, I suppose even then she could roll her computer chair into my cubicle and blather on with an unnecessarily long answer to a “YES” or “NO” question. Ah, God love’er.

Elections make people throw mud. They make people take on the persona of someone they are not under normal conditions. The advent of the web forum has allowed for even more creative and underhanded ways for candidates to poke each other with sharp sticks.

It’s an amazing phenomenon if you ask me and although I know you didn’t, I am going to tell you anyway.

There is a web forum in the area I cover that has actually, in the past, dictated the importance of stories in the publication. I try not to read it, I have been able to distance myself from it. But often, I get a phone call, it always starts with a phone call. “HEY, did you hear about this…” and is followed by: “Yeah I read it on that forum..” and then I hang up. I just can’t go on that.

Forums are an interesting addition to the “citizen journalist” movement. The Internet gives everyone a voice. Does that mean I will be out of a job? I don’t really think so, not in my lifetime do I see journalism undergoing that great of a change as to actually eliminate the journalist. I still see them as a needed filter. You just wouldn’t believe some of the things we get in the office in way of media release, story requests and so on. Well, you probably have seen Fox News, so yeah, maybe you can imagine.

I remember all too well the woman who used to call the TV station I worked for in Cincinnati who tried to convince my boss the TV could hear her. My boss, if memory serves me correct, told the woman very plainly to make a hat out of tin foil and that by wearing it, she would block the evil TV from being able to read her brainwaves or hear her thoughts.

Back to that citizen journalist thing, let’s visit our good friend Wikipedia:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Citizen_journalism

Wikipedia quotes another source as calling Citizen Journalism ” the act of citizens ‘playing an active role in the process of collecting, reporting, analyzing and disseminating news and information.’”

Kind of a scarey thought actually. But never fear, the wonderful thinktank people, or the “pointy head people” as a media friend of mine calls them, have presented tips for utilizing the citizen journalism movement.

http://www.poynter.org/content/content_view.asp?id=83126

Well…I have managed to adequately waste some time and must now contiue proofreading which will bring me into my 16th straight hour of election-related work.

Come back real soon.

I was thinking about reunions today, specifically high school reunions. There was a push when I was graduating to have a five year reunion. This was a ridiculous idea. Most people wouldn’t even be out of college yet, life would still be more about partying and getting laid than anything else and grudges held in high school would probably still be too fresh for some people to meet, gather and socialize without a Jerry Springer-like event.

For some people, ten years isn’t enough time either. Maturity takes more like 15 or 20 years for some.

Think about it. At five years, what do you have to show for yourself? We all know that reunions are not for actually sitting around and sharing memories and being friendly. They are about showing off what you’ve done with your life to people who may or may not have put you down in high school.

Even at ten years most people are just starting an “adult” life or are just putting back together adult lives they had and have ruined, broken, or been abandoned. I know so many people in their mid to late twenties that are recovering from divorce or drug addiction, alcoholism, financial mistakes and so on.

My reunion will probably come and go without me noticing at all. I plan on going to my 30th reunion, if someone is still organizing them at that point. I figure that by then it might be a worthwhile event. In the meantime, the people from high school that I want to see, I track down and see. One-on-one reunions are better than the mass drama that can come with a whole hog reunion.

Procrastination – was my first choice. Taken.

OK, so Procrastinate – also taken.

No song titles came to mind that weren’t already taken, or too whimsical, or too oeey gooey. No catchy phrases, no intelligent-sounding words that would catch a reader’s eye…nothing.

So, I stole. The ABOUT page tells the rest.

The point is, I often wonder what the web has done for human thought. I haven not successfully found any verifiable work (online) that touches on this, but I will keep looking.

But think about it, the almighty GOOGLE god has become sucu a “can’t live without it” part of life. I was collecting information for a story recently that involved the tenant/landlord relationship and commercial property, so I did some “googling” of my own and started making phone calls.

I made so many phone calls. I needed a knowledgeable source, someone who KNOWS the business and could tell me the laws. Yes, I could find it online I am sure, but as a rule, newspapers still frown upon quoting Internet sources. (that’s a whole other topic) But wouldn’t you know it…4 out of 6 people I spoke with suggested I “GOOGLE IT” to find the clarification I needed for my story.

Interesting.

SO, again, I just wonder what the web is doing for human thought. Is it making us smarter, more informed people who are more capable when it comes to finding the answers and information we seek? Or is it aiding us in filling our heads with more worthless crap – perhaps a combination of both. Worthless crap is a necessary filler in the brain at times, I think.

SO, I couldn’t have the Procrastination blog. I couldn’t have the Procrastinate blog. But I suppose the All The Names I Want Are Taken blog will do. It at least provided a nice jumping off point.

Come back again real soon.