onewalrus @ MindSay

WSD folks, WSD. How else to explain our ability to get through days filled with the absurd, the incredulous, the unfathomable? The willful suspension of disbelief is the only plausible explanation I can muster. Of course I didn't make it up you know. Samuel Taylor Coleridge (The Rime of the Ancient Mariner guy) did. He coined the term to describe the necessary mental state for enjoying a theater performance, but it applies universally I think. What isn't theater in todays world?

You know this recent Madman-killing-spree happens everyday somewhere in the world. Most of the world is not as fortunate as us here in the US. They don't sit cozy and protected in front of the televisions watching senseless killing from a distance. For them the threats are right out their front doors, around every corner and constant.

Last week it was Ana Nichole. Then it was Imus, and now today it's Virginia Tech. It is a constant barrage of profit driven negativity entertainment thinly disguised as news. How many OMG's does a person need a week?

Is it really a revelation that there are dangerous mentally ill people floating around in society? Do you really (really) care who knocked up the gold-digging dead slut? Is it really of any grand social consequence what the shock-jock said?

Maybe I'll allow myself the luxury of extending Coleridges' phrase to read "The Willful Suspension of Belief." Remember, the television is nothing more than a miniature theater in your home projecting props, sets and scripted dialogue... it's a performance.

... And the latest twisted bastardization of the English language by the Conservatives is this regurgitation of the new-speak "Partial Birth Abortion". What is ####ing "partial-birth"? Is there partial death, partial life, partial truth? Is there partial OMG or partial STFU? Call it what it is... dialation and extraction. There is no (zero) element of birth in the process. It is not a medical term. It is a term conjured up by hysterical, Bible-thumpers to appeal to the small-minded folks incapable of thinking for themselves. Now there's a suspension for you.

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Pablo

PIRATE WORLD

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