I want to get behind the Occupy movement. I want to believe that from the ashes of the most disaffected, distant and distracted generation can rise the flame of opposition, of discontent with the status quo and (most importantly) a willingness to change it. I want to see a peaceful (for God’s and our own sake, let it be peaceful. This is not the group with a stockpile of ammo and firepower at a bunker out in the woods) revolution that wants to hit home the idea that poor is an economic label, not a moral judgment, and one that no person should have to wear.

I want very badly for these things to be true, but unfortunately the latter two are connected to the first only tangentially. This is the problem.

The first rule of hostage-taking is that you must have demands. It doesn’t really matter who the hostages are, what group you represent or even what those demands are. It’s simple common sense — I’m not going to stop doing/release/let live X persons until you perform Y action. You’re not going to leave the lunch counter until people of every color are served. You’re not going to let the American servicemen go until the U.S. releases some ridiculous number of terrorists. You’re not going to leave the radio station unless you get airplay, nude photos of Bea Arthur and a helmet full of cottage cheese.

With the Occupy “protests*,” the hostages can be considered both the Occupiers as well whatever plot of land they choose to squat in, be it a park near Wall Street or a Red Robin. The problem is, outside a very vague notion of “it’s unfair that rich people get richer while the rest of us suffer during a recession” — which, for the record, is a sentiment I completely agree with — the people at these camps aren’t actually protesting anything. They’re not demanding anything. They just want things different. Sure. I agree. How?

Personally, I find it mildly offensive when I receive more than five emails over the weekend imploring me to “unite” with the 99 percent and “help supply the protesters against the freezing cold.” Surely these people, who have the spare time on their hands to do nothing but stand around, wave signs and beat drums,** also possess winter clothing. At what point does it stop being a protest camp and start being a homeless shelter? Not that I have anything against starting public, donation-funded homeless shelters in major cities with a lot of public attention per se, but a) most of the people in the camp have homes, and b) don’t call it a damn protest camp if that’s what you’re doing.

The purposelessness problem looms ever larger now with the latest events from the camps. Several deaths have occurred, which gives law enforcement prima facie evidence to shut down the camps as a matter of public safety. Again, I find myself wanting to link arms with the protesters, demanding that they have a right to free assembly and that you can’t judge an entire movement by its lunatic fringes.***

The problem is that, as a matter of both statistics and basic sociology, the camps are unsafe. Gathering a group of people in a confined area with limited (and dwindling) resources increases the likelihood that crime will occur. Even just going by the law of averages, the fact that a given place has more people in it than usual means the number of accidents and incidents will go up. It’s inevitable. So the argument becomes “keep the protest camps open because we want to protest!” versus “shut down the camps because people will be hurt.” Kind of a no-brainer.

If recent history has taught us anything, it’s that you need to be able to remember a list of three things an endgame. A plan of withdrawal, a list of demands; whatever you call it, you have to be able to figure out what winning means to you, and when that is accomplished. I’m suspicious of groups that don’t publicly state goals, as you can never tell if they’ve ever actually done anything or not.

In order to support the Occupy movement, I need to know what it supports, what it wants. They need to be able to complete the phrase, “We will Unoccupy the camps when _______.” Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of people screaming that they don’t like where the country’s headed.

And sorry, but we’ve got enough of that as it is.

*This kind of feeds back into the whole idea, but you can’t protest nothing.
** Bringing back the drum circle was possibly even dumber than Tea Partiers calling themselves “teabaggers” unironically.
*** Semantically, is it even possible to have a “fringe” in the absence of a definition of the “center?”

Feels like I haven’t written anything in forever; it’s entirely possible I’ve forgotten how.

Poems for our “bureau” reporter in Santa Fe, whose stories I’m always left waiting for when I’m laying out:

Sitting at my desk
wondering if you’re still alive
unmoved either way.

Four stories at noon
two out, two new by midday;
none ever find me.

He’s slaving away
Interviewing, contacting;
AP filed at 5.

A blank page, staring
waiting to be filled with news …
Angry Birds high score!

I have to interact with people.

To wit:

Our HERO is biking to work, since he lives like six blocks away and gas is well north of $3 in New Mexico. After a minutes-long coast (it’s mostly downhill), he arrives at work and begins to lock up his bike. FRIGHTENING BLOND WOMAN, who was lurking behind the building, comes around the corner talking loudly on her cell phone.

FBW: I don’t know, I don’t have the money.

Our HERO is doing his best not to listen, as it doesn’t sound like a fun conversation to be dropping eaves on. Due to the volume the conversation is conducted at, however, he has no choice.

FBW: I don’t have the money to file papers! If I have to go see a lawyer, I’m gonna go bankrupt.

At this point, our HERO realizes he’s overhearing a discussion about divorce. Though the woman is glib, it’s difficult to tell if she’s joking or not. Her face is strained, even when smiling, giving it an almost movie-like quality –  as if, at any moment, you’d expect her to pitch forward with an arrow sticking out of the back of her head.

FBW: Well if you’re just going to die, I won’t have to worry about it. I’ll just be a widow, no problem.

Our HERO finally manages to work the lock, clicks it into place, and fairly runs into the building.

See, you can give me the environmental, physical and financial benefits of the bike versus the car all you want, but at least when I’m in my car I don’t have to deal with the crazy-pantsosity* of others. It’s not like I’m deficient in that category myself.

* The clinical term.

Oh! I have the slipped the surly bonds of Earth —
Put out my hand and touched the Face of God

“High Flight,” John G. Magee Jr.

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man’s fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone.

The Twilight Zone, Rod Serling

Space flights didn’t use to have apexes. An apex is the top or highest part of something; in reference to flight, it describes the point where the craft is farthest away from the hard, unforgiving ground below. Airliners have an apex of about 40,000 feet over the earth, zipping along until they come to their point of destination, where they touch gently back down on the runway.

Space was different. When you reached the edge of outer space, it made no more sense to refer to your flight in relation to earth than it does to imagine our galaxy as a geocentric one. What is up when there is no gravity? What is down when you can look up and see the earth?

Even in reference to shuttles, which merely orbit the earth, the word “apex” seems inadequate. Using 5.6 million pounds of thrust, the gleaming white planes blasted into and out of the atmosphere riding the back of a rollicking red rocket en route to low orbit, high orbit or even the moon. For eons, man stared out into space (sometimes thinking it was God, other times thinking it filled with vermicious Knids) and wondered. The shuttle stood as the preeminent example of man matching up against nature. Not defeating it, mind you (see Titanic, The, for reasons why one should not think oneself above Mother Nature). But able to meet it on its own terms, to work together to harness the capability of man and prove ourselves not limited by constraints of time, energy or — finally — gravity.

As Discovery whisked away into the sky over Florida this afternoon on its final voyage, it signaled an end. Not an end to space flight, or technological advances, or (metaphorically or literally) even reaching for the stars. It signaled an end to an age of exploration, of adventure. It’s an end of an era in which we thought there was still more to find out.

Think about it. I’m not claiming that there aren’t still many (innumerable) scientific advances to be made, gadgets to be invented and boundaries to be pushed. But it does seem like the grand experiment, the drive to achieve a symbolic victory for humanity, rather than for country or group, does seem to have reached the end of its line.

Where once Houston and Cape Canaveral stood as the gateways to space, now there are “commercial spaceports” (or at least, very badly thought-out plans for them). We’re not sending up publicly-funded vehicles in order to further scientific exploration, we’re equipping wide-body 747s with harnesses and padding so the obscenely wealthy can feel the effects of barfing on a multiple-hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars plane ride, in 30-second intervals.

It’s not a symptom, but a side-effect, perhaps, of a society that seems to have turned from once noble — or merely not-shallow — goals. Where once people strove to became famous by displaying a talent or being the best at something, now they strive be famous for … being famous. The superficiality that has infected our culture is seeping into what formerly were the bastions of rationality and solid principles; look no further than Climate-gate, or the fact that controversy constantly swirls around scientific theories manufactured because of “difference of opinions,” or those who insist that the function of government is to lavish money upon the already wealthy at the expense of those who need help the most.

This is, undoubtedly, a rosy-colored view of the causes of history, but it’s a clear-eyed look at the effects. Man untethered himself from the earth at Kitty Hawk, Man turned a weapon of unimaginable destruction at Nagasaki into a source of energy. And man wrenched himself free from terra firma and set himself down on another celestial body, for no other reason than he could.

I do not intend for this to be a eulogy for our collective exploratory nature, though it very well may serve as such. We seem to be set on a track that takes us further and further away from collective achievement and points squarely in the direction of personal accomplishment. This is not a plea to save the space program or pour more money into NASA. I don’t know the feasibility of building new shuttles; I don’t know the future. Nor, at this moment, do I particularly care to contemplate it.

Instead, I sat outside after work last night and looked up at the stars, just imagining what it was like. I sat watching the liftoff on the biggest TV I could find, trying to comprehend what it means to have multiple times the force of gravity strain to keep your body on the earth, but through the collective intelligence of generations rip yourself away.

Those who went before us soared so majestically they rendered the word we use to mean the highest altitude, apex, meaningless. How far up are we now meant to go? I can only hope that we, as a generation, as a society, as a species, follow their example: Don’t worry about how high we can make it. Think instead in terms of how to redefine what it means to fly altogether.

Stop me if you’ve heard this one: A reporter gets an idea in his/her head that’s fun (racy advertisements!), pitches it to an editor who gets excited because it’ll get lots of readers (Super Bowl ads!), and the story proceeds to be written despite a) the reporter not knowing what the hell he/she is talking about, and/or b) the reporter misstating or completely making up statistics.

Yay journalism!

The only reason I’m mentioning this is the AP (specifically, Ryan Nakashima) is running a story about Super Bowl ads that’s … well, wrong.

We’ll begin where we usually do: at the beginning. Lede:

GoDaddy.com was almost unheard of six years ago. Then it ran the most talked-about ad of Super Bowl XXXIX — a spoof of Janet Jackson’s “wardrobe malfunction” in which a busty woman appears before a censorship board and a strap breaks on her skimpy top.

An interesting lede, states the premise and gets people hooked … oh, and it has absolutely no basis in objective reality.

Unfortunately, the best site for checking statistics (registrarstats.com) is undergoing a redesign, so they’re not up, but DomainTools provides some easily understood stats as well.

GoDaddy ran its first Super Bowl ad in February of 2005 — when “it was almost unheard of.” Except oh, yeah, GoDaddy was actually the biggest registrar in the world at the time. Oops. But the reporter hadn’t heard of it, so that’s different, right?

“But wait,” say the depressing people who steadfastly believe the AP knows what the hell it’s talking about. “That could just mean the ad was SUPER EFFECTIVE in the three months after it aired before the end of the fiscal year.”

That’s a great hypothesis, mindless drone. Let’s go to the data to prove how smart you are.

In 2004, GoDaddy was No. 2 in the world, behind Network Solutions, with 5,777,923 domains to 6,930,906, for a difference of of about 1,152,000.

So yeah. Not so much “unknown.”

I don’t blame GoDaddy’s founder for pumping up the reporter about this — after all, the story is basically free advertising. (But not at the Super Bowl! How will we account for this in the statistics?!) I do, however, blame the reporter for being a moron.

The ad, [homeaway.com]’s first during a Super Bowl, resulted in a huge increase in traffic, which lets vacationers book rental properties. The new business from the Super Bowl ad allowed the site to recoup 60 percent to 70 percent of the cost.

Oh wow, so when millions of people see an advertisement, it might influence them? Thanks, AP! Too bad an ad campaign that only makes “60 percent to 70 percent” of what it cost is generally considered to be a COLOSSAL FAILURE, since it costs you more money than it brought in.

I don’t really have the time/energy to go through and fact-check the rest, but lines like “For other big brands, the link between sales and awareness is harder to measure” are typically excellent indicators that you’re reading a bogus trend story.

Let’s all thank the AP for sending out this drivel to member papers. God knows we have way too much free time on our hands that would be better spent reading inaccurate articles about things that don’t matter in the first place.

I’ve noticed the (to be honest, fairly ridiculous) anguish certain people have been going through lately as they decide as to whether to jump on the Twitwagon, and wanted to work out something that’s been bothering me about the service.

It’s TV news, TV-ified.

Let’s back up a bit. First, we have to define Twitter in relation to the other various types of social media. On the user-interactivity spectrum, Twitter falls somewhere on the other side of both blogs and Facebook.* From most to least, it goes Facebook > blogs > Twitter.

I can see why some people would be surprised to see this, but it’s true. Facebook allows for one party to broadcast their thoughts to a controlled (to the extent that they care) group of people, who can then directly comment on the original post and any response. On the surface, it seems the same as blogs, but because of the audience control (which allows the person to be as free or withholding as they want) and the sheer user base/amount of time spent on the site, Facebook wins as far as total interactivity. As noted, blogs fall slightly on the “less interactive” part of the scale.

Twitter, on the other hand, falls pretty far into the realm of one-way communication. One party can make a broadcast declaration, which other people can then either retweet or comment upon. Though it may appear so at first glance, this is not a conversation. The retweets only allow the message to propagate further; the replies are isolated, usually only make sense to the sender and the recipient (because replies are usually hours later, allowing for more tweets to crowd the space between the original and the reply), and cannot be (easily) viewed in a threaded format that allows someone to easily follow the conversation.

Because of this, Twitter is more of a mass broadcast medium than it is one for interpersonal communication. Yes, it can be used for one-on-one conversation as well, but after a certain point (say, more than 50 people) such personal communication is so intensely targeted it negates the point of people subscribing to the feed at all, effectively killing off the “broadcast” part.

It’s not interpersonal, which is what we’ve come to expect of most services in the times of these tumultuous internets. You can even see it in the way Twitter is being used and referenced — we all hear about the latest Palinism about needing to help overthrow the Egyptian government because Herod tried to kill Jesus**, or how dissidents are broadcasting their grievances to the world. Note how neither of those involves a give-and-take of ideas; it’s simply a person (or group of people) getting their message out.

This is not to argue there are no legitimate uses for Twitter. There are innumerable reasons one might have for wanting a direct line on the thoughts of someone else. It’s nigh-on the perfect Emergency Broadcast System (which I’m not 100 percent sure even exists anymore), as it’s great for getting out small chunks of information (“School two days from now is canceled due to the snow we got today”***) to a large, diffuse group of people. You can also use it a replacement for a website’s RSS feed (if you’re a masochist) by tweeting out URLs all the new posts/articles. On a more personal level, if there are people who you don’t necessarily keep in touch with all the time but want to know what they’re up to, Twitter can (see Appendix) be used to keep yourself in the loop — whether they’re old friends, family members or even comedians.

Here’s where we bring it back to the thesis. I have no problem with a broadcast medium per se; there are moments where one entity needs to communicate its point to many people at once, without allowing the fray to overwhelm the main feed. Newspapers, in fact, are a broadcast medium. Sure, they have letters to the editor, but much like Twitter it’s nearly impossible to follow the thread of a conversation without either a photographic memory or sifting through previous editions to figure it out. But just as TV news needs to condense and simplify news reporting in order to get it across in half an hour (and using pretty moving pictures!), so too does Twitter require an uber-condensing of information.

This is not bad in an of itself — the constraints of a given form can sometimes be the catalyst that provides beauty, as any number of poetic structures prove. When Colbert or Conan to get across a joke in 140 characters, it’s not only funny, it’s impressive that they’ve managed to master the form. It can also be a lifesaver, especially when you follow people who are used to copy-and-pasting obsessively long status updates into Facebook.

But just as the format’s limitations can produce good when used properly, so too can they cause horrible disasters when misused. Twitter should not be a place where any substantive discussion takes place: You can use it to link to much longer, more-reasoned posts elsewhere, but to simply cough up a tweet on your Macbook and call it your contribution to the discourse is despicable (yes, I did have Sarah Palin in mind when I wrote that).

Even more so than that, the real danger with Twitter is its immediacy. Where 24-hour news started to fray the lines between reporting facts and reporting rumor, Twitter has absolutely demolished it. Now you don’t even need to have heard the rumor; a report of a rumor is reason enough to publish, lest you be left out. This applies to more than news organizations as well. Most of the people I follow are probably smart enough (God, I hope this is true) to check sources when a death or major occurrence flashes across the Twitterverse. But so many other people are conditioned to hit the RT button, or to add their own comments to the situation (“Yeah, FUCK MUBARAK” or “THE ONLY DIFFERENCE BETWEEN BARACK AND MUBARAK IS ME & U!”), that even the response to the rumor becomes a valid source of legitimation. Add that to the fact that Twitter requires an even more condensed version of information than even TV news and, well … not a good recipe.

All that said, Twitter is still an evolving tool. It can be extremely useful*****, or extremely annoying — much like Facebook. It all depends on what you want to get out of it, and how willing you are to put in the time to prune your sources and customize it to work for you. And, y’know, how willing companies are to step back and see if they’re using it correctly. But, again like Facebook, I’m not really holding my breath for that.

* For all intents and purposes, Tumblr is a slightly more social version of blogging, though not so much as to require its own classification.
** Not a real tweet … yet.
*** This is a paraphrase of a real tweet sent out by WSU.
**** The phrase “objectively cool” means “something that people outside of your industry might find interesting.” So designing a particularly ingenious circuit should probably kept to Slashdot. And as a general rule, your poetry is NOT interesting. Not even to other poets. They’re just reading it so you’ll read theirs. Haiku and limericks, however, are always appreciated.
***** In this case, “useful” means — as so often is the case on the internet — “an entertaining way to kill some time.”

Appendix

When I state that Twitter can be used to keep in touch, it really depends on the person you’re following and how cognizant they are of what they’re tweeting. In addition to the dependable “I’m eating a sammich” or “On the terlet agin!” tweets, there are those classifications of people who simply cannot comprehend how to use Twitter properly. A brief, non-comprehensive list:

• Passive-aggressive twerps — These are the same people who go post a Facebook status update like, “Man, I really wish people who lived in the room next to mine would do the damn dishes.” It sounds like they’re griping about some anonymous person, but not only does everyone know who they’re referring to, that person more than likely will see the post on their feed … So the same outcome could be achieved by simply talking to that person.
• Attention whores — You’ll notice a lot of these can also apply to people from Facebook; that’s because these people do not change terribly from one social media service to the next. These are the people who post things like, “Worst. Day. Ever.” with no explanation. Now, we all do this from time to time in order to gain sympathy or to prod a friend into asking what’s wrong so that we might vent — this is acceptable. But when you do it every other day (or post cryptic shit like “That was the most amazing food EVER” because you want people to know how good you can microwave Hot Pockets), it’s the easiest way to get un-followed.
• The open book — This is sort of a warped version of the attention whore, in that they want everyone to pay attention to them by tweeting the most intimate details of their life. Trust me, not only will “Oh boy, he fell asleep when he was done AGAIN. Guess I’ll have to satisfy myself with a pint of ice cream. AGAIN” get me to un-follow you, it will also be cause to break out the bottle of drain cleaner to pour into my ears to clean out my brain.
• The tireless self-promoter — Again, bragging a bit is a perfectly normal and acceptable practice. Every once in a while, something you do at work (or as a hobby) is a) objectively cool**** and b) something your friends would appreciate, it’s natural to want to share. If, however, you made a spreadsheet that uses THREE DIFFERENT header colors and computes formulas across four different worksheets, well … maybe just post that on the company intranet. In related news, check out what I did yesterday afternoon.

INT. HOUSE

MARGE: Mail call!
[The rest of the family comes down the stairs in the same manner and with the same sound effect as in "The Brady Bunch," before lining up according to height]

MARGE: Let’s see here … Here’s Pacifier Monthly, for Maggie. [Maggie makes a sucking sound, takes out her pacifier and starts sucking on the magazine]. For Lisa, there’s The Weekly Nerdlington.

LISA: Ooh, I hear this issue has Dennis Miller referring to Christopher Hitchens like he’s Sarah Shelton circa 1773.
[Cut to the family staring blankly at Lisa]

LISA: [joylessly] Yay, Justin Bieber, woo.

MARGE: Oooh look, Ricky Gervais’ How to Win Friends and Influence People for me! [cover shows Ricky Gervais painted to look like an Oscar statue, but flashing both middle fingers at the camera.] Bart, you got another letter from that Dick Cheney* person.

BART: All right! [opens letter] Aw, man. This says I’m still six years too young to join the Dastardly League of Evil.

MARGE: Well, at least he sent you a neat button!
[Marge takes the envelope, shakes out a button into her hand and puts it on his shirt. The button's face has Mt. Rushmore, with Glenn Beck, Rupert Murdoch, Sarah Palin and Bill O'Reilly's visages on it. The flag serves as the sky, Glenn Beck is crying tiny dollar signs and the inscription at the bottom reads, "REMEMBER WHAT OUR COUNTRY STANDS FOR".]

MARGE: And for Homer … Oh lord, it’s another letter from ABSTNES.

HOMER: Abstinence? Marge, you said it’s OK if I drink as long as other people are around.

MARGE: Not alcoholism, ABSTNES — the Association for Businesses of Springfield for Tourism and Negating the Effect of the Simpsons. Besides, drawing a face on your hand doesn’t count as having other people around.

HOMER: Quiet, Marge! [in an undertone] He knows things. [talking with his right hand in a crude British accent]** Yeee-es. You chaps won’t be rid of me that easy.

LISA: What’s it say, Mom?

MARGE: (reading the letter) Dear Simpson Family: Because of the many instances of indecent blah blah blah … Given the prestigious nature of Founding Day and your husband’s propensity for intoxication, we’ve decided it’s in the town’s best interests to send you … [gasps] They’re giving us a free trip to Albuquerque!

LISA: I want to visit a Pueblo settlement!

BART: I want to go to a cactus factory!

HOMER: Pssh, stupid kid. Cactuses aren’t made in a factory, they grow on trees, like money. And candy. [Drools] Mmm, candy tree.

MARGE: Well, we’d better hurry up! The plane leaves in half an hour.

LISA: The Simpsons are going to New Mexico!

In the 20-odd years The Simpsons have been on the air, they’ve had some … shall we say, flimsy premises for episodes that see them jetting off to exotic locales like Africa, Brazil or Japan. At one point, back when the writers still had a modicum of integrity, they made nods to the eccentricity of the plot setups somewhat akin to the parody above.

At this point, facing my third move (to a third state) in a year and a half, my life is starting to feel like a Simpsons episode.

Rest assured — or be disappointed, for that matter — my next stint does not involve starting my own snowplow company or buying an old ambulance and renting myself out as a medic for hire. I’ve managed to snag myself a gig as an online editor for the Farmington Daily Times, a small outfit in northwest New Mexico that produces some darn good journalism … but could use some help on their interwebs (and, hopefully, I’ll get to do a little copy editing and page design while I’m at it).

It’s not the only option I had, but it was the best. I was recruited for a copy editing position in Chicago for Groupon, the online-local-coupon dealer.*** But I decided to stick with journalism, at least for one more go-round, for several reasons. One, I still have that hankering to have a new product to deliver constantly. Straight-up website copy editing, like the stuff at Groupon, is so intangible — even the deliverables are at best one page that looks pretty much the same as the rest. Two, the chance to get into the web stuff and mess around with it, figuring out how to better to tell a story or keep readers informed, is a much greater (and infinitely more interesting) challenge — interesting and challenge being my two favorite words when it comes to finding something to do.

Once again, I’m moving to a new place where I don’t know anybody outside of work, essentially the same situation I was in when I moved to Coeur d’Alene. But I muddled through it once, I figure I can survive again. What disappoints me the most is reading this post, with lines like “The hope is to keep this apartment for quite some time, to break the moving cycle. At least long enough so that the next time I have to move, it actually means something again” … only six months after I wrote it.

In the most technical of terms, I did accomplish what I set out in that post: Moving this time will mean something to me. It’s perhaps not for the reasons I would like (having spent a number of years setting down roots in a place, both professionally and personally, meeting people and creating lasting relationships), but it’s there. I also take more than a little solace in the idea behind the sentiment: To create enough of a home base that it feels like an upheaval when I moved. It happened a little this time, the roots tugging when I tried to pull them up, but there’s every hope and opportunity that this next move might be the one that gets it right, for however brief or long I might be there.

Am I sad Spokane didn’t work out? Of course I am. There are tons of people I’m going to miss; unique opportunities I missed that I’ll regret, and ones I experienced I’ll treasure. Does it mean I’ll give up when I try the next place? Hardly. And though my moves are at this point reaching the level of fodder for a past-its-prime animated sitcom, it doesn’t mean it won’t wrap up with a nice, sentimental (sometimes bordering on the verge of sappy) wrap-up. Episodes from the early seasons of The Simpsons prove you can have fun, slapstick-y humor with an emotionally uplifting conclusion. The first, funny part is already on the books. All I have to do now is figure out how to write the ending.

* In true Simpsons fashion, a joke that’s at least four years too late.
** I didn’t want to include this gag, but it’s totally an “actually insane Homer” moment they’d throw in after about season 18, so I left it in.
*** Also, as is always the case, it took all of an hour and a half after I accepted an offer for others to start coming in (while I was in line at Safeway, no less). But frankly, I didn’t really want to be the sports editor in Sheridan, Wyo., anyway.

“When I ask ‘What’s next?’, it means I’m ready to move on to other things. So, what’s next?”
— Jed Bartlett, The West Wing

Six months ago, I quit my job as a “Web Publications Specialist.” The hours were absurdly long (overtime was expected and uncompensated), and even herculean efforts — like the time I put in a 25-hour day in order to help finish a website for launch — went unnoticed, save to be exploited for publicity purposes later. I enjoyed my co-workers, but I didn’t really enjoy the work, didn’t really get anything out of selling overpriced things to people who really didn’t need them in the first place.

So I started looking around. I regularly surfed journalismjobs.com, trying to find something that suited my skill set. I mostly applied for sports editing, copy editing and page design positions, though I would occasionally branch out if it was in Washington state somewhere. For the first few months it never really went anywhere, but around February/March I started to get responses.

Some were in-state, others were from elsewhere. I had set up a few phone interviews a couple weeks in advance when all of a sudden I got an email from The Inlander, which had the tripartite advantage of a) being close, b) being snarky and c) being a copy editing position, which is where I’ve often felt I can do some of my best work.

I was actually on vacation in British Columbia when I got an email asking me to come in for an interview later that week. I had no problem with this, as I really wanted the job, so I cut it a day short and drove back across the state on Friday morning in anticipation for an interview that afternoon. When I got the job, I just couldn’t stop smiling. It felt like one of those perfect moments — I was just coming off vacation, I was happy, and to celebrate I went to a friend’s barbecue and got completely black-out drunk and passed out around 10 pm.

When I woke up at 2 am, my mind was clear and I immediately started figuring out what I had to do: resign, find a place to live, figure out how I was going to move everything. I had one thought, derived from an episode of The West Wing I always enjoyed. It’s partially encapsulated by the epigraph above, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. The idea behind is that there are things you can change and there are things you cannot. Oftentimes, when circumstances come at you, the best thing to do is not to whinge about how bad everything else and how unfair life is treating you. When the variables change, all you can do is survey the situation and figure out: What’s next?

Six months ago, I plunked down in a low-slung chair, facing a brilliantly sunlit window the Inlander‘s publisher sat in front of. After asking the traditional “Why do you want to do this?” and “What are you hoping to get out of this?” questions, he turned to a topic intimately dear to my heart: loyalty.

“How long are you planning on staying in Spokane?” he asked. “We’re looking for somebody who’s in this for the long haul, five or 10 years.”

Loyalty describes almost everything I’ve ever done in a professional setting. It’s why I always worked so hard, both at the Evergreen and later at my former job. At the Ev, the loyalty was to the paper, to the profession, to the ideal that the news was a vital cog in society’s machinery, but mostly it was to my friends. My friends, who toiled tirelessly day in and day out, trying to put out the best newspaper they possibly could. It was why I didn’t mind staying late or taking on extra tasks: Out of loyalty. Even later, at a job I didn’t feel any particular respect for, I was more than happy to stay late or help other people out because I knew they’d do the same for me if asked.

One month ago, I was called into the publisher’s office for a meeting with him and the managing editor. As I sat down, I was told we were there to “talk about my position” — more specifically, the lack thereof. Due to budgetary constraints for 2011, they said they couldn’t afford to keep me on. I could either take my leave then, with one week’s severance, or continue to work through the end of December. I chose the latter, figuring that a week’s pay (“completely fucked”) was inferior to a month’s pay (“mostly fucked”).

When I went home, I did as any self-respecting Coug would: I drank. Heavily. I started when I got home at 4:30 pm and finished around 11 (when I passed out), taking most of a bottle of Scotch and a goodly portion of a bottle of Everclear with me. (This was actually a few days before Apple Cup, which I originally intended to attend but decided that — given my financial and emotional state — was probably not in the best interests of either my liver or my wallet.)

When I awoke the next morning (a Friday, which meant work), I stumbled out of bed and into the shower. I fashioned myself into the closest approximation of a functioning human being I could muster, put on my coat and marched out the door to work.

What next?

I gave myself one night to bask in self-pity, and then I started to get to work. I updated my resume, started rooting through my computer to find my portfolio website, couldn’t, got three-quarters of the way through making a new one before I found the old one, ditched the new one and updated the old one. I started crawling JJobs again, firing off resumes and cover letters.

It’s incredibly easy to get caught up in blaming people. Lord knows there’s enough to go around. I could angrily denounce the Baby Boomers and Gen Xers for fucking over our generation so royally, leaving us with an endless carousel of education, internships, jobs that we get thrown off of well before the ride ends.* Or to start scrutinizing and finding those tiny little things that don’t seem like much when everything’s going along swimmingly, but blow up to gigantic proportions when everything’s going to hell. Things simply are what they are.

But none of that does any good. I know that’s a tough prescription to take (much akin to a “Tough shit” offered when an accusation of unfairness is raised), but it’s true. I struggled with it myself in those first few minutes after I went back to my desk after the meeting. I kept flashing back to that first meeting with the publisher, with the thoughts of loyalty running through my head: “I moved to Spokane, I quit my job, I gave my word that I wouldn’t jump at the next incrementally better job … You, on the other hand, laid me off/let me go/fired me** six months in.”

It would have been easy (believe me) to level an accusation of hypocrisy, but that would have been intellectually lazy of me — and not changed a damn thing, besides. They looked at the numbers and decided what was best for them moving forward, what was best for the company. Obviously it’s not the outcome I would have preferred, but it does me no good to carry bitterness for their ensuring the paper’s continued existence. And, again, such vituperations can’t help me; they can only function as distractions.

I enjoyed my time at the Inlander. I’m immensely fond of all the writers, production people and even some of the advertising folks (no, really!), and take great pride in a few of the stories I wrote (and had a great time writing sarcastic, cynical comments on just about every cultural product imaginable).

Though nothing’s certain yet, I’m fairly deep into the interview process for one job, and I’m sure the hiring machinery for others will kick into a higher gear once the holidays are over. (Plus, I got this fortune cookie while eating teriyaki at work a few weeks ago, which has to be a good sign, right? I mean, fortune cookies can’t lie.) I would have preferred to have a gig lined up by now (as I tend to get all twitchy and stabby when I have nothing to do), but there’s nothing I can do about other peoples’ decisions — I can only influence my own. And however this interview or the next turns out, it’s not that big of a deal. I’ll simply do what I can: Examine what I did, try to figure out what I can do better next time, and ask myself the only question that matters … What’s next?

* The woman who was hired to replace me at my old job was herself let go after about three or four months because of budget problems. But that’s a whole nother story of mismanagement.
** These phrases sound like they’re different, but only if you’re not on the receiving end.

This revelation is not a sudden light that shone down upon me. It’s, in fact, been a part of my knowledge ever since I started working in the news. But somehow, no one seems to realize it.

Stories you see in newspapers, on cable TV, in magazines? Most of them are wrong.

Now, I’m not talking wholly fabricated a la Jayson Blair, but the fact of the matter is most journalists (be they bloggers, broadsheeters or broadcasters) are lazy. This laziness seeps into their reporting, which is usually cobbled together by calling people on both sides of an issue, transcribing whatever they say (or lifting quotes from the press release), and going about their merry way.

I first saw evidence of this phenomenon when I was at the Daily Evergreen. For some reason, we had three or four stories about WSU (or the Ev itself) find their way into the larger media landscape, usually via being picked up by the AP. And every time, there was always at least one major fact that was flat-out wrong. Every. Single. Time.

The first time, we tried calling the AP office and letting them know. They ran a correction over the wire … except that their correction was also wrong. And when we called them back to inform them they still didn’t have it right, they just ignored it.

Thereafter, we didn’t bother to inform them of their erroneous ways.

I bring this up because of a story I’ve been working, the so-called Four Loko ban. (An edited version of my story will be up on Thursday, using a lot of this same information.) As I went through and spent a grand total of four days tracking down research, culling information and calling up experts, one thing became crystal clear to me: The Washington State Liquor Control Board got it wrong. Horribly wrong.

Allow me to elaborate. In its proclamation, the LCB cites two reasons for their ban.

1. The overuse of caffeine can result in acute overdoses that cause health problems.
2. The marketing messages imply they have energizing effects and fail to disclose consequences and adverse effects

I’ll spot you the second reason, even though the “ban” could easily be replaced by warning labels. But the first reason isn’t even close to any known definition of the words “truth” or “accuracy.”

The studies (including those cited by the board in their fact sheet accompanying the ban) show that the danger from drinking caffeinated alcohol drinks comes from the combination of caffeine and alcohol. That is, the stimulant (caffeine) masks the effects of the depressant (alcohol), thus allowing the drinker to consume more than they otherwise would without feeling its effects.

No one, anywhere, has ever suggested that the amount of caffeine in these drinks is in and of itself a danger. If that were the case, regular energy drinks would have been banned the minute they were introduced on the market.

The aforementioned fact sheet also mentions additional reasons for the ban. They include:

• Citing two studies (from Wake Forest and the University of Florida) that people who consume alcohol and caffeine are more likely to suffer the negative aspects of drinking (assault, sexual assault, riding with intoxicated drivers).
• The FDA is currently researching the safety and legality of alcoholic energy drinks
• Companies are marketing these drinks toward youth*
• Alcoholic energy drinks look similar to regular energy drinks

These are the reasons cited — if any are given at all beyond the underage CWU students getting shit-faced in Roslyn, Wash. — for the ban in every news story I’ve read. There are, however, a few problems.

• Both studies focused on only those mixed drinks you can buy (Jågerbombs, vodka-Red Bulls) in bars. Zero studies have been conducted on pre-mixed alcoholic energy drinks.
• The FDA has not ruled on the safety and legality; therefore, why is the LCB moving ahead? Furthermore, the FDA is using those same studies, which concern the adding of alcohol to caffeine in any form, to base its judgment. Why are only pre-mixed drinks like Four Loko being affected?
• Of course they’re advertising to “youth,” an intentionally vague term. No 50-year-old’s drinking Four Loko. The spokesman for the board told me, “The board would say that these products are dangerous in their estimation. This is different than drinking beer in college or young people drinking to excess. These cans have high levels of stimulants and high levels of alcohol. The purpose of them is getting drunk.” You know, as opposed to every other kind of alcohol sold, the purpose of which is to not get drunk.
• The spokesman for the LCB also tried this “people get confused by packaging” line on me. Here’s how that conversation went:
  ME: It also says there are concerns about the packaging looking similar.
  HIM: If you’ve ever seen them, they look pretty close to the same cans as regular energy drinks
  ME: Are you seriously suggesting that people are purchasing these drinks without being aware of what they are?
  HIM: Anecdotally, people purchase them. i don’t know how the system works. But the product look just like energy drinks.
  ME: Won’t they be carded? Doesn’t it say “12 percent alcohol” on the can?
  HIM: Again, anecdotally, this is a problem.

There are two takeaways from this whole mess: 1) Mixing caffeine and alcohol can be dangerous if the person who’s drinking the concoction isn’t aware of how much alcohol and caffeine they’re actually consuming. 2) There is absolutely zero evidence to suggest a difference between pre-mixed caffeinated alcohol and non-pre-mixed. Any ban should cover bars, restaurants and any other mixing of caffeine with alcohol.

But what do you read in the news? You get the LCB’s sentiments, you get Phusion Products’ (the makers of Four Loko) rebuttal, and that’s it.

I realize this is not an issue of monumental importance to most people. I must admit, I hate energy drinks, be they alcoholic or not. But this kind of thing cannot be allowed to perpetuate, either at the media or governmental levels. If there’s a health problem, then it applies to the general consumption of alcohol mixed with caffeine. That’s the message that any reasoning adult could come up with after spending an hour looking into this issue. The failure of both the Washington state government and the media in general to come to this conclusion is worrisome.

The amazing board spokesman came up with these reasons why the ban only applies to pre-mixed stuff:

• Pre-mixed alcoholic drinks are available at your neighborhood convenience store (ergo kids can get their hands on them)
• Servers keep an eye on those ordering mixed drinks at a bar
• They’re more expensive at the bar**

I’m going to ignore the last point (because it’s stupid), and focus on the first two. The state of Montana figured out a way to fix the first problem without a ban by only allowing the sale of alcoholic energy drinks in liquor stores (where you have to be 21 to even get inside). The second is a great reason … were it not for the fact that the entire problem with these drinks is that the effect of the alcohol is masked, thus meaning the server would have no way of telling how drunk the customer is.

There are several competing themes in play here: Treating adults like adults, unnecessary intrusion of the government, and simply keeping an even playing field (between bars and the pre-mixed drink makers). I have no problem with a ban on mixing alcoholic drinks with caffeine — based on the science, it seems rather sound. What I do have a problem with is ramming through a politically expedient piece of legislation, crying “public health” as the reason and ignoring the actual implications of what that would mean. We’re smarter than that — the government, the media and the populace at large. At least, we should be.

* Using “social networking sites interactive fan websites and product giveaways at events.” OH GOD THEY’RE USING FACEBOOK! ILLEGALIZE IT!
** I swear he actually said this.