Yesterday I spent eight hours in a hospital waiting room in Tampa while my mother underwent surgery for a torn rotator cuff. She's recovering well, but the harm inflicted on me by eight hours of cable news has yet to wear off. It happened to be Fox News Channel, but that's irrelevant; all news is boring when you're in the hospital and are stuck watching it at length, because the newscasters only repeat over and over the breathless update that they have nothing more to report and here are the things they don't know yet. When I had surgery in high school, it was the same day a local school bus was hit by a train and five kids were killed, and every station devoted itself to daylong coverage of the very-slowly-unfolding news story. With all due respect to the families of the deceased, it was one of the most boring days of my life. Yesterday FNC covered only four stories (I counted) for the entire eight hours: A) Hostage crisis in a Colorado school, B) Terrell Owens did or didn't attempt suicide, C) Democrats are mean for leaking a classified report about terrorism, and D) the Dow Jones almost broke a record but didn't. The anchors had precious few details about each of these events and repeated them hundreds of times, as well as repeating over and over again what they didn't yet know. It was enough to make me want to sign up for a lobotomy in the next room.

Ok, sorry Mike, I can't resist one dig at Fox News: While an analyst was interviewed about the classified document leak, he slipped in a criticism of Bill Clinton for picking on his own Fox News interviewer the previous weekend, and said Fox News is a "whipping boy" for the Democratic Party. Yes, that's right, poor defenseless Fox News would never dare cast aspersions on a Democratic politician, because criticism of our elected officials would be unpatriotic and would cheapen the public discourse for mere entertainment value, and those big nasty Democrats enjoy kicking innocent Fox News around for laughs while their day job running the country doesn't keep them busy. Yeah.


Logical Operator

The creator of Funeratic, Scott Hardie, blogs about running this site, losing weight, and other passions including his wife Kelly, his friends, movies, gaming, and Florida. Read more »

What I Did on My Christmas Vacation

The last week and a half was some of the most fun I've had in a long time, and a much-needed vacation. I tend to take many short weekend trips each year rather than one long break, but it feels so good to be rejuvenated and rested for a change. "Christmas" came on Sunday the 23rd, dinner with my mom and Santa's usual generosity all around. Go »

Wests Take Southwest to Southeast

As Steve West mentioned, he and Brenda recently visited Sarasota for a week of fun. In advance, we rented an AirBNB (cat allergies prevented staying at my place) and kicked around some ideas for what to do, but we were concerned about unpredictable fatigue and other medical complications and knew that we had to take it one day at a time. The trip had a bumpy start, with Kelly taken by ambulance to the ER the night before (she recovered quickly) and a difficult Southwest flight and Uber pickup for the Wests, but that all quickly felt like it was behind us as soon as the fun began. Go »

Manly Pastimes

"So what did you do this weekend?" "I went drag racing." "Really? Go »

Ten Things I Learned While Kelly's Parents Pat & Russ Spent a Week Visiting Us

• Florida reminds me of Dave Barry's quip that vacationing in Britain is great because you meet people from entirely different states. We stopped a woman to take our picture; she was visiting from New Jersey and her daughter beside her was from California. The only local we met warned us what bridge not to jump off for swimming because the water is shark-infested. Go »

Illinois 2014

Kelly and I are home after a week on the road visiting family and friends in Illinois. I wish that we had more time to see more people, but I'm also glad that we got out of town before the sub-freezing temperatures returned. It was important to us to spend time with Kelly's father and brother since this was the first Christmas after her mother passed away, and most of the trip was spent just being a family. Go »

Free-Fallin'

I enjoy safe hobbies like making websites, but there's something to be said for the dangerous ones: (link) Go »