So, Tuesday. What about Tuesday? Well, Tuesday was sorta like that Dorito that twists suddenly like a traitor's knife to flay the roof of your mouth at the worst possible moment during the worst possible hangover-dehydrated lunch meeting, actually.
Live near Tampa International Airport? Absolutely love the deafening sound of low-flying airplanes? Congratulations! You may have already qualified for more of it, as the airport will temporarily alter flight paths during its billion-dollar expansion and improvement program! Why does what is unarguably one of the best, most convenient airports in the nation need a disruptive billion-dollar improvement? Because America is an insane spend-crazy uncle who sought out a distant nephew he thought won the lottery to mooch off, but the nephew actually didn't win the lottery, and is now to enamored of his new relationship with his uncle to admit the truth, and at the end of this horrible movie about not being able to tell the truth about some things everybody dies and goes to hell. (Also, probably Cuba.)
More good news: Home Depot is reportedly hiring more than 1,300 new "permanent part time and seasonal" employees for 30 Bay area stores. (Apply here.) So, yeah, you won't be able to earn a living wage, but look on the bright side: You also won't have to learn where a single thing is located inside the store — just wander around not making eye contact.
Shocker: Proven jackass Ethan Czahor — that dude who started internet non-entity hipster.com before being tapped to be Jeb Bush's chief technology officer, then got caught trying to scrub misogynist and homophobic personal tweets from the web — has already lost that job. ("Resigned" means something completely different in the public sector.)
NBC News has suspended Brian Williams for six months without pay over the revelation that he misrepresented a certain occurrence regarding a certain helicopter flight during his time covering a certain Middle Eastern conflict. Which, yeah, bad form, but if we're gonna punish people for lies told to the American public about our involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan after 9/11, shouldn't we work our way a little higher up the food chain?
And finally, Jon Stewart announced his impending retirement from The Daily Show. All kidding aside, Stewart's smart, refined watchdogging of the news has inspired a generation of, ahem, self-described "real" journalists not only to put a little more pointed fun into their stories but also to pay more attention to how mainstream news itself is reported; in his way, he's been as effective, as influential and as true to America's need to know as the Brokaws, the Murrows and the Hickses. We salute and will miss him.
(Image of TIA by LoneStarMike via Wikimedia Commons.)
This article appears in Feb 5-11, 2015.