pants!

Today I was trapped in a waiting room for two excruciating hours, powerless against a blaring CNN broadcast coming from a television suspended on the wall. Boy but CNN is a load of crap—or as the English might say, “My word but CNN is pants”—for some reason I’ve never realized how bad it really is. All of the hard work I’ve put into growing my brain with the Wii’s Big Brain Academy has been completely ruined by the sheer stupidity of the looped broadcast. Below are the ‘stories’ that CNN covered:

- Anna Nicole Smith’s judge gets his own show

- Paris Hilton’s neighbors concerned about media frenzy in neighborhood

- Nicole Ritchie faces impending DUI trial

- Man beaten to death by angry crowd

- Furniture warehouse burns, kills firemen

- Horse stable burns, kills horses

- San Diego burns, kills sagebrush

- Plane that might have had faulty landing gear doesn’t land but then safely lands at another airport

- Abused children in Iraqi orphanage rescued by US troops

- Abandoned baby’s potential link to missing pregnant woman investigated

- Football player caught in legal woes

- Baseball player makes amazing catch

I don’t any of this can be considered actual news. Half of it is about celebrities that have no business garnering this much media coverage, and the other half doesn’t affect me at all. And the story behind the Paris Hilton headline only disappointed me--I thought they were going to report that her neighbors were nervous at the prospect of having a hardened criminal living in the next mansion down. In fact, the only story that I would consider real news was only mentioned in passing: Over a live shot of an empty podium, soon to be occupied by President Bush to explain his reasoning behind his veto of the most recent stem cell bill to pass through Congress, the anchor directed viewers interested in this story to the live streaming video on their website. Then we watched what’s-his-face catch the same baseball 42 times. And then it was back to ‘Anna Nicole Smith’s judge gets his own show’.

Now I know what J feels like when he hears a Fergie song and flies into a foaming rage. It’s true— like Fergie, CNN’s sole purpose is to actively make the world dumber. Well, I for one, refuse to be a victim any longer. From now on, instead of poisoning my brain with drivel I will hone my Big Brain Academy picture-matching whack-a-mole skills. It might not actually increase the weight of my brain, but unlike watching CNN, I sure won’t feel stupider as a result of it.