Take it from me, being a media intestine isn't always easy. Passive as it may seem to the uninitiated--processing information for hours on end, imbibing it, digesting it, passing it along--there's a particularly accumulative kind of stress that takes its toll as the days and weeks of news lemming past you on their way towards wherever information goes when its obsolete. And it certainly doesn't help to have a good memory, because once this stuff stows away and gets lodged upstairs it's hard to shake out.
I imagine it's a bit like living in a small town (not that I've ever lived in a small town), where each personal difference or interpersonal act of defiance gets inscribed for the ages on some Central Square stone tablet, displaying itself publicly for years on end, cooly waiting for time and/or weather to erode it from the collective consciousness. I imagine being a media intestine is a lot like managing a small town general store, except that instead of a small town you have to deal with the entire Goddamn planet, and thus the Central Square tableture is large indeed, reminscent of the slate-black monolith in Kubrick's 2001 (Duh, duh, duh . . . dum-dum!) and we with our hands fruitlessly ear-clutching, trying to prevent humanity's ceaseless whine. It's like managing the world's biggest general store, where everyone and their mother comes in to shoot the breeze, except that there's no penny candy--no peppermint sticks, gumballs, or malted milk--which is fine anyway because that stuff rots your teeth.
If you do end up taking the plunge into the hydro-electric flow of 21st century information (and who among us really has a choice?), likely as not all sorts of trivial oddities from all sorts of corners of the world will stick like burrs to your inner monologue only to pop out at the most inopportune times. What am I talking about? Here's a short list of media jetsam that I uncontrollably remembered just last week:
1. The possible passage of an amendment that would conjoin the areas of supervision of the Minnesota Barber Board and Minnesota Cosmetology Board, ending a century long schism between barbers and beauticians, was broached. When one legislator suggested the amendment another lawmaker questioned: "Are you sure the barbers and cosmetologists are OK with this? They've been locked in animosity for years!" The drafting legislator replied, "Umm . . . yes."
2. The cracker who wrote the latest computer worm virus was caught in Germany thanks to reward money ponied up by Microsoft upper management.
3. There's a Feng Shui subdivision somewhere in California.
4. The new astroturf in the Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome (home of the Minnesota Twins) has a foundation made out of recycled Nike sneakers.
5. Ice cream prices may be exorbitant this summer thanks to a "perfect storm" of circumstance in many of the ice-cream-ingredient growing parts of the world: e.g. cyclones in Madagascar (vanilla), civil war in West Africa (chocolate).
6. The 26th of April was National Intellectual Property Day.
7. While Britian's outer-space launch of "Gravity Probe 2" was successful, its proof of Einstein's General Theory of Relavitivy turned out of be irrelevant.
8. Breakthroughs in refridgeration technology have made it possible to cool food and drink using only sound waves.
9. The water in San Diego harbor may be contaminated with rocket fuel.
10. While there were 14 million payphones in the USA in 1994, today there are only 9 million.
I could go on, and on, and on, and on . . . but why bother? It's such useless knowledge--all of it--and while I'm certainly not the first person to bear the burden of trivialities (think of Cheers's Cliff Claven, or other Cracker Jack whiz kids of yore), the difference is that I've done absolutely nothing to gain this kind of brain-jam. I've not cracked a single book. Neither have I purveyed a single historical marker, nor prodded a single tour guide. I've no memory of asking for more information of any kind, whatsoever. Rather, it's been enough simply to be in a helter-skelter mish-mash whirl of mediation.
Forget PG-13. All movies should come labeled like this.
Of course I don't mean to wax melodramatic. Its not like I'm unable to cope with tidbits. I go for long walks and try to forget. I become entranced by contretia, i.e. staring at birds, music listening, enjoying good conversation with a fine stout. What amazes me most isn't the factual trivia, but rather the broad scope of its origin. I remember stupid stuff from Madagascar and Zanzibar, outer space and California . . . and there seems to be no geographical limit to the kinds of things we can learn nowadays. It's that cliche about the world getting smaller, and in many ways this is similar to the globalizing agricultural revolution, where thanks to modern shipping we can buy strawberries in January, oranges in April, salmon in Oklahoma. My buddy the meat inspector was telling me how McDonalds switched last year from using local beef (butchered in South Saint Paul) to imported Argentinean sides. He was complaining, but this sort of agricultural change has been going on across the board.
I'm putting a stop to it. Right here. From this point on I'm only buying food at the Farmer's market, I'm going to can my own fruit each fall, and I'm only retaining trivial facts that I learn first-hand. Forget the information superhighway, I'm taking the information gravel road, and the only things I'm going to remember are going to be things I've seen and heard with my own eyes and ears, so that if I know useless information its going to be locally-grown useless information: for example, my next-door neighbor's brand of sneakers, which of the two identical Super America gas stations on the corner of 40th and Lyndale is older, or the exact number of tulips growing in my front-yard flowerbed. If I'm going to wake up in the middle of the night remembering, I want it to be a consequnce of things like that.
In fact just the other day I was walking through the neighborhood and I happened across the local Farmer's Market, not in time to enjoy any fresh produce, but in time to witness the closing-down and cleaning-up of the Fresh Popcorn machine. Maybe next time I'll get to enjoy some organic produce, but at least for now I learned some organic facts about floral display techniques and the pickup routines of after-school soccer-moms. Did you know that the alleyway next to the Lexington Avenue Farmer's Market has cobblestones made out of wood?
