My Beef With the News

Oh, I forgot this in my last entry.

I am so tired of TV Networks pretending that their reality TV shows are NEWS!!! Sometimes I watch Fox 5 Washington b/c I want local news but don't want to wait until :25 or :55 after the hour for the other network's five-minute break-in from the network morning shows. So they're covering a murder or whatever on Fox 5, then all of the sudden the anchors pep up and say, "and when we come back, we'll look into the buzz surrounding last night's controversial decision on American Idol." WHAT? That is not news! That is a promotion for your reality show! It would be like them saying "next we'll interview Fez from 'That 70s Show' and ask him if he's reached a decision on his summer job." See how silly that sounds? It's entertainment programming, not news!

Fox isn't the only guilty party ... NBC does it with The Apprentice, CBS does it with Survivor, and ABC with The Bachelor. remember when Survivor was big a few years ago and CBS's morning show would have an interview with the most recent castoff the morning after the show? Ooh, gotta tune into that, what WILL she say?

I may not be the best person to comment on this, though. I have little use for any reality show, so obviously I don't care one bit about hearing who said what to whom that made someone cry on (Insert Reality TV Show Name Here). There are much more important stories in the world that these news programs can cover. And they DO NOT include the Michael Jackson trial, Terry Schiavo case, or any missing child story (except on a local level).

Dallas and Back

I travel a fair amount in my new job. So far it's not many trips, but each one is nearly a week-long a piece. I got back late Thursday from five nights in lovely Dallas, Texas. It actually was a very pleasant trip, but I was worn out after this one. I got to see my friend Victoria a lot, which was nice. I stayed in a lovely historic hotel in a cool part of town. However, the desk chair was horribly uncomfortable; all the furnishings was period-type furniture ... old cherrywood chippendale floral-printed stuff - not my style.

I also got to enjoy some of the pleasantries of Dallas. As a true-blue blue-stater, I'm supposed to dislike all things Texas. However, I can't help but enjoy myself. I always have a nice time in Dallas. The Big D certainly has it's positive attributes:

1. FOOD

I've never had a bad meal in Dallas, period. Not just the typical local cuisines, either. I mean, you just pick a restaurant and go. The food will be great. Barbecue, Mexican, Steak, Rotisserie Chicken, Asian, whatever. The main course, the sides, the appetizers, all yummy. I have no clue why. These are mostly at casual restaurants, not the fine dining (I'm much happier and relaxed at a casual restaurant wearing whatever than donning a suit and dining at a five-star establishment).

2. Dr. Pepper

As the home of Dr. Pepper, you can get it everywhere that soda is sold. In other parts of the country, soda offerings in restaurants are regularly limited to cola, diet cola, and lemon-lime soda. Not Dallas. Everyone has Dr. Pepper, and many even have Diet Dr. Pepper on "tap" in the soda fountain.

3. Architechtual License

You can build any type of building or home in Dallas you like and it will look like it's supposed to be there. Red-Brick Georgian? Red-Tiled-Roof Italianate Stucco? Mid-Century Ranch? Craftsman Bungalow? Contemporary Californian? Tudor? All good. It's the halfway point between the Atlantic and Pacific, so the styles blend well. You can plant deciduous trees and look like the east, or plan scraggly shrubs and look like the west.

4. Infrastructure (a.k.a. good streets and signs)

This is a Taylor one, for sure. I pay close attention to the style of street sign used in a city. What color? What size? Illuminated? Block Numbers? Street signs in Dallas are easy to read and have block numbers on them. Intersections with traffic signals have large signs that hang over the intersection with block numbers printed on them. Amazingly helpful when you're a visitor. Each municipality in the area has a different style of street sign, so you know which neighborhood you're in, too. Many of them are illuminated, too, so they're easy to see at night (I LOVE this, I wish more cities had them).

5. Shopping

Dallas shopping is probably #4 in the US as far as exclusive brands (NY, LA, & Miami being 1,2,&3). There are a ton of exclusive, expensive shopping centers in town, both inside malls and outside in walkable plazas. There's also a lot of shopping for those who don't want to blow the bank, you just have to look a little.

Of course, any good city has it's bad points ...

1. It's Dallas, TEXAS

Sadly, just like Atlanta, Dallas is a city surrounded on four sides by red-state trash. However, in Atlanta, you have to leave the city to find good native cuisine (pork barbecue, Southern food, etc.). I had amazing Tex-Mex, Mexican, and beef barbcue in the city limits of Dallas, so no need to leave the city for food. However, the intown neighborhoods in Dallas feel a bit more Republican-leaning than Intown Atlanta. Not that they're any more conservative, it's just that the Texas legislature-mandated "red state juice" that they pump in the public water supply has warped the minds of some intowers into voting Republican but holding more moderate/liberal views like the inner-city counterparts in other US cities. Still, it has to put up with all the whacked-out radical legilators and lawmakers from all the tiny po-dunk towns around the state.

2. Flat as a Pancake & Far from the Beach

Once you leave Intown Dallas, it's flat and treeless for as far as the eye can see. If you want to take a roadtrip to somewhere different, take an extra day or two off of work, because you'll have to drive further for any geographic diversity. Plus the beach is something like seven hours away. Atlanta's four-hour distance from the beach isn't a fun drive, but you can at least make a weekend trip out of it.

3. Sprawl

Like the other sunbelt cities, it's sprawled the hell out. Not as bad as Houston or Phoenix though. On the flip side, Dallas has some really cool walkable neighborhoods. You'll still need a car if you visit.

Okay, I think I've written enough about Dallas. I'm bored, so I'll wrap up this entry and get back to other stuff soon. It's such a lovely day in Washington, I think I'll go running this afternoon.

What Do I Believe? (Folks, it's a long one)

I went to the booze doctor on Monday so we could try to figure out why I like to get liquored up more severly than most. It was a good visit; the counselor (she wasn't acutally a doctor) is a recovering alcoholic herself, so she could really relate to a lot of the things that I was telling her about my fears, my experiences, my expectations, etc. Essentially what I'm doing now is the right thing: taking a break from drinking, trying to find other things to do on the weekends, talking to friends about my goals, etc. She also suggested attending some AA meetings and just listening to what people have to say. I told her that I didn't think that AA would work for me since they tend to be religious/spiritual during their meetings and rely on "God" or a "higher power" for strength and support. She said that she didn't really like the religious side of the meetings, either, but just "take what you need and leave the rest behind."

It got me thinking though, what really do I believe in, religion/spirituality-wise? I was raised my entire life in the Southern Baptist Church (SBC). I never liked going to church; it was boring, tedious, full of rules, and populated with people with whom I felt little in common. My parents made us go all the time. Sunday mornings - always. Sunday evenings - ususally. Wednesday nights - occassionally if we didn't have too much homework (church NEVER trumped school/education in my parents' value system, something for which I'm very grateful). I was seven years old when I walked down front after the sermon during the invitational hymn to accept Jesus Christ as my personal lord and saviour, which meant that I became a member of the church and got dunked in the baptismal pool. Nothing really changed in my life, though. I acted the same, talked the same, believed and felt the same things. So why bother doing it? Peer pressure, essentially. At a certain age if you're a child in the SBC, it's just expected of you. Imagine reaching teenage years and having not been baptized, why, you'd be ostracized! You'd be a freak-show! And most importantly, you wouldn't be able to cast meaningless unanimous votes in church business meetings (like anyone would ever vote against the recommendations of the minister or Deacon board, why, you'd be ostracized!).

In retrospect, it's my opinion that children shouldn't be allowed to go through this ritual until they can prove that they truly know what they are getting themselves into. Hell, I didn't have a clue; I was doing it for the wrong reasons. The church should have some sort of faith test, sort of like the written test you take to get your driver's license. Nothing too hard like the CPA or Bar exams; academically-challenged people need to be able to pass the test, too. Lord knows there are plenty of those people floating around the church. I also got this little pocket-sized Bible with my name embossed on the front in golden letters. King James Version, of course. If you pointed a gun to my head today I still couldn't tell you where that itty-bitty Bible is today (but I'd still have soiled britches).

As soon as I was able to stop going to church, I did. I went in college maybe once a year, but always with friends, mainly to be social. I still didn't like it. However, I still claimed to believe in God and the whole basic tenents of Christianity (though I call myself a "protestant" since "Christian" sounded too much like the hateful ignorant masses that call themselves Christians but are the biggest hypocrites around). One reason that I held on to my beliefs was that I wanted to believe in some sort of afterlife where I could continue to be the people that I loved in the former life. It scared me to be alone, even if it was a "happy place" that I was going to.

About a year or so ago Jamie and I were visiting Whit at school. Spirituality and religion came up in conversation, in the context of what we believed. Both of them matter-of-factly said that they no longer knew what to believe. At first I was taken aback a little. I told them that I believed in a higher power that would guide us to a fruitful afterlife, and that not going to such a place would make me very sad, because I wouldn't be with the ones I love. They both said that if we just die, we won't know any better anyway. If there's no afterlife, we don't go a place of constain pain and suffereing (a.k.a. hell, hades, underworld, Wal-Mart, Virginia); we are just dead. period. It got me thinking, why am I so afraid to let go of the idea of a happy, pleasant afterlife? Frankly, it's not a sure thing, so why am I fooling myself into being so sure about something that is frankly unknown to all living beings?

The more I thought about it, the more it made sense to me. How can anyone be so sure of what happens to our spirits after we die? Yeah, it's written in the Bible; well, so is a lot of stuff that we don't believe. Maybe this whole afterlife thing is something we made up to comfort ourselves with the fact that there's something out there that man himself can't solve and can't figure out. We don't know where our spirits are before we are born, so how can we be so sure that we know where they're going when we die?

So many churches focus on keeping people out of hell. "Witness to the nonbelievers so that they will not wind up hell," I heard all the time in the church growing up. The SBC believes that anyone who is a Christian has a responsibility to convert as many people to Christianity as possible. The rewards for doing so and the penalties for not doing so are never clearly laid out; the ministers get away with just saying "it is God's will," or "put God first in your life and follow his orders," and similarly strong statements. Maybe hell is something that someone made up a long time ago as a scare tactic just to get people to do something that they are reluctant to do without such motivation. We have no idea who made up this concept. It could have been a corrupt oracle or scribe who wanted everyone in a village to turn over their wealth to "God" and live simply, without worldly goods or temptations. All the while the creator of hell lives high on the hog, eating gigantic turkey legs and having sex with whores behind closed doors. Who knows. Maybe I'm far off.

So bottom line is that I really don't know what to believe anymore. I've seen so many negative things come out about the religious institutions in this country that I don't know if they are really out to help the masses or just benefit a few select people who have chosen religion as their career path. Think about it ... most high-profile ministers and religious figures aren't living in double-wide trailers, after all. They've got their fancy mansions, nice cars, and other acoutrements. They want to keep their standard of living, so the only way they can keep it up is by convincing people to keep believing and acting the way that they have always acted. They can increase their wealth by recruiting others to join their belief system. They get on TV and in the media as often as they can, and they at least have Sunday morning sermons to spread their message to a captive audience. It's a system that works. When life and death are on the line, people revert back to basic, primal instincts of survial. They'll do whatever they can to keep close to them the important things in their life (family, friends, standard of living, health, etc.). It's sad, but true. Just look around ...

Do I like the idea of never seeing my friends and family once I leave this earth (or earlier for those who precede me)? Not one bit. But it's only fair to me to believe the truth of what is known and not convince myself that there's an alternative when it's not for sure. While unsettling, it's somewhat empowering.

Lines Lines Everywhere Are Lines

I don't like waiting in lines. I know, who does? I really don't like it though. Waiting in general. If I'm with a group and someone's going to pick up food, I'm usually willing to do the picking up (provided it's not raining, I'm not tired, etc.). Why? Because I don't like sitting still waiting on someone else to make something happen for me. It's not like I am afraid to relinquish control or delegate responsibilities; I just don't like sitting idly by.

Anyway, back to lines. I've banked at SunTrust for almost six years. In Atlanta, SunTrust is omnipresent. There are branches and ATMs everywhere. Every Publix supermarket has a branch, too, and they're open until 7pm weekdays and 6pm on Saturday. You can go to the bank whenever you want and rarely have to wait in line. There were four regular branches within 10 minutes of my office at Emory, and two supermarket branches. However, I move to DC and it's a different story. There seem to be a fair amount of SunTrust Bank branches here ... as many as any other major bank in town; however, there's only one, maybe two tops, branches within a 10 minute walk of my office. One is only a block away, so I've never bothered to find another one. There's ALWAYS a 10-minute line and only two or three tellers working. One teller is a commerical teller, so anytime a commercial client comes in (and for some reason, they're always youngish white women), then can skip the line and go straight to this imaginary queue for the commercial teller. It seems to happen a lot when I'm line. Now, a trip to the bank is not a quick one. Plus the bank closes at 3pm here (except Fridays, at 5pm). No Saturday banking, either. So I essentially have no choice but to go to that branch unless I want to take time off of work and go elsewhere. I wonder if all banks in DC are this understaffed. I'm not loyal to SunTrust, I'm willing to switch, but why go through the hassle if the customer services are no better? I get a fee-free account, two foreign ATM transacations a month fee-free, and I can sign up for a savings account with no minimum balance (which I will do soon, since I just closed my Emory Credit Union account last week).

Yeah, I know, if that's all I have to complain about, then you don't want to hear it. Well, I also had to go to the DC DMV this week, too. Everyone seems to think the DC DMV is the equivalent of getting stabbed to death by a rusty spoon: time-consuming and excruciating. These people have never lived in Georgia, apparently. It's hardly a pleasure trip, but the longest I had to wait for anything was an hour, and that was when I got my license plates for my car yesterday. DC also lets you pay registration fees for TWO years, so I certainly did that to avoid going back there again next year. My main complaint about the DC DMV is that they're not very clear what documents you need to get accomplish the task that you set out to do. They have an elaborate website, but when you get there, it seems the clerk you get calls the shots regardless of policy. I won't delve into details that interest no one, but I can thankfully say after numerous trips down to 301 C Street NW, I am in full compliance with DC motorist law and hopefully will stay that way until March 2007 (aargh, that sounds SO far off!).

I don't have much in the way of weekend plans, which is kind of a good and bad thing. It's the only weekend that I'll have in DC for a few weeks (both preceeding and after this weekend), so I have stuff that I need to do. On the flip side, I always enjoy having some plans to which I can look forward. I'm just an on-the-go kind of person. I get it honest, though; my dad's the same way. He always likes to have something planned for the weekend. Hmm, we'll see what I get up to.