News in 2010

After a few months of really hard work and insomnia and not meeting deadlines, I finally got a few days off. No big plans for these days, apart from catching up with some studying and watching some news. News…

So, this morning I was watching Fox & Friends and they showed images of an apparent riot at Moscow airport because people have been stranded there for days because of weather conditions, as have folks in the US and Europe. You can see the Euronews report here. Of course people are pissed off, nobody likes to spend even one hour waiting for an airplane. The problem with Fox & Friends was that, as they were showing the images of people protesting in Moscow, the hypothetical questions started and they were something like: ‘could we see something like this in NYC? People have been at the airport for three, maybe four days here, so could this be a possibility? If the situation continues, people might start doing the same…’

I saw the same story on CNNI, they showed the same images, but instead of coming up with hypothetical things and making audiences think, ‘uh, this WAS President Obama’s fault, he should be shoveling snow off the tarmac right now!’, I actually learned what was going on there.

This is something that really pissed me off this year: the hypothetical news, the passionate-blogger news, the no news-value news. And they’re everywhere.

I’m a big fan of Twitter, for me it’s the best way to compile all the organizations or people you want to get news from, but I guess in the urge of producing more and more content you can see stuff that, well, should be left unsaid, like when our local newspaper Correio do Povo reports something like: “Beach vacationers enjoy the day walking along the shoreline”. If you knew what the shoreline really looks like in my state, you’d be running like hell from it. (Oh, so maybe THAT’s the news! People enjoying themselves on the awful beach shore!)

Photo taken in Imbé

This year was definitely Jon Stewart’s year. Having a comedy show, it’s obviously easy for him to make fun of the absurdities that politicians and pundits say, but the different thing about him is that the show researches and checks facts before putting something on the air and one of his biggest trademarks is the sound bites shown to contradict what somebody is now saying so passionately on TV (this is now being used by AC360. Couldn’t have he done this before?) Anyway, one of my favorite moments was the ‘republicans will ride in the “back of the car”/”back of the bus” thing’. In the failed attempt to get people to vote in midterm elections, Obama said he wouldn’t give the car keys back and GOP would have to sit in the back of the car. Well, guess what Fox News reported…?

They simply progressively replaced “car” by “bus” and this obviously became a racial issue. The whole Jon Stewart segment can be seen here, really worth watching!!! What makes me angry is the progressive change, you know? Slowly and subtly during the hard news, and then boooom! Obama wants to send all Americans to concentration camps. In the back of the bus.

But I think one of the most outrageous passionate-blogger pieces of news was Obama’s trip to Asia last month. It all started with this Michelle Bachmann’s interview on AC360:

And it all turned out to be complete bullshit spread by those talk radio guys that for some reason have millions of listeners. That piece on AC360 actually generated comments on the NY Times, basically saying good job for the fact-checking.

It’s unbelievable that now pieces on good reporting are not given to Watergate-like articles or war stories, but to reports that straighten out fake/not fact-checked ones.

I missed Stewart

Federal judge blocked some parts in the Arizona immigration law. The sad thing is that this case will go on and on and on and divide people even more. AC360 showed that policemen go through training on how to do the job which includes a video basically saying the do’s and don’t’s. The thing is that some three weeks ago Jon Stewart showed the same thing. Three weeks ago! The video is “old” but it’s a must see. The judge Napolitano part is fantastic. Agenda breach! Agenda breach! Latino 911.

I’m just glad Stewart’s back… And I really like the new look!

—

What a crappy day. Every single thing to be done took me hours. Expected responses not e-mailed, exercises not finished, meetings not carried out, projects not finished. Loud, annoying people around me. Endless telephone and Skype interviews. Irritatingly slow Internet. The longest bus ride home ever. Crowded bus. People bumping into each other. Traffic jam, stopping at every traffic light.

I have been so tired and seen things piling up and no perspective of working on them. College deadlines approaching. Trip to Santa Cruz on Friday very early in the morning, so early that people should be in the middle of counting sheep at the scheduled time. And if you think that after the trip I’ll get to binge drink to forget this awful week, well, think again. My stupid attempt to be a good person and help out at the school on a fucking Saturday morning turned out to be even worse than I thought. The teenagers didn’t show up, instead only a girl who had learned about the workshop the day before, has huge pronunciation problems, isn’t loud and is expected to record a podcast.

I need to get some sleep but I’m at the stage of tiredness that can’t close my eyes. I wish I could pass out and wake up 10 hours later…

—

We Feel Fine: “I also learned that my weaknesses include: I get discouraged if I feel I am not being appreciated I lose interest if I no longer control my projects and I become exhausted from competition” (4 days ago)

Back to busy

Back to busy, indeed. Assessment interviews started yesterday and it was a looooong day, I tell ya…

The whole thing started the day before. I went to work and focused on preparing the first draft of the proposal in order to show the guys in Santa Cruz what we have in mind for the distance classes. The irony of it all is that after quitting Journalism school, I’ll have to write scripts and produce content if the project becomes reality… Needless to say that I’m feeling a little nervous about it all.

I had already written down the main idea but I had now to be careful with the details. I must have read the whole thing over 20 times just to make sure everything was OK, but decided to give a last look at it at home just in case. I had cancelled the class with my students because I knew I would have to work on that a little more. So, I did my thing and turned in early because I would catch the first bus to Santa Cruz. That meant missing AC360… OK, I can live without it for a day, right? But I just couldn’t bring myself to sleep because it was too fucking early and because I kept thinking about the time I would have to wake up and I was afraid of not listening to the alarm clock in the morning and missing the bus… I couldn’t sleep because I thought I wouldn’t get up the next day. I know, I have issues…

After staring at the ceiling for half an hour, I looked at the watch and saw that the show had just started five minutes ago, so I thought, ‘Maybe the for 15 minutes only…’ I turned on the TV to see Billy Nungesser, James Carville and AC discussing about BP not being transparent and that the company didn’t think the number of barrels gushing out in the ocean wasn’t important and that BP had estimated 1,000 barrels at first but now the number is much higher and then I thought, ‘Is this a rerun?’ I know that AC has been anchoring from the Gulf the longest and his show is basically about the oil spill and it’s important to hold the BP accountable and report on what’s being done and what’s not, but can’t they dig up some other stuff? I mean, I had seen that same discussion at least 10 times before and I don’t thing it would make much difference if they placed life-sized cut-outs and rolled an audio from a show aired three weeks ago. So, after 15 seconds, I turned the TV off and went to bed.

4:30am, a very appropriate time to get up… if you are a morning show host! My bus to Santa Cruz was at 5:30am and I had a two-and-a-half-hour ride ahead of me. The only good thing is that at this time the bus is great, comfortable and empty, as opposed to the ones that operate at 6pm — the time I came back home — which are full, not enough legroom and stop at every single bus station along the way. And not only bus stations, the bus actually stops in the middle of nowhere and people get off. But I wonder where these people go, because there’s nothing around, nothing! So they get off the bus, some even carrying  luggage, and what do they do? Do they wander in the fields? Do they evaporate? Does the mothership come to pick them up?

I interviewed people all day long, 24 in total and no breaks. It didn’t feel so bad, only at the end I felt like I was going to faint. I had a great surprise in terms of the employees’ level, all of them seemed to have made progress. And I got to eat some of the delicious cakes they make in the city! Even brought some home…

Well, now I’m really gonna be busy. Assessments, proposal, winter workshops, college… I just hope I can manage.

—

Very disappointed in the English team. Really disappointed. They were my biggest hope and what about now? Well, I’m rooting for the underdog, if either Paraguay or Ghana win I’ll be very happy! (Neither will…)

—

We Feel Fine: “I can say that I think I wanted to feel some of these things but I’m not terribly sure I really did At the end of this post I talk about holding my feelings and allude to the idea that I think it’s what’s best” (2 hours ago)

What does it take to be a complete asshole?

Well, if you are the guy that lives down the hall, don’t go any further: you’re already a complete asshole.

I’m a person that unfortunately holds grudges, but I’m trying really hard, REALLY hard to become a better person and avoid cancer down the road. I’ve been putting up with a lot of shit for some time now and been trying to abstract the negativity and see the positive side of things, which isn’t an easy task at all. There’s only so much shit you can take before exploding, and I guess I’m on the verge here.

This guy that lives down the hall is a complete asshole, douchebag, fucker that doesn’t do anything with his life, ANYTHING, besides going to school and being supported by his parents, and his lack of productivity — meaning that he hangs out with his dumbfuck buddies a lot in his flat — is getting on my nerves big time. Big time.

After having a very busy and tiring day — students in the morning, putting out a lot of fires at the school and more students at night — I just wanted to sit back and wait for AC360º. So, as the girls were leaving my flat after the class and I was closing the door to take them downstairs, a group of the dumbfucks almost ran over us along the way, one of the guys actually bumping into me. The girls were appalled and went ‘did that guy just bump into you and kept walking?’ I said, ‘Yeah…’ The girls made a few comments about the incident but I wasn’t paying attention because the whole thing just shocked me. I was attacked by them!

I don’t have a We Feel Fine moment today. I do not feel fine at all!!!!!

P.S.: I’m not a person with a vast wardrobe, but couldn’t AC360º change his shirt, or at least alternate the days?

Killer holiday

The only thing more annoying than having a holiday in the middle of the week has got to be not being able to walk around in your house.

I’ve had a problem with my closet for more than two years. The guys didn’t put it together correctly and I haven’t been able to open one of the doors because it hits the bed. My tiny bedroom doesn’t accommodate the gigantic closet custom made for my bedroom in my former flat. So, after all this time I’ve finally decided to do something about it. I gotta tell you that it takes courage to take everything out of that thing, it is in fact huge and I’ve got a lot of shit that for some reason I’m holding on to.

We contacted a guy that works for the furniture store and he agreed to come today, national holiday, and fix the damn thing once and for all. All right, beautiful. 1pm.

I spent a good one hour yesterday unloading stuff and just throwing it everywhere in the living room — also tiny. The more things I took out, the more seemed to pop up from the back of the shelves. The CDs landed on the washing machine. Shoes in the balcony. Clothes on the couch and on the hanger in the balcony. Everything not wearable basically all over the floor. For a split second it felt as if I was getting ready to move out, only missing the boxes to pack everything up. Than, it felt as if I had just moved in. Than, it felt as if I was getting new furniture and waiting for the guys to put it together.

Needless to say I went to sleep almost at the crack of dawn, woke up still feeling hammered and finished taking the things out of the bedroom — bed sheets, mattress, nightstand. Turned on the TV and no cable. Just dynamite. The house in disruption and no television to help me cheer up. Mom showed up at 12:30pm. She said, “we should call the guy.” I said, “get out of here, he’ll be here any minute.” She called the guy anyway and this was the answer he gave to the question: “Are you coming?”

— Er… No. I’m actually working for the store today, I’m at a customer’s house and will be here all afternoon. I might have an opening in a couple of days.

A COUPLE OF DAYS??? Fuck you, bastard! Why did you fucking agree to come here if your plan was not to show up at all? I got so pissed off that I just wanted to call him again and let him have it, but mom wouldn’t give me the number. So, we ended up contacting another guy who said he would try to come here tomorrow but if not possible he would sent another person. I hope this one keeps his promise. This all reminded me of Kramer’s “verbal contract” thing…

Anyway, the clothes on the couch are now in a mattressless bed and I’ll probably just get the mattress and crash in the living room. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to find clothes to wear tomorrow…

P.S.: Today’s AC360’s birthday! Yummier by the year… And he’s down there covering the oil spill, outraging images of birds and basically any form of life dying. Will this whole thing at least help a little bit raise awareness about alternative fuels?

We Feel Fine‘s randomly selected piece of story of the day: “I have been given a bit of inspiration from a fellow writer and I couldn’t shake that nagging feeling so here I am” (2 hours ago)

What’s new, Arizona?

Another boring, bureaucratic day at the school. I’ve recently complained about being very busy and teaching for many hours during immersion and I wanna say that I like teaching, but I would also like to have some 15 minutes between classes to go to the bathroom or have some water as opposed to spending five consecutive hours with one student. I started tabulating the student’s responses to the programme and the results look pretty good. And this week I’ll have two more assessments to prepare, kind of a preparation for July, I guess. And, well, I gotta confess that putting the student’s feedback together is being stalled to the last possible day. I don’t know what’s worse: having to write some 20 texts about their performance or putting up with that duchebag, piece of shit neighbour of mine. Well, this is a subject for another post.

Well, Arizona just couldn’t stand being out of the news for some other wacko piece of legislation. This time, the bill that was signed into law put an end to ethnic studies, on the premises that these classes could segregate Latinos, teaching them that they are an oppressed ethnic group and as a result this could cause them to distance themselves from whites. The superintendent of public instruction, Tom Horne, was on AC360 and said that he believes in equality and he is a supporter of all races coming together and attending the same classes, but he went on to say that the schools shouldn’t be teaching “the downers” of history and I just went, “wait a minute, buddy.”

So, according to him, a person that believes the downers of history shouldn’t be taught, World Wars I and II should be out of the history books, right?, you know, all the death and persecution. Maybe they shouldn’t teach the Inquisition anymore as well, because that just makes the Catholic church look bad… Or, maybe,  they could scratch out all the soldiers that have been killed in the two ongoing wars and focus only on the “removal of a brutal dictator”, quoting Bill O’Reilly. This is insane. From what I gather, anyone could attend these classes, if the majority happens to be Latino, so be it. Is there anything wrong in learning about their heritage which would help them understand where they came from, what their ancestors have been through and how they have contributed to the building of the country they live in? And if I may take this a little further, myself, as a Brazilian, should only learn that Princess Isabel signed the end of slavery and not that the Portuguese started the whole slavery thing and also devastated millions of miles of our forests for wood, correct?

This whole thing reminded me of this Jon Stewart piece on a committee deciding, in Texas, what should be included and banned from textbooks. Unbelievable stuff, but I guess Arizona managed to crank it up a notch. And absurd things just have a massive chain reaction, such as cities boycotting the state.

Well, enough with the downers, right? One more TEDTalk translation available — we’re on fire!!! This time, I translated this fascinating talk by Jeremy Jackson, a coral reef ecologist that explains how we have destroyed our oceans within the past 100 to 150 years. Data is alarming and the future isn’t looking any good. The reviewer that helped this eye-opening talk be published fast was Giuliano Giordano. There are three more talks lined up but I’m still waiting for the final “OK” from the translators to have them published.

A pack of Cheerios on the pavement: evacuated block

Today was a day that really, REALLY dragged on. Now that immersion classes are in a hiatus, I finally have time to do the — extremely dull —  important job of compiling student’s feedback, write evaluations and also prepare the feedback on all the teachers. So, in order to get things done without any distractions, I left my laptop at home and worked with the school’s computer. What a piece of junk. But OK, I managed to prepare the first four evaluations, on the students that had classes in Santa Cruz. As for the other, I don’t know, 15 to 20 students that still need to receive some feedback, well, I need the help from the teachers, who have been anything but helpful when it comes to respecting deadlines. Anyway, I’ll give them one more day to hand the papers in, otherwise I’ll get the papers, go to the other branches and will sit in front of them and literally watch them fill in all the tables.

So, I was watching AC360 and there was this Nic Robertson’s report on a Catholic boy from Long Island that turned into a jihadist. When Anderson was announcing the report, he said something like: … one young man journey … and before he had the chance to finish the sentence “…from altar boy to jihadist”, instantly the phrase “…from Milan to Minsk, Rochelle Rochelle…” sprang to mind! hahahahaha! Well, if anybody out there is as much of a Seinfeld fan as I am, you will understand!

While in the terror subject, there was this tweet from CNN breaking news of a new evacuation in Times Square. Very short account and strangely enough, no other news organisation reported the incident, which makes me wonder if that’s true or not. So what’s happening now is that if any moron forgets some package on the street it all turns to chaos. This is something that obviously wouldn’t happen in Brazil. An unattended package wouldn’t last five minutes, you know, UNATTENDED, because somebody would definitely take care of it — you know, grab it before you could even say “IT’S MIN…E…” Sometime ago, when I didn’t have cable and was still watching Brazilian programmes, there was this report on “how honest Brazilians are”. It was actually a research carried out in a number of state capitals — my city included — in which some objects would be left unattended. The idea was to see how long they would remain in the same place. They left a bike in Rio, Sao Paulo, Brasilia and, obviously, Porto Alegre, among other places. They actually left the bicycle in MY neighbourhood, some 10 minutes from my flat, and the bike was “taken care of” in less than 10 minutes, the country’s number 1! So much for a great neighbourhood to live in, uh? What’s really amazing, though, is that property prices in the area have spiked in the last few years, mainly because it’s near the city centre , but it also borders some of the best-known trafficking points in town. So, once again, the main picture of inequality that exists in this country.

And Lula is helping bailout Greece…

One more TEDTalk translation available in Portuguese. This time, I reviewed the talk of executive director of the Lions Aravind Institute of Community Ophthalmology, Thulasiraj Ravilla, who explains how eye surgeries are being done in patients with curable diseases in India at a low cost, helping thousands of people see again. Translated by Sueli Zardo.

Brazilian politicians…(what’s the sound for puking?)

As usual, busy week and not even half way through. To my surprise, classes have been pretty good, students are interested, participating and they seem to be having fun. I haven’t started working on next week’s schedule yet, the guy who’s coming is a 3rd-timer and he’s coming by himself — I really wished somebody else would be coming with him because classes would be waaaay easier to prepare. Actually, the activities we’re working with this week were prepared for the immersion in Santa Cruz, so a total no-brainer.

I kind of complain about not having time to finish everything that I need to do, but I must admit that I work better I get things done when working under pressure, even though I don’t like it. The thing is, I was contacted a couple of week ago by the company in Santa Cruz about translating the corporate assessment into English because folks in the headquarters in Iowa wanted to know how the employees are being assessed. They said that I could write the next evaluation that I’m doing within the next few days in both English and Portuguese, changing the name of the employee, and this one would be sent to Iowa. However, after teaching my two-hour class in the morning — brief comment: I hadn’t taught a Monday early morning class in ages, I wasn’t happy about the idea, but had nobody else for the slot — I go check my e-mails and there it is, a message entitled “****URGENT***” asking to send the translated copy until Wednesday. Just fabulous! I had started translating it last week but since there was no rush and there was a lot to be done with the immersion, I inevitably put it aside. So, I went to the school earlier to work on the translation. Even though I like translating, I can’t help but feel nervous about that, because the guys in the US will actually read what I’ve been doing here, and I’m talking about the headquarters of a big company! Well, my boss will have to take a look tomorrow before I send it, because if I go down, I’m taking everybody with me!!! LOL

Well, since I’ve mentioned translations, two more are available in Portuguese on TED website. As UK Prime Minister elections are just around the corner, I chose to review PM Gordon Brown’s and David Cameron’s talk. Gordon Brown, interviewed by TED curator Chris Anderson, talks about global ethic vs. national interest — is it possible for the leader of a country give equal consideration to people around the world as they give to their countrymen? Translation by Francisco Dubiela. Conservative Party leader David Cameron talks about giving the people, rather than the government, more power to make decisions with a little help from technology. Translation by Rodrigo Ferraz.

And even though I haven’t watched Brazilian news in a while, I couldn’t help but think of my country when I read about the House and the Senate voting down automatic pay raise and realise what a huge gap there is when it comes to politics in both countries. The two institutions in the US have shown significantly low approval ratings over the past months (I do think people over-estimate polls, but this is a topic for another post), so voting against the automatic pay raise is only natural, with some members even proposing cuts in their salaries. But in Brazil, we would never, EVER, see that happening. The Congress could be under bomb threats, riots on the streets could break out, civil war could erupt and still our congressmen and senators would give themselves a big, fat pay raise. And the most stupid, we-don’t-give-a-shit-about-you reason is that, according to constitution, their salary can go up because other politicians have seen a hike in their salaries. So, if congressmen deliberately give themselves a raise, state representatives are entitled to earn up to 75% of that amount, then city representatives are entitled to earn up to 75% of the state representative’s salary and so on. And they’re not embarrassed at all, even though millions of people don’t have sanitation and die of preventable diseases. But, honestly, who gives a shit? To make things easier to these crooks, maybe they should copy the automatic move from their American counterparts, right? Less media coverage (doesn’t really work with a lot of coverage anyway…), people would be completely unaware of how much politicians would be making, the perfect scenario to become a politician in Brazil.

I just think the population should do exactly what happened in Ukrainian parliament earlier today. Give me the eggs!

P.S.: Sanjay Gupta is filling in for AC360 during this week, and last night he actually managed to have higher ratings than last week’s shows…

P.S.2: Tomorrow is another reeeally early morning day! But be patient, only one more week to go…

Arizona bills shameful

Next week we’ll have the last immersion with two people, then just one more week with one student and that’s it, so much for Immersion Program 2009-2010. I’m guessing I’ll have a relatively ok couple of months ahead of me until it’s time for another Corporate Assessment, meaning basically two trips to Santa Cruz, correcting writing tasks, doing interviews over the phone and writing down the results. Last year I assessed 52 people between July and August and maybe 15 more until December. At some point, you don’t know what else to write. Usually the first 10 assessments are the ones that serve as models and as people have more or less the same needs depending on their command of the language, I adapt it to each employee. Otherwise I guess I’d be prepared to write the book “101 ways to write a corporate assessment”… Anyway, what surprised me earlier this week is that I was able to organise the schedule in ONE DAY! I don’t know how I could pull that one off… Well, I guess it’s because of the help of all other teachers, a couple of exceptions, but most of them helping out big time.

And the battle Stewart/O’Reilly-Fox News seems to continue. Last night, Bernie Goldberg was back on the O’Reilly Factor for a rebuttal to Stewart’s response to Bernie’s comments on Stewart’s “F*ck yourselves!” and… what? Who’s telling who off here? It reminds me of that Friends episode where Phoebe and Rachel discover that Monica and Chandler are together and Joey is in the middle, trying to keep secrets other than Hugsy, his bedtime penguin pal… “They know that we know? Oh, but they don’t know that we know they know we know…”

In politics, the bill that was passed by the Arizona Legislature about illegal immigrants is just absurd. It allows police to stop people on the street and ask for proof of identification, otherwise they can go to jail immediately. However, the question is who will be stopped on the street other than Latinos — it’s Arizona, for crying out loud –? Representatives say that only people that the police “suspect” are illegal will be asked for ID but this is vague. Plus, who’s to say that folks won’t start saying things and pointing fingers passing on information about immigrants? This is major retrocession, as big as the other bill passed by the same state of Arizona — what’s the problem with those guys? — that now the candidate that wants to be in the state ballot for presidential election or re-election must produce their birth certificate. The Republican representative Cecil Ash was on AC360º last night and said this was just another way to show a candidate’s qualification for the job, but nobody has ever asked the 43 former presidents to do such a thing, why right now? As AC360 said “the birthers are back” and it’s fucking ridiculous, and it even promotes some crazy bastards and their delusional thoughts. It was an interesting interview last night, by the way.

Yesterday was a holiday and got to stay at home and do some stuff. However, I woke up not feeling so well. Major sore throat and feverish. That reminded me of the talk I’d had with my co-worker on Tuesday. I was at home, getting ready to go to work when I received this text from my colleague, saying he’d had a dream about me the night before and that I wasn’t well healthwise. Needless to say I started looking for lumps and feeling tumors growing in my brain. A little later we bumped into each other at work and I told him I was fine as far as I knew but had now grown suspicious of it. He said it wasn’t his intention to raise any alarms but the damage had been done. Well, 24 hours later there I was, waking up not feeling my best. I DO hope that’s the connection with the dream…

Anyway, not feeling 100%, what I did was to stay at home and catch up with the news. Watched some CNN but then decided to turn to Jornal do Almoço, a couple of months after having convinced myself it wasn’t a show worth watching at all, maybe the weather forecast only, but still pretty lamely delivered. I watched the programme for some 20 minutes and it had NO news value whatsoever the entire time. First, they spent a few minutes talking about football and giving the same information that would be given half hour later, during the SPORTS show that follows! Then, there was this interview with Marcelo Dourado, Big Brother Brasil winner and, frankly, a douchebag. After, there was another interview with a psychic that is in the state touring cities and probably giving some psychic advice to the psychos out there. I must tell you that watching that programme was as painful as watching Fox & Friends in the morning.

What’s going on, AC?

As I expected, this week’s been brutal. Yesterday I worked for 9 hours (as opposed to the 6 I’m expected to work…), half of them in classroom not because I’m understaffed, but because I’ve no staff at all. And also as I expected, the guys that are here for the third time couldn’t be more bored — since their English is so fucking perfect… — and for literally one hour, the time they were supposed to finalize one project to be presented right after and be discussing options with one another, they were mute, no sound at all. I only knew they were alive because of the keystrokes on the laptop, but I gotta be honest that at one point I thought I’d have to poke one of them to wake him up.

Anyway… I got so sick and tired that I literally got sick. I don’t know if it’s the sandwiches I’ve been having — they taste pretty good, though… — that made me feel like that. I cancelled my phone classes in lunchtime and called in sick. The school’s coordinator will fill in for me. I also have these recurring headaches, maybe because I’m not eating properly. I don’t remember the last time I had a “real meal”, you know, rice and beans, some meat and vegetables. Well, but I know when I’ll have it again, next Friday, since I’m taking the students to lunch.

So, having this forced day off made it possible to watch/read the news. For me Twitter is the best way to get updated since everything is there. As I was scrolling down, there was this AC360’s tweet announcing his guest for the night: Demi Moore will be interviewed tonight about Haiti’s situation — she’s just got back from there — and I went: what?!? Ok, I watch the show every night and will keep watching it until the day it ceases to exist — not a far-off possibility, let’s face it… — but it seems lately that AC360’s main reporters are celebrities. First, Sean Penn, who’s been in Haiti and constantly appears on the show, then Dr. Phil is on talking about bullying and child abuse, and now Demi Moore? Couldn’t he get Michelle Obama on the show? Yesterday the Big 360 Interview was with Chelsea Handler, who’s very funny, I watch her show on E! every weekend, but… come on! No wonder the other channels beat him big time… I’m sure that their interviews do not involve Sinead O’Connor talking about the catholic church… for two segments… via Skype or whatever… But I guess the topper was when he brought Cheech Marin to talk about his loss on Jeopardy and talked to the guy for 5 minutes…

Another thing is the repetition. Last week’s story about the adopted Russian boy who was sent back to Russia by himself by his American family was incredible, for sure. It was all over the news and certainly would be on AC360, since he had shown a few months ago a Gary Tuchman’s report on this ranch in Montana that helps violent adopted children, many of them from Russia. So, instead of doing a follow-up on the story, showing how the boy is doing right now, he showed the same fucking story!!! For the third time in the last, I don’t know, five or six months!!!

I’m not sure what’s going on there, I don’t know if the show will be changed, if the guy will continue to report the news, if it will be more of an interview show, but I can tell you I’m not enjoying it…

Well, but one thing that I REALLY enjoyed was Jon Stewart mocking Glenn Beck on The Daily Show aired March 18. This was perhaps the funniest moment on television ever…

P.S.: Fair and balanced? How can O’Reilly say that nobody at Fox News has ever mentioned jail time for those who don’t get health insurance? unbelievable…