Is it important?

I've been bouncing silence off the walls, to see if it echoes.

It does.

I have been paying a lot of attention to the news, lately, just seeing hwat's going on in the world. Am I the only person who doesn't care who fathered a chunky ex-playboy bunny's baby? Anna Nicole Smith's case is a waste of billions of dollars of paper and airwave technology. Anyone who cares is part of the problem that we have real problems that are not being addressed. Any journalist asked to read a sotry about her on the air who wishes to still be able to look at themselves in the mirror should just walk off camera.

Adam "PacMan" Jones has been suspended by the NFL. I met him, when he played for WVU. Seemed nice enough. He used to come into the little convenience store that now advertises itself as "Beer Pong Headquarters", at the corner of Willowdale and Stewart Street,and buy a cigar the night before home football games. The clerk there told me it was a ritual he had. Maybe she was exaggerating, but he had just walked in, asked her to pick him one out of a particular box, and seemed pleased with her diligence.

Again, is it important?

Not in the least. When gas is ten dollars a gallon and everyone knows at least one family that has lost a son or daughter, father or mother, brother or sister or cousin or uncle or aunt, as we throw good lives into a war we had no business going into to begin with and China and India invade Russia and the Middle East, looking for water because the Himalayan glaciers are gone and nukes begin to fly...will it matter?

No. But at least we had fun ignoring it with trivialities. Our epitaph, to whomever or whatever remains to read it, will be "They got distracted".