Monday, May 5, 2008

Conceited Douchebaggery

Before I get into my next baseless rant, I have two quick updates.

First - Megan presented her paper at the conference last week, and she did a fantastic job. Now her semester is complete and it's time for her to have an opportunity to relax. Congratulations, Megan!

Second - The parking lot resurfacing project at my apartment building was finished at some point yesterday. As I was getting home after 10 pm Thursday night, I was fully expecting to have to park on the street again, but shockingly, the lot was reopened and there were plenty of open spaces. Thankfully, I didn't have to get up before 6 again to move my car.

Now that the updates are complete - time for some good old fashioned ranting!

There is one group of people that I have absolutely no respect for. These people are so full of themselves and their own puffed up worthless profession that they feel that they have the right to impose their will onto an entire population of people. I'm not talking about politicians or University professors - but rather television weathermen. People have survived storms without the aid of these morons since man originated on this planet. Now, in the technological breakthrough era, if people can't recognize the sound of the sirens that sound when a tornado has been sighted and then know head to the basement, then they probably do not deserve to survive the storm. It's not that difficult and overtaking a television station's programming is completely unnecessary.

Here is a perfect example of this douchebaggery - Megan and I were enjoying a nice evening with Chinese takeout and attempting to watch the Thursday night comedy lineup including 30 Rock and The Office. It is a cloudy night and storms had been predicted. Neither of us mind the potential of thunderstorms, the windows are open. Apparently, within the Kansas City area, clouds that have the potential of spinning have appeared This is the universal cue to every local station to switch into their own sensationalized version of the doomsday that is about to arrive in the form of mild rain and wind - the likes of which haven't been seen in centuries... or realistically, a few weeks. So, instead of being entertained by the antics of Michael Scott or Liz Lemon, we are forced to endure the pain of watching an obese imbecile in an ill fitting suit informing us of the dangers of a storm forty miles away from our present location.

I'm sorry, it's difficult to have respect for a "profession" when they can be wrong 100% of the time and still retain the position. Would you go to a surgeon that had even a 10% error rate? I can get all the information I need from the Weather Channel's website and information about any dangerous situation can be transmitted to me through a little box with color coded county maps indicating the severity of the storm. Oh wait, all the networks have had that capability from the inception of color transmission. What is the point in breaking in and not showing the programming promised through the network? There can be only one reason - conceit. They love to hear themselves talk and they love to know that they can control the airwaves. In reality, they are nothing and can be replaced with the color coded map. Worthless.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

yes, except if they didn't break in on television shows to warn people of impending danger, everyone would blame the weather people or news stations for not warning them in a timely fashion.

Congratulations to Megan!

Andrew said...

That's what the box in the corner of the screen shows - impending danger. They can break in if there is an actual threat, but they don't need to take over and hold the network hostage until every single warning in the vicinity have all expired - this was a two hour hijacking and nothing drastic happened.

Miss Jodi said...

I've noticed that our weatherman sits behind his desk now when reporting major storms. I'm convinced that the reason he has to do that is because he's so excited about what's going on that standing up might be embarrassing for him...

Andrew said...

That is a definite possibility.