Posts Tagged ‘news headlines’
Tit Tat
Being inclined toward contrarianism, I frequently find myself wishing for some version of equivalent retaliation against news making headlines. I’m rarely successful in coming up with anything that fits just right but that doesn’t stop my urge to imagine a good counterpunch.
What would the opposite of Russian-driven falsehoods about American politicians look like? What could Americans make up about Russian leaders that would have any equivalence? I’ve seen a lot of parodies of a bare-chested Putin in various situations, but they never feel as if they are the least bit influential.
How about a flip of stories about “millions” of criminal immigrants flowing unchecked across our borders? I’d like to see a flood of online shares about news of an equal number of unsavory Americans invading Iceland and demanding more gas and convenience stores be built along the ring road.
Here’s one that proves how futile this whole contrarian mindset is for me: campaign lawn signs. I practice the complete opposite. I don’t post any signs on our property. Ha! I sure showed them!
Doesn’t work.
The best I can come up with is countering hateful news and actions with pure love.
In a way, it doesn’t work either. Not without extra effort. Loving people can be a lot like not putting out lawn signs. Who really notices? How does it make an influential point like a good meme image with a catchy turn of phrase might?
I need to put in mental energy to overcome my desire for instant gratification of exposing objectionable acts or intentions and redirect that urge to induce a loving smile and beams of hopeful goodness upon deserved targets.
Because the world deserves better.
Plus, after I send out that love, I can still imagine miscreants slipping on a banana peel in front of people they were trying to impress. Lovingly, I mean.
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Idle Pursuits
Yesterday was a rather quiet week on the Ranch. It probably felt like a week-long day because I chose to accomplish almost nothing industrious or ambitious. I ended the day in the time warp of nighttime broadcast television where there were endless commercials for shows scheduled to happen well in the future between occasional action of the NFL’s Monday Night Football game.
In the afternoon, I accomplished an incredibly luscious nap that included some fascinating dream sequences. Can’t buy that, even during Christmas sales.
I may have accidentally noticed some crazy news headlines that hint at more similarities today to situations occurring in the time before and during WWII than any human should be comfortable tolerating.
From what I keep seeing, plenty of town criers are hollering warnings but nowhere do I find definitive action being taken. Talk is cheap, another world war will be more expensive than any of us want to imagine.
Regarding my brilliant idea to have people smarter than me come to mark the power wires leading to the barn, I learned they don’t do “private” lines, only public utilities.
I’m back to my own ingenuity but it won’t happen until the ground re-thaws again in the next few days. The last two nights brought us hard freezes and yesterday the temps didn’t climb anywhere near thawing.
I’ve put away my jigsaw puzzles to make room on the big table for craft projects. One of Santa’s elves is knocking herself out with above and beyond effort making beautiful toys for girls and boys.
It’s the holiday season 🎶
And Santa Claus is coming ‘round
I won’t continue with those lyrics because the next line has something to do with Christmas snow and I don’t want to lie.
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Feeling Crummy
Imagine you have been out of town, traveling on a commercial airline, attending graduation events with throngs of others who have traveled from far and wide and you arrive home feeling less than your best in the third year of a pandemic.
Out of an excess of caution, Cyndie chose to wear a mask when she got home until she verifies by test whether she was feeling crummy because of the dreaded virus or simply some other easily possible reason. Allergies? Travel fatigue?
A nap was enough to get her out walking the dog and pulling some dreaded invasive garlic mustard plants while I was trimming and hauling away more branches from the lower portion of evergreen trees along the driveway.
I can never tell when she is truly ill because she tends to maintain her activities regardless.
After catching up with some news headlines, I was feeling kind of crummy until I happened upon the tidbit about the small trial for cancer treatment that resulted in an unheard-of complete remission in all patients.
Imagine hoping your treatment protocol might help some patients and then learning it made tumors vanish in all 18 participants.
I believe that would be the opposite of feeling crummy.
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Thinking Contrarily
The coronavirus variants are causing the pandemic to not go away as much as people wished it would. When not worried about a wildfire or flash floods ravaging homes, the threat of COVID continues to linger large in people’s minds. Some folks have decided to think contrarily about protecting themselves from the virus. Instead of accepting a free vaccine that is the prevailing solution for the pandemic, they decide to pay someone for a livestock dewormer.
Instead of thinking about how to protect their children from a threatening contagious illness by wearing a mask indoors, they choose to focus on how oppressive it is to be told to wear a mask and begin imagining that wearing a mask is actually harmful to their kids.
I get it. I have contrarian tendencies, myself. I choose to wear my belt so the buckle is on my side instead of front and center. Because, why not?
I’m wondering if the concept of virus variants prolonging the pandemic couldn’t contrarily be applied to variants of love that can improve the health and well-being of the human race.
What if oppressive regimes the world over were to become influenced by a new variation of love that morphed into one that overwhelmed their pillars of greed, power, and control?
What if a new mutation of common sense were to evolve and imbue the minds of people who have difficulty thinking for themselves or find it hard to recognize when a grifter is fleecing them?
What if domestic house cats overcame their urge to bother sleeping humans during the wee hours of darkness when sleep is so precious? Okay, that one is really a stretch, but there could be some variation of that tendency that is less crazy-making, couldn’t there? Please?
If thinking contrarily about controversial subjects can lead to some insane results, it seems only logical, being a contrarian, that thinking contrarily about non-controversial subjects could lead to some increasingly sensible and practical results.
A contrary decision to something good doesn’t have to be bad. It could contrarily be better than good!
Let’s put our contrarian tendencies to good use and find new ways to morph love into a continually more effective influence on the world at large.
Let love be the world religion. No dogma. No doctrine. Just L. O. V. E.
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I want to hear about variants of love that are more contagious than any previous love we experienced before.
Let it command the lead story of newscasts and fill front-page headlines.
Unstoppable spread of unbelievably contagious love!
Contrary to the norm, let it be that people grow to respond with more fascination and interest to headlines like these than to the negative stories of old.
Can you say, “enlightenment?”
Oh, you contrarian, you.
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Relative Something 