I am from planet WHEREAMI

I think everyone gets to this point.  At some point, you look around you and notice that you are totally from a different planet.  Nobody thinks like you, looks like you, likes what you like, listens to what you do ... NOBODY.  Some people get to this point when they are 14 or 22 or entering puberty or moving to a new place or marrying into a new family or something like that.  Not me.  I got to this point gradually, over a period of a few years.  And my time has come.  Countdown to total isolation.  Boo. 

I don't use Twitter.  I don't like Twilight.  I don't think the President is too liberal OR too conservative.  I don't give a fuck where LeBron James plays basketball next year.  I don't watch any housewives of any state or county or city.  I hate cable news.  I don't think that the free market is the end-all solution to all problems.  I don't like to watch people yelling or fighting or fucking or gossiping or falling down drunk with a fake tan on TV.  I like soccer and hockey and baseball.  Football is cool, but college football is getting lamer by the minute.  I don't own a smartphone.  I don't CARE AT ALL where you are or why you are there or what you will be doing this weekend or who will be there or what it was like when you left or what shoes you bought or how sad you are today or how that one person whose name you won't say on facebook is just the worst friend/girlfriend/boyfriend/boss/employee/waiter/busdriver/husband/wife/mother-in-law EVER.  I like the kind of drama that wells up when someone overcomes an obstacle, not the kind that is created by chance-meetings or alcohol or fashion fauxpas.  And (with the exception of my close friends and family) I AM THE ONLY PERSON IN AMERICA WHO FEELS THIS WAY.

I imagine a time in the future when some person wants to know what Life In America was like in 2010.  I picture that person watching a documentary or reading a book (who am I kidding, though, they will probably be watching it on their face on some kind of weird iHead contraption that gets wi-fi faster than you can think actual thoughts).  What would that documentary/book/wiki article/iHead video say?  Will it talk about Real Housewives and Jersey Shore?  Will it talk about King James' decision to stay with Cleveland or go the fuck to Miami?  Will it talk about Sarah Palin and oil spills or Al Gore and massages?  Will it show tweets and facebook posts and TMZ and Lindsay Lohan crying and some people talking shit about each other on Top Chef?  Will it show Tea-bagger rallies and Glen Beck screaming and Generals resigning?  I think of this and realize that I cannot identify with any of those things right now.  Granted, the oil spill as a national disaster is concerning and I hope and pray that people are able to clean up the mess and find ways to avert a disaster like that in the future.  But the coverage of the oil spill and the political posturing on both sides makes me ill.  Still, none of the other 'hot topics' of 2010 so far resonate with me as a human, a citizen, a woman, a person, or an Idahoan.  NONE.  This makes me feel like I must be from a different planet.  Or, I am getting really, really, old.  But it can't be that, because Tea-baggers are really old and they fucking love yelling and fighting and shouting and Sarah Palin and cable news.

What is it?  What could make me feel totally out of touch with everything that I read and see and listen to?  One theory is that "the media" thinks that is what I want.  It thinks that I want to watch people scream at each other or call the President a communist.  It thinks that I care what a no-name representative from South Carolina thinks about the oil spill clean-up efforts.  It doesn't want to tell me the FACTS about the oil spill clean-up effort.  It wants me to know what some old white dude thinks about it, because what he thinks is so crazy outrageous, it just HAS to be reported.  REALLY???  Is this what people want?  Do they really want to see screaming and fighting and superficiality and uninformed opinion?  Do they really want information that is all guess-work and no check-work?  REALLY?

The conglomeration of entertainment and news and profit and hype has resulted in one big garbled pile of garbage that occasionally spews out pictures of (ugh) Justin Bieber and Nancy Pelosi on the same news cycle.  The stench has seeped into sports broadcasting, as well.  This week, ESPN will broadcast a ONE HOUR televised event for LeBron to announce where he would be signing as a free agent.  The ad proceeds will go to the Boys and Girls Club, but, come on, man!  It is SUMMER TIME.  People should be outside enjoying themselves, not sitting in front of the TV for AN HOUR to watch some guy they have never met tell them what his next job will be.  But that is what sports is now.  Sports talk shows are spectacle, opinion, hype, and total speculation.  Nobody knows anything.  Everybody thinks something.  Or, they believe it.  Same diff.  We see stories about sports star's divorces, affairs, financial situations, political leanings, and spats in the dugout and locker room before we ever see who actually won the god-damned game.  We spend months watching reporters follow around a diva in a Vikings jersey to see if he wants to play football again.  The news doesn't ever happen.  We don't hear about actual breaking news.  We watch the news DRAG on and on and on and on for weeks and weeks until the thing that we want to know is so watered down with hype and opinion and speculation that we don't give a rat's ass anymore.  We don't care who won the game.  We don't care about the oil spill. 

I don't know.  I have been feeling this way for a long time, and maybe I just don't know where to look for news and information anymore.  NPR does a great job, I suppose.  Like yesterday, when they interviewed a man who worked on a North Carolina vineyard.  (Transcript here:  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128365796) On his vineyard is a grape vine called the Mother Vine, which had been producing grapes for over 400 years.  A power company employee doing work near the vineyard recently sprayed a small portion of the vine with herbicide.  As a result, the Mother Vine began to die.  The story detailed the vine's recovery, explaining how scientists from NC State and the Department of Agriculture devoted endless hours of their time to helping the vine survive.  The man, whose father owns the vineyard, sounded hopeful and thankful.  He wasn't screaming or shouting about the power company, or blaming the government for his problems.  Rather, he was touting the benefits of cooperation to preserve the way of life, history and culture of his profession.  It was interesting and inspiring and I liked it.  It is stories like this, the simple ones, that inspire me in 2010.  Stories of cooperation, growth, and hope.  Those stories are still largely missing from the media landscape.  It is all doom and gloom and lowest-common denominator bullshit that clogs our airwaves and keeps us just distracted enough not to get involved and be a part of our society in concrete ways.  After all, what is the point of getting involved if everything is shot to shit?  It may sound like a conspiracy theory, but these days, I'll take anything--even alien abductions--to make me feel sane.  After all, I am from a different planet.