So as it turns out, writing something every day is hard.
Most of the time, something I do or see during the day
touches off something in my brain, forcing it to shake off 26 years of dust and
Sonic the Hedgehog trivia to actually operate the way brains are supposed to.
The “hot takes” post was the result of conversation my roommate and I had
yesterday about some dumb radio hosts he used to work with. The Rocky post
obviously came on the heels of seeing Creed
in theaters. The Jeopardy!/Wheel of Fortune post came to be after watching an episode of – you guessed it – The Bachelor. (It’s a-RAINING BEN!
HALLELUJAH!)
But some days, you just don’t have it. In those instances, I
like to scour the news for stories I’ve missed or weird stuff I would never
think to look for. Because I’m a good millennial, that means Google News.
Sorry, *insert name of local news establishment here.*
Nothing really jumped out at me as I sifted through the
front page: I didn’t read anything too in-depth, but I think someone named
Charlie Hebdo made it to the Baseball Hall of Fame or something. (They’ll let anyone in ahead of Bonds and Clemens, I
guess) Something caught my eye on the left side of the screen, though: a list
of suggested subjects for me, with a few interesting subjects at the top.
For those who are unfamiliar, Brookside is a somewhat
sketchy area in the southern part of my current place of residence, Newark, DE.
Mark Wahlberg is a prominent actor and precursor to Channing Tatum who maybe
kinda sorta suggested that he would’ve stopped that whole September 11th thing from happening if he just hadn’t cancelled his flight plans at the last
minute.
It’s somewhat puzzling that Google believes I’m the kind of
person who reads more news about Brookside and Marky Mark’s Trumpian claims
than I do news about “the world” and “the United States.” Nevertheless, I’m of
the mind that nobody knows me better than an increasingly intrusive
multinational technology corporation, so I took the plunge. After all, there
are plenty of similarities between the two subjects: Brookside’s hippest bar,
Two Stones, shares rent space with a Great Clips, while Mark Wahlberg once
stated that “[t]here would have been a lot of blood” aboard American Airlines Flight
11 had he, Mark Wahlberg, been aboard to save the day. You can see the thought
process here.
Surprisingly, very little of note is going on in Brookside
these days! The only story that appeared upon clicking the link was a Delaware News Journal story about a shooting that police are still investigating. The
final two graphs are, in order, a list of police department phone numbers and a
description of the Christmas decorations in the neighborhood, proving once
again the importance of the inverted pyramid. If only Mark Wahlberg were there
to wrest the gun from the hands of the cold-blooded attackers…
Speaking of Wahlberg, there are many, many more articles
about home. Most focus on his terrible-looking movie Stepdads….er, Daddy’s Home,
starring Will Ferrell as, well, you get it. In the trailers I’ve been bombarded
with as a result of my crippling television habit, Wahlberg offers his kids $20
for their affection, which is perhaps about the price of the change fee he must
have paid when he tragically switched his flight on September 11, 2001. I’ll
bet Wahlberg looks at that $20 bill after the scene ends and weeps for America.
The other articles are end-of-year lists of the best and
worst movies of 2015. Shockingly, Wahlberg’s other laugh-riot, Ted 2, is on several lists of the year’s worst films. As you likely know, the movie stars Wahlberg and his best friend,
an anthropomorphic teddy bear from his youth named Peter Griffin. Wahlberg’s
attraction to his childhood toys as an adult likely comes from a desire to
return to a time of innocence, a time before he had to think about how he could
have safely landed the plane that was headed straight for the Twin Towers…if
only he’d been there.
So there you have it. The news I need to know, as suggested
by Google News. Thanks, Google. Your slogan may say “Don’t be evil,” but your
actions say “We need to reconsider how we use search history to suggest news
stories to Chrome users.”
Note: I was being sarcastic earlier when I joked about the local news establishment. Obviously, I know that the main news outlet here in Delaware is MSNBSea, anchored by Tom Jumbo-Grumbo.
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