There is plenty of bad news to go around these days and even when there is good news, like say when a firefighter saves someone’s life from a burning building, you can easily put a negative spin on it. Okay, the firefighter article is just an incredibly funny Onion article that I’ve been meaning to post about for a while now but if you’ve been paying attention to current events, its overall negative and despairing tone just fits.
If you have not heard by now, the busted Gulf well has been capped but it took BP over three months to do so and who knows if / when my kids will be eating fresh Bayou seafood in the future. The Gray Lady features an article today titled A Spill Into the Psyche, and a Respite which talks about how
more than [it being] an environmental catastrophe, the disaster playing out in the gulf has become a festering reminder of the disarray afflicting so many areas of national life, from the cancerous political culture to the crisis of unemployment to an intractable war in Afghanistan, seemingly impervious to whatever plans are dreamed up in Washington.
Fun stuff that definitely touches a nerve, and it doesn’t even include immigration, the environment, the nascent green sector, etc. Great.
Now let’s talk about the crisis of unemployment that was mentioned in that quote above. The Gray Lady featured about two weeks ago an article about the life and times of Scott Nicholson, a semi-recent grad who is having a tough go at landing a “decent” full-time job. This hyper qualified and brow beaten yet still hopeful millennial (which means he is somewhere between the ages of 18 and 29) faces a 14% unemployment rate which approaches the levels for his age group that was present during the Great Depression. Even more fun than the oil spill is a generation imperiled.
So, what is fun that we can talk about? How about that “Inception” took in over $60 million this weekend which once again proves that Nolan just nails it, time and time again. The one thing this sad world needs right now is a nice distraction and this piece of work should do the trick. The last time I had a new born around, I was able to find time to fit in a midnight IMAX “The Dark Knight” showing and somehow I have a feeling that I’ll be finding time to see another late night Nolan flick this time around as well.