Does it ever strike you that there’s a great big world out there and you’ve seen hardly any of it?

Oh, maybe you’ve been to Disney World or Niagara Falls, or the Grand Canyon. I’m talking about spending time in places away from those tourist traps, as marvelous as they might be the first time you see them.

What about Europe or Asia or the Middle East? What about, at least, reading a book in which you might meet a character or two that aren’t like you? Different skin color, different way of speaking, different religion, if you consider yourself a religious person.

I guess what I’m getting at is that there are many of us who refuse to do our homework, make the effort, refuse to leave the nest and admit that there is more than one valid way to understand the world, to look at life, to make it through the day with your head up and your humanity intact.

I’m not fascinated by ignorant people. I don’t feel sorry for them anymore, if I ever did. I’m tired of them now, beyond annoyed by them, because they seem like caricatures, like they can’t be real. And they are the way they are, in part, because they’ve never ventured beyond the zip code they grew up in. They’ve had the bad luck of being stuck, of listening to the wrong people for too long, being told one too many times that life is hard and no one cares and someone else is always to blame.  

I’m not sure how this all fits with the people we elect to Congress. Many of them are well heeled and well traveled, and yet they say things that make you wonder how big their world really is, if they have the capacity to see, to learn, to think for themselves or muster even a small amount of compassion.

It takes all kinds, I hear. But not if some of those kinds are just ignorant assholes. Some peoples’ stories need to have more chapters.

Super Bowl fifty-something. Yea. It actually could be one of the best ever.

Or it could just be the latest drubbing at the hands of the Eagles, if Nick Sirianni and Co. figure out a way to contain Patrick Mahomes. If they can’t, then it might be a good game, maybe even a great game.

Then afterwards, we can all go back to wondering what else is flying at high altitudes and invading our airspace, along with keeping tabs on the seeds of WWIII being planted in Ukraine and elsewhere.

It’s both funny and sad that people in the public eye, people who have molded and cultivated public personas and a certain reputation, have to think twice about what they say before they open their mouths to speak.

Heaven forbid they tell it like it is when they’re put on the spot. Instead, they have to calculate, weigh consequences, weigh the risk of being knocked off some pedestal because of the way they phrased something, or, in a moment of “weakness,” spoke their mind, thus losing things they’ve worked to achieve.

It becomes a risk to be honest, because it may lead to a disastrous drubbing on social media or more traditional media that tanks their chances of working in Hollywood anymore, or whatever else they’d stand to lose.

Too many concessions and compromises. People are too worried about leading nice, neat lives. It’s not about being considerate of other people. It’s more about losing one’s place in the public eye, losing status and position and opportunity.

Madonna has a new face, and it is being hailed/excoriated as a “provocation.”

So, does this mean she’s done it on purpose to get a rise out of people? That Madonna… she’s always pushing the envelope.

Or is it really just plastic surgery gone awry, and what we’re seeing is a pathetic rationalizing of an attempt to put the brakes on the aging process?

My opinion? It didn’t work. It hardly ever works! And now it’s just funny, in a pathetic sort of way.

The SOTU was memorable from an “audience participation” standpoint. Leave it to Marjorie Taylor Greene and others to dumb everything down.

Poor Kevin McCarthy and his class clowns. One could almost feel bad for him for occupying a seat that is pretty much always on camera, having to gesture to his unruly charges to act like adults. This is democracy in action, though.

It must be difficult to see a person for whom you have little respect standing in the bully pulpit and saying things that grate on your nerves. Apparently all that’s left you is to try and steal the spotlight and act like second grade dunces.

The numbers are all over the place. CNN puts the earthquake death toll at 9000. USA Today has it at 15000, while the LA Times has published an article that says 16000 people have perished in the earthquakes. In a way, the numbers don’t matter anymore.

The people in that region have suffered a terrible event. They’re stunned, their lives have been turned upside down. They need the most basic of things. It has to be a shock to everyone’s system.

Vladimir Putin probably won’t even notice. Or maybe, in a moment of irony and calculation, he will send relief to the region.

“Unprecedented” gets used a lot in the media, along with “breaking news” and “traumatized” and “devastated.”

One could easily get the idea that hyperbole rules, that no one can handle anything anymore, no one possesses an adequate vocabulary or even a modicum of coping skills. We’re all just raw bundles of nerves, apparently, ready to lash out and assume the worst, conditioned not to think before we speak.

Yikes.

Blame it on Fox News, blame it on NBC if you want. The media in general have a knack for this pants-on-fire tactic. It’s all about clicks and viewership numbers. So, anything goes.

Was it the same when Cronkite was sitting in the anchor chair? Is Edward R. Murrow rolling in his grave?

Is there a cadre, a cabal, a circle jerk of so-called world leaders conspiring to bring us down?

One might think that, by this point in our evolutionary journey, or at least by the power of observation of what has come before and learning from our mistakes, we as a species might be moving away from harboring a desire for world domination and war. But apparently not.

There will always be, as Bertrand Russell observed, official gentlemen, living luxurious lives, mostly stupid, and all without imagination or heart who cannot envision a world where their philosophies, their dreams of conquest do not hold sway, are not acted upon, and are wholly refuted by the masses.

Sadly, we must have some miles to travel yet. There seems to be little hurry to walk upright.

What’s the fascination with body counts? The earthquake in Syria and Turkey is horrible, yet we stand by waiting, and maybe perversely hoping, that the death toll will go higher? Thousands of human lives snuffed out in the blink of an eye, in grotesque ways, and we await news of higher numbers like it’s some sort of notable achievement.

I guess it’s a frame of reference, or something. Another way of grasping the magnitude of the disaster besides 7.8.

And 7.5.

I couldn’t give less of a shit about the best and worst looks on the red carpet at the Grammys. I’m sure some are absolutely apoplectic over these fashion faux pas.

We have the corner on distractions and fluff in this country.