The Importance of Being Egotistic

Today I found myself stuck watching some morning "news" show while I waited in the lobby of my car dealer. The claim of the rental car girl that "They're bringing a lot of cars around front right now, " was slowly turning into "They're bringing a lot of cars around front sometime before noon." So I was sitting and dividing my time between Miss Mary Sunshine and her semi-attractive middle-aged co-star and the toy model of a BMW X5.

Some guy with a newspaper of some sort was watching with me, and snorting in derision while Mary talked about some potbelly pigs somewhere in Chicago.

"They really don't have a lot of news do they?" The woman who was sitting opposite newspaper guy said.

"I'm waiting for them to start talking about what's really important!" Newspaper guy cried. "This here will be the end of oil in America, they're taxing terrorists..." I only heard about half of his blather, I was too busy trying to crane my neck far enough to see the headline on his rag. And it was a rag...it even had glossy paper...no newsprint in sight.

This is about the time I started dividing my attention between the toy X5, the potbelly pigs, and my new found need to classify reading material by their actual material. It's not really and newspaper unless it leaves dirty black ink all over your hands and is too cumbersome to read comfortably. Somehow my own personal fantasy about newspapers and the mess they make took enough time that I found myself suddenly alone with Newspaper guy in the lobby.

He looked at me. I stared at the pigs. He looked at me again. I glared at the pigs. He scooted closer to me.

I moved my purse to sit between us.

He got the message and moved back to his other chair.

Then he looked at me some more. "You're not really watching this are you?"

"Nope, they're just pigs."

He nodded and mumbled about needing to see the "real" news. He kept on about the end of oil in America and terrorists. His snorts were much louder and somehow much more pompous now that he was in control of the fancy remote control. He waved the news-thing around to make a point about how American news doesn't talk about the real important stuff. I caught stuff like "ignorant" and "biased" and "monkey" Meanwhile I watched to see what he thought was real news. CNN? Fox? MSNBC? CSPAN? Was he conservative? Liberal? Libertarian? Did he want world news or domestic? Was he a pure story guy or someone who only watched analysts? Did he enjoy John Stewart?

Probably not, he was wearing a polo shirt after all.

Instead he stopped on a channel with old pictures of Britney Spears dancing in various states of undress.

Which is obviously more important than the end of oil in America and terrorism put together. And way real.