They're Selling Postcards of the Hanging

I'm not going to ask for your forgiveness, folks. I'm just going to say this...I'm back.

WITH.

A.

VENGEANCE.

Look for the posting to begin with a fury not seen since bloggers tried to expose the conspiracies surrounding the Kennedy Assassination. (Quick insight: It was Roger McDowell. Kramer taught everyone that.)

Past Reading

Manning: A Father, His Sons, and a Football Legacy by Archie Manning, Peyton Manning and John Underwood

Two TV Sets and Two Cadillac Cars, You Know It Ain't Gonna Help Me At All

This is what we get with a culture raised on the combined diet of quick cuts of Sesame Street, Nintendo, and the internet.

Mr. Brotherton, the consultant, wrote in an e-mail message that it was customary now for professionals to lay BlackBerrys or iPhones on a conference table before a meeting — like gunfighters placing their Colt revolvers on the card tables in a saloon. “It’s a not-so-subtle way of signaling ‘I’m connected. I’m busy. I’m important. And if this meeting doesn’t hold my interest, I’ve got 10 other things I can do instead.’ ”

Don't get me wrong, though. I know that in a few months, I'm going to be handed a Blackberry during my initial days on the job and from there on out it is going to be a constant source of information and distraction. It just seems that we've lost something when we adopt the "entertain me or else" mindset that seems so prevalent in the continued upheaval of the technological age.

Current Reading
An Unfinished Life: John F. Kennedy 1917-1963 by Robert Dallek

Things That Remind Him: "Life Has Been Good"

Despite describing yesterday's post as "lame", Mr. Jeremy Masten is the latest victor in the Song of the Day contest after naming "Paperback Writer" by the Beatles as the Sunday Song of the Day. I must be getting soft to tolerate that kind of insubordination, but I'm chalking it up to a weekend traveling to and from Abilene.

It sounded like a Geraldo Rivera TV stunt.

An old safe is discovered in a Dallas courthouse. Once opened, its contents reveal a secret cache of files related to the death of President John F. Kennedy. There is an assassin's gun holster, brass knuckles and a transcript of a "smoking gun" conversation to kill the president.

To top it off, the existence of the safe and its contents are revealed in a news conference on Presidents Day. It wasn't a Geraldo stunt, but a dead-serious Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins talking about what he discovered locked in a safe on the 10th floor of the Frank Crowley Courts Building.

"Newly Discovered JFK Assassination Items Revealed" by David Tarrant of the Dallas Morning News.

It might just be my pre-existing aversion to conspiracy theories, but today's press conference in Dallas detailing the release of information related to the assassination of JFK doesn't seem to shed any new light on the historic event. Yes, in case you were wondering, I was also the kid who did not become paranoid when we watched a video during my junior year of high school asking whether we actually landed on the moon instead of a lonely stretch of desert in the American West.

It's not because I claim to possess any type of ability to sift through all of the conflicting arguments and viewpoints surrounding the great conspiracy theories in American history, but because I believe in the power of the blabbermouth. That great figure who cannot keep quiet when they hold the answer to a question that has confounded others for years.

I find it very, very hard to believe that if someone knew that Jack Ruby and Lee Harvey Oswald actually did meet to discuss the impending assassination of President Kennedy that we would not have known that fact for 45 years. Oliver Stone doesn't even dream up scenarios that far-fetched.

In the age of the 24 (and shrinking) hour news cycle, anyone and everyone is out there combing the countryside for the answers to those eternal questions:

• Is Nessie really swimming out there in the Loch?
• Is Jimmy Hoffa really buried under one of the endzones at the Meadowlands?
• Why is Nickelback a commercially successful band?
• Why is there no Betty Rubble in Flintstones vitamins?

Just like someone trying to determine the number of licks it takes to get to the center of a Tootsie Pop, the world may never know.