Thank God for the NSA

All I've been hearing about for the past few days is how the NSA has been spying on us, and nothing is private anymore, but has anyone considered the benefits of having the NSA collecting all of your communications?  I have.

First of all: It will put a stop to all those annoying people who criticize the government.  Who will whine about the government when they know that someone who works for the government is listening?  I'll tell you who: terrorists.  Now instead of listening to how politics is becoming too partisan, we can get back to meaningful discussion topics like last week's episode of "Storage Wars," or the best season of "Dr. Who."

Second: It means all that data that you've been trying to find an easy way to store is already being stored for you!  Those emails you were trying to organize by date?  The NSA has them organized by frequency of the words, "jihad," "Obama," and "holy-war,"  which is almost as good.

Third:  It will make politeness and email etiquette the norm.  Now, instead of hastily typing out a request for an email to a friend, every email can be tagged with a polite "thank you" to the agent making sure the two fifteen year old band geeks aren't hiding bombs in their tuba cases.

The miscellaneous applications are also impressive.  Phone conversations submitted as evidence in a court case will always be verified, you have an unbiased third party settle any argument you have over the phone, someone can always proofread your emails, and no snap-chat dick pick will go unappreciated.

What I'm trying to say is: keep an open mind.  Sure, privacy is dead, but at least we're safe from all the couples arguing over who should hang up first.

Ignorence is not bliss

I haven't posted in a long time because I went to the orient to find myself.

Just kidding, I didn't feel like it, but I'm back now, here's why:

I've been interested in pursuing  a career in communications/media for a long time, and if right now you're thinking, "but that's a dying industry," please shut your computer down, turn off all the lights in your house, and jump out of a second story window, I know it's a dying industry.  I don't care.

Anyway, a family friend of mine, Kevin Dupont, invited me to come with him while he recorded some analysis shows with Comcast and Channel 7 News.  I got to see how sports reporting worked, and while I'm not interested in sports, it was still pretty awesome.  If you don't know who Kevin Dupont is, look him up, he's in the hockey hall of fame.

I got to ask some of the anchors how to get started in the industry, and they all told me the same thing: write a lot.  So here I am, writing, about my visit to Comcast and 7 News, in case you hadn't picked up on that.

It was pretty confusing for me, actually.  Mr. Dupont also brought a friend of mine along, Joe, who watches an average of an hour and a half of sports talk shows a day, and does interviews for the school radio station.  I, on the other hand, have been known to call scoring in baseball "points" and have propably watched an average of an hour and a half of sports talk shows in my life.  I'm a comedy guy, my radio show is a classic-rock/comedy hybrid, and when I write for the school newspaper, it's straight journalism.  I was totally out of my element.

Here's where it gets embarrassing.  I met Lou Merloni, only I had no idea who he was.  For those of you as ignorant as I was, Lou Merloni was the second baseman for the Boston Red Sox from 1998-2003, and he now hosts a radio show, "Mutt and Merloni" on WEEI.  He was hosting a segment about Rondo, who had just torn his ACL.

So I had no idea who this guy was, and Joe was freaking out.  It may have worked in my favor though, I came off pretty cool, or maybe touched in the head.  We'll see if I apply there some day.

The list doesn't stop there, though.  Throughout the course of the evening, I met Cedric Maxwell, Joe Amorosino, Janet Wu, and Jackie MacMullen.  I had no idea.  None.  I just walked up to them, and shook their hands, while Joe stood behind me practically dying.  If you don't know who these people are either, look them up on Wikipedia, and try to imagine the shame I now feel.

This is definitely a hyperbolic perception, but they probably think I'm an ignorant plebeian.

In hindsight, I should have watched a lot of sports shows before I went out with Mr. Dupont.  It would have made it a lot less awkward when I got into a fight with Dan Shaughnessy (that's a joke, I actually fought Maxwell).