Corduroy Pillows

“Police Push Into Kiev Square as Crisis Grows”

“Effort to Help Filipino Women Falters, U.N. Says”

“Thai Premier Rejects Demands That She Quit”

Oh, there’s more. French paratroopers died in Africa. A Chinese professor who advocated for free speech was fired. Most chilling of all, a child welfare agency in Arizona was found to have 6,554 cases of documented physical abuse that were filed away without any investigation at all.

That’s six THOUSAND.

Do these headlines sound familiar? Then I’m not the only one who read yesterday’s New York Times. High five! No, it’s the NYT. Sedate but firm handshake instead.

Now let’s talk about how there’s only twelve days until Christmas.

What? Was that transition too abrupt for you?

That’s kind of how I feel when I see luxurious ads juxtaposed with stories about human suffering, but there’s more than that.

I know I just complained about the surfeit of (and subsequent desensitization to) information in our techie global world, and I wouldn’t want to repeat myself.

Har har. True enough, Auntie doesn’t mind repeating herself, endlessly or otherwise.

But instead of trying to work through to a way of handling massive amounts of conflicting input, I’ll focus on the one thing that, no matter how hard I try I just can’t get a handle on. On which I can’t get a handle. You know. Never mind.

The thing that I need to come to grips with is how they decide which words to capitalize in the headlines. It’s really bugging me.

Ding dong, ding dong, merry merry merry Christmas.