gettin' shit done

When you see some guy talking on the teevee news, in his own little box opposite the anchor's little box, you might think "how come there's a half second delay?" or "how hard would it be for them to just make the audio a little nicer?" or something sweetly naive like that. I can forgive you for thinking that, I guess. It seems like it should be simple. But it is really, really not. To just get that guy in the chair required frenetic phone calls between Ottawa, Saskatoon, Regina, Toronto and a goddamned sushi bar in Etobicoke. He had to be coaxed and coddled, have the wasabi wiped from his ample chin and a gps stuck into his tighty whiteys before being thrown into a cab. Then, when it was discovered that he didn't have security clearance for the location of the shoot, a series of even more death-defying feats had to be accomlished to get some other guy in there. Technicians in dark rooms full of murmuring, beeping machines had to communicate with human beings quickly and clearly, even though they haven't seen natural light or breathed a whiff of naturally polluted wind for months. Their tongues are atrophied and they've lost the use of consonants. The anchor had to be briefed and debriefed and rebriefed.

It's sort of like being in the army, I imagine. You get a real feeling of accomlishment from pulling it together at the last minute against stupifying odds. Then you realize that what you've managed to accomplish is a total crock. Some guy hedges and smarms around his message track on camera for 2 minutes. You blow up a village. Whose day is better because of this?