I Need to Move

I need to move someplace where they don’t have televised weather coverage. Preferably someplace with ideal weather year-round, and in a perfect world, someplace nearly deserted with my nearest neighbors blocks/miles away instead of yards away.

I know that winter storms deserve coverage; they’re hazardous and can potentially be deadly, and I would agree that television news is an excellent method of getting critical information to the largest group of people but when is enough enough?

Fortunate enough to not have to leave the house this morning, I turned on a local news station and found nearly non-stop coverage on this latest winter storm. The station’s storm coverage consisted of a meteorologist in the studio providing updates and a meteorologist outside on the building’s roof providing very similar updates only standing in the wind and snow. They had portentous images of summer lounge furniture up on that very same roof covered in large amounts of snow to try and show us – – I can only guess – – that they meant business with their coverage and weren’t making this storm up and that we could, in fact, trust the large amounts of snow we were seeing on our own outdoor furniture. They had a reporter standing outside a local business that usually opens for the season today and another reporter riding along in the station’s “Mobile Weather Watcher” which, while sounding cool, is a gas-guzzling GMC Suburban that takes to the streets during storms to give viewers at home a birds-eye view of just how bad road conditions are while taking up space on treacherous roads side-by-side with drivers who are out doing slightly less important things like trying to get to work or to appointments. Finally, they aired a taped interview with a local psychologist who told us that it’s good to complain about the weather. Complaining and letting it all out, she said, “really helps”, and then she shared an affirmation with us: “It will get better, winter will end, we’re going to have a great summer.”

In addition to complaining and letting it all out really helping, a concept I agree with, it’s also fun which is why I’m writing this, but again, seriously, when is enough enough and at what point does continuous coverage like this become nothing more than a bunch of different pitched voices chattering unheard?

Thanks for reading and yes, I know that I could stop my complaining about endless, over-the-top TV weather coverage by simply not turning on the TV, but that’s not nearly as dramatic as suffering and shouting my complaints to the world!