The age of no shame and randomocity

I know it's been said, but what is it with people these days? Why are there so many people out there who as so damned desperate for attention that they'll do anything--anything at all--to get their faces on TV?

There was a time when, if you did something really stupid or embarrassing, you did everything you could to hide it. If you were on TV you wanted it to be because you've done something exceptional--performed CPR on a nun, or won a Grammy, or at least got married or something. Now people are perfectly happy when the picture the news uses of them is a mug shot and they're on TV because they were caught having sex with turtles, or because they tried to hot wire a police car or tried to steal an angus bull by riding it like a horse.

I used to have a girlfriend who was an ER nurse, back during the days when Lorena Bobbit was in the news, and she told me once that a guy had come into the ER one night, incredibly drunk, and announced that he had tried to amputate his own penis and the media was to be alerted. (I told her that, since he obviously wasn't successful, the media wouldn't be interested. But I think I may have underestimated them.) Anyways, that was a while back, and it's gotten much worse since then.

Trust me--if you are watching the news and see a story about some idiot who had done something unbelievably stupid, soon you'll see a good half dozen others who tried to do the same frelling thing.

It's worse, though, when what they did is dangerous to other people who have nothing whatsoever to do with them. Like the guys who set their own houses on fire and call the fire department and then shoot at the firefighters when they get there.

Yes, after that dumbass in New York did that, another dumbass in Hoover, Alabama, did the same thing--though fortunately that moron didn't hurt anybody. He did get his face on the news, though, which I think was the point. Of course he's going to prison for attempted murder, but, dude, it was worth it!

Gods. Just when I thought we couldn't get any more pathetic. And by we I mean Americans. I can't iimagine this being something that goes on in other places in the world. Does it? I mean, stupid people are everywhere, but do so many of them want to get on the tube in other countries like they do here?

I've been developing this new idea a little more--one of my viewpoint characters is a very crooked public official. Seeing things from his point-of-view has been a bit of an eye-opener. I'm enjoying creating the character--let's hope I can make the actual heroes as interesting as this guy is going to be!

More details as they come together.