Ranting again

Yesterday turned out to be more traumatic than planned and for an unexpected reason. By Friday I have normally run out of bread and so I go to the canteen at work and eat there instead. I checked the menu on the intranet and it looked fine. I thought I’d probably have the jacket potato which had some kind of beef filling. So I wandered down to the canteen by which time I’d forgotten exactly what the filling was for the potato and for some reason there were no signs up saying what was on the menu. But I just asked for a potato with the filling, didn’t really think about what they had served me, went and paid and then went and sat down to eat. It was only then that I looked at my plate properly and thought there was something unusual about what was on my potato. My brain whirred through and to my horror I realised that what they had served me was liver. Liver!!!!!

I’m not a fussy eater at all but there is just something about liver that instantly repulses me. I was so unimpressed BUT just to prove that I really will eat anything, I ate it anyway and just tried to concentrate on the fact that it was food and it is bad to waste food, so I couldn’t just chuck it away. You see I really should never trust the canteen at work. I think on Fridays they just sell create the potato fillings from whatever they have been unable to get rid of during the week, which is how you end up with fillings such as “mixed meat” – and to be honest that could cover a multitude of sins – bacon and hot coleslaw and now liver and mushrooms (in a rosemary sauce I might add). I will never, ever trust them again.

I will stop going on about the coverage of the shooting in Virginia at some point, but yesterday I read the BBC’s explanation of why it showed the video of the killer. I have to say I still have no sympathy for them having done it. The BBC’s argument seems in part to be “everyone else was doing it”, which is a highly dubious argument to me. People are also deluded if they think that by watching the ramblings of a killer when he has already killed two people and is about to slaughter many more will give them an accurate insight into why it happened. Are they experts? Do they have all the evidence to build up a proper picture of all the events that led to what took place? Or are they just pop-psychologists who think themselves suddenly qualified to analyse a complex situation that seems to have quite some history to it and led to some very tragic events?

I just find it distasteful in the extreme that any tragedy around the world is beamed into our home and we see people dead and dying and somehow appear to gain entertainment from other people’s tragedies. If it was my life that had been blighted by such circumstances would I want the whole world watching the dying moments of someone I loved or telling me their theories on why it happened? I think not. We should show people more respect and allow others who are rather better qualified time to investigate and draw conclusions based on all the available evidence. I despair of the way journalism is going sometimes.