Edward Bristol’s Non-Commercial Website

Unless I have a very good day, watching the news makes me sick. I had a friend; she lived on a beach in Brazil. Every evening she would double-lock herself inside the house and watch the world go crazy on CNN.

She was a very paranoid creature. Her world was a terrifying, hostile place and she was always in trouble. She’d call me with news like “They found Glukomoxamil in lemons!” or “The north pole shrank 5%!” or “Barbaristan has attacked Autistan!”

Those days on the beach in Brazil, I ignored all news. I read no papers and had no TV. And you know what? The world was doing just fine as far as I could see. I knew of no problems for months. The sun shone, the waves crashed, people did what they always did and I simply didn’t know. The stuff they mentioned on CNN was not visible on that beach.

One day my friend called me and said: “They fly airplanes into the world trade center.”

I laughed: ”Ja, ja, sure” and hung up. Paranoid stuff.