...Maybe?

Is it just me, or are there a lot of really crap things happening at the moment?
 
You’ve got your global recession, your imminent pandemic, your local hostile takeovers, your international panic attacks, your Wall Street idiocy, a world shortage of food, petrol, water and medicine, a fervent debate on whether climate change is really the equivalent of That Voice In Our Heads, (and more importantly, if we listen to it, does that make us crazy?)
We have a couple of well reported wars, several not so well documented skirmishes, pirates, man-eating sharks, Paul Henry, and a knife fight in South Auckland.
 
…Also, the water was turned off in my apartment building this morning. So I can’t have coffee.
 
Obviously, the end is nigh.
 
You turn on the news, and none of it is good. Maybe the sport. I don’t watch the sport.
I turned on Sunrise this week, and as much as I do nurse tender feelings for it, I turned it off feeling like, really, jumping off a bridge is probably my best option at the moment.
This is what I learnt:
The NZ dollar is capped at 2.5%.  Now, what I don’t know about financial matters would fill several best sellers, but I managed to deduce this is Not Good News for the low and middle income range because, although we don’t have any money to invest in anything even if we wanted to, if we do invest, we’ll get a low return.
Swine Flu is about three more cases away from turning into a full scale pandemic. The death toll is 236 worldwide; we have 104 - 111 suspected cases of Swine Flu in New Zealand. The World Heath Organisation has raised its alert to a 5, officially. (6 being: “Okay, everyone, you’re on your own.”)
There are “thousands” infected in Mexico, with parts of the country being shut down for a week in order to minimise the risk of Swine Flu spreading.
Several hundred schools in the US have closed, and Egypt is slaughtering all its pigs.
The Dutch Royal Family was almost run down by a car in the middle of a parade and lots of people were injured, with five fatalities.
It is New Zealand Music Month.
 
One of these things is not like the others. One of these things just isn’t the same…
 
Hi Sunrise, I’m Sam Lee, your target audience. I enjoy being in the 18-35 age range, obviously I’m in the low and middle income range because I have time to sit and watch your show and, y’know, not go and make the money that would put me in the high income bracket. Fun fact: This may lead to me to contribute to the unemployment rate, which, in case you hadn’t pointed it out to everyone already, is rising.
I try to keep up to date with current affairs, I appreciate seemingly effortless banter between co-hosts, and like to be told what weather I’m getting from random places around the country.
Oh, you want me to watch your show? Why don’t you tell me I’m going to be poor for the rest of my life, am going to die of an illness I still don’t understand fully, and give me the opportunity to see Fly My Pretties play at Wellington Airport, because obviously things are going so bad for New Zealand musicians that they’ve been reduced to busking? Great…thanks.
 
To be fair, they did make an effort, somewhere between Swine Flu and The Recession, to tell us it’s not all bad. Apparently, we’re adopting a “green shoot philosophy”. I looked it up.
Ben Bernanke, chairman of the Federal Reserve Board in America, coined the phrase when he spoke of detecting “green shoots” of economic recovery. Now every financial commentator, economist, journo, pseudo-journo, and television reporter are desperately adopting the phrase, obviously to encourage people like me to continue to a) watch and b) stomach the news. Even Obama (remember, our saviour), is going around swearing he can see “glimmers of hope”, which, for all our sakes I hope is not like seeing ghosts or unicorns.
 
This is all very well and good, but I’m not sure the man realises one thing- in order to save themselves and also the rest of the world, Americans are going to have to be given a current affairs bulletin and maybe a globe, while we’re at it. I watched Rachael Ray this week, also (I do work, on occasion, I promise), while she asked Gordon Ramsey how did he cope cooking for Americans on a reduced budget, as (knowingly and strangely loftily said) “We’re in the middle of a recession, you know.”
He did manage to work into his answer that it was a “Global recession,” so yes, being from Britain (another country, hence the funny accent), he had somehow managed to work out cooking for people on a limited income.
But, hey, I’m all for Obama, beacon of hope, slayer of dragons, who is currently dealing with the fact that a government aeroplane flew so low over New York this week, the entire state freaked out, thinking it was another 9/11. Gosh, there must have been a good reason for that.
Oh, yeah. They wanted to take aerial photographs.
 
So things are not that great. But they’re not that bad either; the overgrown Brat Camp that is Parliament are, for the most part, keeping their mouths shut and actually, you know, earning the masses of money that put them in the “high income bracket”.
 John Key hasn’t been seen from in months- there are rumours that he’s been secretly stuffed under The Speaker’s chair and Helen Clark is quietly ruling from New York; Paul Henry hasn’t made a moustache gaffe in…hours; none of our major companies have had anything to do with poisoned food products of late, and the Little Guy is still fighting for their rightful place in our brand new Super city, if the signs in various towns in Auckland are anything to go by.
And, it’s New Zealand music month.
Business as almost-usual.
 
Alright, I’m off to Starbucks. Maybe a coffee frap mass produced by a global corporation who routinely competes with the Little Guy in any chosen location, buys coffee beans in bulk at a reduced rate from farmers who can’t afford to complain, is currently involved in a mass internet conspiracy theory (they’re funding the Israeli attacks on Gaza, apparently) and has Coke and Mc Donald’s as blueprints for World Domination will make me feel better.
 
Or, hey. I could always watch television.