Where are the sharks?

OK, so I guess this just dawned on me, thanks to Gawker, of all places.

What's with all the news this summer?

Seriously, as a guy that's worked many summers at newspapers (OK, four really boring summers as a professional and only two as a student), well, summer is usually really fucking boring. That's when we start reporting about kittens getting stuck in trees and "shark attacks." I remember when I was working back at the Valley Morning Star in 2001 and it was the slowest news summer EVER, well, in my opinion, anyway. We refused to put "shark attacks" on the front page (all of us editors were pretty adamant about it). So the ME and AMEs decided to run this 12-part "Death and Dying" series that would run every Sunday from July to the end of September. So you know, it worked out fine ... until September when we got the double whammy of tragedy nationally and locally (for those who aren't from deep South Texas, a portion of the Queen Isabella Causeway to South Padre Island was knocked out, causing many deaths, and it happened only a matter of days after Sept. 11).

But yeah, summers are generally boring, news-wise. But this summer we still got Iraq, we already got a hurricane, we got journalists going to jail, we got bombs in London, and we have a U.S. .Supreme Court justice step down, with possibly the cheif justice stepping down as well. If I were still working for newspapers, well, it would lead to some pretty interesting daily budget meetings. But I'm not, and I rarely watch the news anymore because it interferes with my vegging out to Nick at Nite, O.C. and Gilmore Girls reruns, and, of course, Golden Girls on Lifetime.

So I guess the whole point of this post was to say it's a busy news summer and I don't work for a newspaper. How fucking lucky am I?

OK, that's all.