The state of the culture

I'm getting so tired of Bush and Obama and McCain and gas prices and Iran and flooding and taxes and all that silly stuff. Thank God I stumbled across a cable news outlet last night and learned about something really important: the Hulk Hogan crisis:

This is chilling, isn't it?

A teenager accused of plotting a school attack wrote that he wanted "instant recognition" for shooting a record number of victims and that he wouldn't feel sorry about it, according to documents unsealed Tuesday.

Athletes aren't the only ones who take performance-enhancing drugs. A growing number of college students (as well as their professors, apparently) are taking drugs such as Adderall and Ritalin, which are typically used to treat Attention Deficit Disorder, as "study drugs" to stimulate their memory, concentration and focus. Alarms are being sounded over this "drug abuse" crisis, but Reason magazine wonders what the big deal is:

How to tell if an issue merits a lot more discussion: When liberals start saying "the debate is over":

The won't even leave the classics alone:

Everything old is new again. And we're not just talking about Indiana Jones and the raiders of the movie box office or that remake of "Get Smart."

Coming to the small screen this summer are "Million Dollar Password" and "Celebrity Family Feud," updated versions of vintage game shows.

Whenever I get too pessimistic about the future, I console myself with the knowledge that I haven't gone completely around the bend:

BUSKIRK, N.Y. - A few years ago, Kathleen Breault was just another suburban grandma, driving countless hours every week, stopping for lunch at McDonald's, buying clothes at the mall, watching TV in the evenings.

I continue my impressive record of seeing buzzworthy movies on cable months after everyone else has stopped even talking about them. This gives me the advantage of being able to read a lot of informed comment immediately after seeing the movie, to see if there's anything I missed. And there's little need to worry about issuing a SPOILER alert for anything I might write. 

I frequently go to Google News and do a search on "Indiana" to see what's happening around the state. Occasionally, an "Indiana Jones" story shows up -- about one or two for every 50 entries or so. But in the last few days, as you might imagine, I've had to wade through dozens of Jones entries just to get a few good "Indiana" hits. Sometimes, even the stories that seem to be about our state really aren't

Home-schooling gets another unintended boost:

In most math problems, zero would never be confused with 50, but a handful of schools nationwide have set off an emotional academic debate by giving minimum scores of 50 for students who fail.

Officials in schools from Las Vegas to Dallas to Port Byron, N.Y., have proposed or implemented versions of such a policy, with varying results.

I eat too much or eat the wrong things or both, and the predictable results come about Naturally, it's the government's fault, not mine:

The problem at first was that the problem was ignored: For almost two decades, young people in the United States got fatter and fatter -- ate more, sat more -- and nobody seemed to notice. Not parents or schools, not medical groups or the government.