Curmudgery.

I enjoy my role as a curmudgeon and we all know that Curmudgery sells newspapers better than kitten rescues. After all, we get a warm and fuzzy feeling in our hearts for the firemen who spend thousands of taxpayer dollars digging a bedraggled, mewling, critter out of a storm drain, only to have it procreate more brain-dead, sewer-jumping progeny to add to the gene pool. However, comma, that story doesn’t sell newspapers. It gets buried on page 34. Below the fold.

People want blood.

People want gore.

People want veins in their teeth.

At the race track we regularly repeated this litany that was true-to-life for most spectators:

Was there a crash? I hope there wasn’t a crash!
Was anybody hurt? I hope no one was hurt!
Was there blood? I hope there wasn’t blood!
Did anybody die?

Speaking of car wrecks, Happy New Year!

I most sincerely hope. You know the saying, “It can’t get any worse?” Well, of course it can but I doubt it can get any more surreal. I mean, who could make this stuff up? If I had written that Ken Lay went to jail but AIG CEO Martin Sullivan took $15 million in cash as his company but-for-the-grace-of-thee-and-me sank and that Merrill Lynch CEO Jeff Thain would ask for a $10 million bonus because he “kept the losses to only eleven billion dollars,” nobody would believe it.

It is dispiriting to have to hammer on the same bad behavior by crooks in business, crooks in finance, and congress critters.

So, here’s the deal. I want to smile more in this new year. Send me happy stories. I can’t guarantee I will spin all of them into columns but I can guarantee they will make me smile.