Clogged memories

Staying up late once again, desperately trying to find some reliable news on the current situation of the ongoing hunt on Bin-Laden in Pakistan, I suddenly felt a moment of deja-vu.

Year ago, I was atteding the E3 computer games expo when the bomb attacks on Riyadh, the capital of Saudi-Arabia took place. I learned about the attacks on the newspaper in my hotel, but the news were hot off the press, and there was little detail in the newspaper, so I tuned up to the main news channel to learn more. Lo and behold I was in luck: World news were next.

Main news started (after loads of pointless ads) and ...the main story was on local LA group who were praticing wooden clog dances. And they sucked big-time. I took a deep breath. This was after all United States, and I knew American events were of paramount importance here, even if I thought there might have been something more important or interesting going on in some part of the vast US of A. So I decided to wait until the clickety-clop noices of the dancers' footwear would die down, and I would get some news from the Persian Gulf.

So I waited patiently, checking with my remote now and then to convince myself that these were indeed 'World news covering the latest events around the globe'. After another long commercial break I got... part 2 of the wooden clog dancers, with even worse performances, horrible country music and increasingly annoying interviews of the cream of LA clog virtuosoes. The 'World news' logo on the bottom left-hand corner of the TV screen seemed to mock me.

After 30 minutes, I couldn't stand another second of watching people holding each others hips while banging their wooden shoes on the floor, and I escaped to the expo. (According to my colleagues, I gave up too soon, the Riyadh bomb strikes were covered just after part 3 of the clog dancers).