I don’t THINK this is cynicism, but maybe it is. I was reading something this morning that triggered an “oh I NEVER believed THAT” reaction and it started me thinking that I tend do disbelieve a fair amount. To discount stuff I hear and I wondered where that came from. It’s not that I refuse – I mean gimme a picture and holy shit. Usually. Maybe. Less so now that we have the Joys of Photoshop available to us.

What triggered this was reading a funny letter in a fanzine where a guy was er, um, INTERPRETING some “hidden code” in a previous issue which somehow tied into the Beatles’ “No. 9” and the rumor – you remember? - that Paul was dead. It even referred to the whole “ooooh, play it backwards” and in my feeble brain I could hear – exactly – what allegedly was someone saying “”turn me on dead man” which meant WHAT exactly?

Okay, that’s a really cheap shot I know. I mean how many of us really believed it and HOW old were you? (Wikipedia reports it as 1969, so I was old enough not to buy everything I heard, at 16. I like to think.) And WHAT THE HELL were people doing wasting time playing their damn records backwards. What, they had nothing better to do? No, clearly not since in more recent years we’ve had the right wing nut jobs who apparently have NOTHING BETTER TO DO than watch movies FRAME by friggin FRAME to find “obscenity”. SIGH.

But this led me to think about how much I discount things I hear. I wonder if I’ve always been like this. My quick answer is yes, I remember dismissing “rumors” when I was a kid. I was WRONG. When Cathy Doolin came into our what was it 5th grade classroom to tell us the president had been shot, I was so sure she was wrong. She was such a trouble-maker and how would SHE know anyway, we were in school, hermetically sealed and isolated from the news. Where did she GET this stuff?

Er, she was right of course. I don’t know how she heard – a hidden transistor radio? Maybe she was in the principal’s office (er, again?) and there was a call?

Last week it came again – and I knew, alas, I was right THIS time. The late story reported that the West Virginia miners had been found alive. Come now. High levels of carbon monoxide, one entrance/exit, no special oxygen equipment, no communications and it was well over 24 hours? I was so skeptical to hear the story that “they’ve all been found alive” and I felt horribly bad the next day to be found right.

What is it then? The horror stories of the New Orleans Superdome during the hideous days of Katrina were discounted, but well, I did not know what to believe there (I was hesitant to believe it, I admit, not because I think people are all angels, but I dunno, there were too many people around, I thought…I dunno.)

Is it that we all have friggin cell phones? Doesn’t anyone remember that game of “telephone” where stuff get jumbled within seconds? That Anderson Cooper HAS to run out to West Virginia and report SOMETHING, even though he (and the rest of them) know NOTHING? And they keep TELLING us they know nothing for hours on end? (guess who’s stopped watching CNN? But you knew that from my rant about losing Aaron Brown, don’t you? I do go to CNN.com about once a day to check headlines and see if I want to read anything.)

I just wonder why I don’t believe what I’m told.