the navel times and observer

Cows, I'm afraid, have it lucky. At the end of the worst day of a cow's life (beef or dairy cows alike) it gets a piece of metal fired through its head a high rate of speed. At the end of the most rotten, miserable, heartbreaking day of the animal's life it never has to live to see the end of it.

I mean once a cow meets its end it just becomes another slab of beef on a table. Or, in the case of gamey old cows, jerky. Yup, once this world is through the only worry for a cow is the judge in its next plane of existence: USDA grade inspector 1284.

The same is not true for the rest of us. I've spent the last two nights working late on pulling hot stories together. Two co-workers recieved reprimands today for not having the level of production the newspaper requires, though both of them put themselves under precarious levels of stress and spend all day working the only way newspaper reporters can -- by talking to people.

Unfortunately the next day is still the next day. The newspaper has to be filled every single day regardless of what did or didn't happen the day before (or, as is unfortunately sometimes the case, the week before, we are, of course, only as good as the information we're fed or that we dig up).

Which means we have to find something to write about, enough to fill up the paper for every single day. For some of us that just ain't easy. After all newspapers require change, change is expensive, and plenty of people around here are anxious for their lives to change as little as possible. My co-worker in a rural county and me when I was in Barton County suffered endlessly for an utter lack of change. Those areas aren't very dynamic, people are pretty pleased the way they are, which means curtains for the journalists interested in covering more than beauty pageants and parades.

I mean the Globe covers those events as well, but the newspaper's there for more than that.

Me? I got lucky with this beat, these little towns are under heavy dynamics because of changing traffic problems, growth, loss, dickhead ego-driven politicians and those who just can't seem to figure out this "governing" business in the post 'good ol' boys' generations.

Even so that stuff doesn't happen every day, sometimes you have to dig really hard into the mundane business to dig up all the news fit to print. Mediocrity? Mostly, but it's just good enough to be worth column inches if you can get a few "little people" (Joe and Jane Offthestreet) to comment on it.

At least I hope so. We've had the nose to the ground to look into a dog poop pick-up ordinance yesterday. For the rest of the week it's looking pretty dry if I can't scare up some life.

I will be covering the governor tomorrow, though. I just hope I can get my question in. He's touting a plan to sell only 10 percent ethanol gasoline in Missouri and I want to know exactly how much jet fuel it took to fly him and his relatively small entourage around the state to five towns in the span of 7 hours.