Think fast!

WARNING: This post isn’t really about Sharon Stone or what she said about China that upset everyone. Rather it’s about a person’s (my) reaction upon first learning that Sharon Stone had said something about China that upset everyone. If a search engine has sent you here seeking a blogger’s opinion on Ms. Stone and/or the remarks she made, sorry about that. Please hit the “back” button on your browser and visit any of the 18 billion blogs that talk about it. Thanks and have a super day!

It’s old news that in today’s society we are bombarded constantly with information. Ads, news, entertainment, warnings and instructions are being fired at us from all directions at once during every waking minute of our lives. I have difficulty comprehending how older people who didn’t grow up conditioned to absorb this constant multimedia onslaught keep their heads from exploding. I also can’t imagine how it can possibly get any more intense than it already is, although I have no doubt in my mind that it will.
Since there is so much information clamoring for our attention, it’s being delivered in shorter, faster and more concentrated doses. As such, we’ve been forced to receive and process the content in a manner not unlike a crack addict on a caffeine jag playing charades like our lives depend on it. Because maybe it does. Who knows? If we don't digest everything, we might actually miss something.
I was in line at the post office the other day where there was a tv mounted on the wall showing CNN. Across the bottom of the screen, along with two stock market tickers and that night’s American League pitching match-ups (the screen shown here looks positively barren by comparison), ran a crawl that read “CHINA ANGRY OVER SHARON STONE’S QUAKE KARMA REMARKS”. For the less than five seconds it took for the words to travel across the screen, my brain went to work as follows:

CHINA – "Beijing. Olympics. Protests. Great wall. Chinese food. Chicken lo mein would be good for dinner. Lo mein rhymes with ptomaine. Maybe I don’t want Chinese food tonight."
ANGRY – "Mad. Grumpy. Grouchy. Hostile. Dick Cheney."
OVER – "Easy. Under. Done. We have clearance, Clarence. What’s our vector, Victor?"
SHARON - "Umm, I don't know...Stone?"
STONE – "Yay! I guessed it!"
QUAKE – "Earthquake. Housequake. Youthquake. Quake cereal. Quisp cereal! I’ll have cereal for dinner instead of Chinese food."
KARMA – "Instant karma’s gonna get you. We all shine on. Shiny happy people. REM. I'm sleepy."
REMARK – "Reflect. Reflex. Relax. Don’t do it. Frankie Goes To Hollywood. When two tribes go to war…My god, Sharon Stone has said something that has caused China to declare war on us!!"