My roommate pointed this out to me, and before she did I didn't realize.
Apparently I've become the 'angry letter guy.'
A few nights ago, I saw a report on the CBS Evening News (not the most reputable source of information, granted, but) about sushi in New York City. Apparently, sushi can KILL.
Sorry, did I say kill? I meant, make your hair fall out. Semantics, really.
According to this news report, raw tuna has the dangerous possibility of being contaminated with mercury, and this has caused problems for some woman on Long Island somewhere, a woman who apparently didn't believe in something so odd as a variety of diet. High contaminant levels in tuna have been pretty much standard since, I dunno, forever, but take that information and combine it with something trendy in New York City, something like sushi, and suddenly it's news.
That wasn't my problem. It's dubiously ethical and badly researched and a waste of brain cells to watch, but that wasn't my problem.
Lately, nightly news programs in the United States (because they supposedly have nothing better to report) have been donning the guise of investigative journalists and have been trying to prove things to their audience themselves to make their broadcasts more compelling. So what CBS did was, they clandestinely purchased (filming all the way, I'll mention, because isn't the footage of raw tuna sliding down a grocery store check out conveyor belt oh-so compelling?) a variety of sushi dishes from a dubiously defined spectrum of retailers, sent 'em off to a lab and tested them for mercury levels based on this one woman's horror story of mercury poisoning.
Ignoring for a moment the way they selected these retailers (because, of the hundreds of sushi sellers on the island of Manhattan there are, like, four companies that supply all of 'em) my problem was their language. Paraphrased: "Of the samples we tested, four came back from the lab with abnormally high levels of mercury."
Four.
I don't know about the rest of you, but the first thing that came to my mind was, "Okay. Four out of how many, exactly?"
My first instinct was to write an email to CBS. And I did. It was polite and inquisitive and biting and sarcastic as hell, but what'd you expect?
Point is, she thinks I've become the angry-letter-writing-guy, the one who complains about those damn kids riding their bikes across his lawn.
I don't have a lawn. And I turn 25 on Friday, which is not exactly within the age range for crotchety old man. And it made me wonder: is this what it feels like to be old and ignored, where the only creative outlet I've got is sending letters to CBS's own personal /dev/null?
...and then I killed a bottle of wine and decided to think less. So it's probably just as well.