God, what a pile of fetid, vacuous crap has landed on what was, until just days ago my beloved News World International.

It was the only channel I could still safely watch without fearing the big-haired loud brash and overly abrasive (read: ugly American) talking heads going on and on about dead angelic cheated-upon pregnant mothers-to-be, deadly Armaggen-like and obviously satanic thunder storms, the killer bacteria that’s laying in wait on every surface — ” NO! DON’T TOUCH THE REMOTE IT WILL GET YOU!” — to give me cholera gangrene flesh eating flu-like bird/monkey/pig pox flu, and a whole host of other random, pointless bullshit to distract me from the fact that the cost of living is in a photo-finish meteoric rise, all neck-and-neck-like, with interest rates, gas prices and the large-size tom yum soup at Vientiane Café on Baltimore Avenue.

There is no longer any refuge as that dull, boring, stiff-as-a-board, loser motherfucker Al Gore dared to replace my beloved NWI with, well, the biggest pile of stupid mindless pointless bullshit to fill a television screen since the last presidential news conference: Current TV.

(Oh, and don’t forget he’s also married to evil wench Tipper (hellooo! PMRC?!!?!!? How quickly we forget the 1990s helmet-haired cow who so brilliantly came up with the idea of those lame-assed stickers to put on CDs, which really made a difference, don’t you think?).)

Oh sure, CNN International is okay, if you can find it and you still have to sort; BBC has news, but in between the fourteen gazillion house fixer-upper shows they air daily (after living in London I know that there’s far worse, albeit entertaining, programming — why do we get stuck with people who insist on constructing kitchen blinds out of old straws and manky plastic PVC pipe when V. Graham Norton has half-naked men in leather bondage suits?!!?).

Nothing was as soothing in a catastrophic “See, the whole rest of the world is going to shit too, honey, now go get another glass of wine and we’ll soothe you with our rounded Canadian vowels…” way as NWI, always there to give me the perspective from outside the good ol’ U.S. of A.

But now… now, it’s all over. Now, clicking on what the Goremeister has devised, in his brilliant mind, to be the uber-channel for 18-24 year olds, I’m reminded of… oh, what is it? Oh, I know – the pointless filler they play on airplanes when you’re boarding and shuffling around trying to shove your carry-on into a space the size of a tic-tac and find a germ-ridden blanket, or that certain department stores show on an endless loop in the “juniors” department in an effort to appear more hip, despite the fact that their most high-profile designer used to run around in high heels chasing crooks on bad daytime TV in her heyday.

There is no programming, no content, nothing of any real interest that cannot be figured out by spending 30 seconds on the Internet, and the pace, which is supposed to appeal to these wunderkind teen- and 20-somethings, is just annoying, stupid, and it’s obvious it’s trying waaaay too hard.

But then, what do you expect from the man who is so in touch with the younger generation, he split the 18-24 vote in 2000 with Bush.

Ah well, since he invented the Internet let’s hope he’s familiar with Monster.com…
And in the meantime, give me back my news!!!