Bleating my feeble bleats... Bleat!

There is a large amount of nothing being promulgated here. That's to say that I'm not responsible for any actual finding out of stories, I'm not doing the leg work as it were, not digging up leads, not hounding down witnesses and such. For example, today I read about how Indian prostitutes were being trained in the ancient martial art of karate, an initiative to help them defend themselves against angry males who want to hurt them in addition to hump them; you know how men are, wanting to have and eat their cake at one and the same time, oh males, sigh, when will you learn? But I realized... when had I last trodden upon the ancient lands of India? When were my feet last snug inside a pair of cheap sandals, when was my belly last stuffed with the tastiest masala, when did I last stroke the spinal column of a divine yet emaciated cow found outside a video rental proprietorship? Not recently. Come to think of it, I've never stepped foot on the great subcontinent known in the English-speaking world as India. See! I told you! I've got no first hand knowledge of the stories I pretend to have something to say about. What usually takes place is that I imagine something to say after first clicking on a few hyperlinks on a handful of websites. If I'm lucky, once the information has found its way to my computer and converted the electronic signals to a human-friendly medium, only then do I read it and plan my pretend insights.

So I was going to talk about how I'm really happy that Indian prostitutes are learning how to defend themselves against aggressive clients, that I thought it a sign of good times that vulnerable females were being equipped with the skills and wherewithal to kick a would-be barbarian in the face if he insinuated his experience involve more than she bargained for. But what gives me the right? I wasn't the journalist paid to travel to those remote locals, not the photographer paid to take those suggestive shots. No, I am worse than than an uninformed observer, worse even than an armchair critic. Truth be told, I don't know what I'm talking about. What else don't I know, you might ask but aren't but I am? Well, I wonder about the meeting between Novaya Gazeta editors and Russian President Dimitry Medvedev, and I felt pleased that the head of an essentially autocratic state would meet with the essentially renegade news source, especially since Novaya Gazeta journalists have been dropping like flies, if "flies" means "human beings" and "dropping" means "brutally murdered." That must be a sign of good things I thought. But immediately following this thought, I thought "What do I know?" And I realized: Not much. So I have to admit that my mentioning of the miserable conditions of Russian journalists and the possible rapprochement of Medvedev is outside my area of familiarity, let alone, leaving aside, not to mention, expertise. I'll not pretend to have an opinion about this.

So what should I do? I'm not a journalist, and I'm not reporting first hand about the inhumanity everywhere apparent. All I can do is bleat (a whining feeble complaint) my feeble little bleats. And they are feeble, and I'm easily calmed with a dish of milk and a melancholy tune on a set of ancient pipes. Thank goodness blogs are so redundant and unnecessary. I wouldn't want to give the impression that I cared about anything. But worry not knowingdoingeans, I'll return soon to bathe my nasty armpits in the fetid waters of hypocrisy. These digital pages will once again see uneducated, inexperienced and unwarranted opinions expressed. Fret not!