Tuesday, January 27, 2009

just say no...

if there's one thing you can say about danes, it's that they have a great sense of humor. i just saw evidence of this on the TV2 evening news, where they reported a story of the director of a factory in jutland (the bit of denmark that's attached to germany) who has banned all of the bad news regarding the global economic crisis (hereafter GEC) in the workplace.

he and his assistant spend the first hour of every workday cutting all articles which reference the GEC from all of the newspapers in the building. they then distribute the severely shredded newspapers in the canteen and breakrooms. his idea is that all of this negative talk isn't helping. and perhaps he's right.

he's serious about it at the same time as he realizes the absurdity. the workers took it very well, laughing and not feeling it as censorship in their workplace. if people make reference to the GEC, they owe 5 kroner to a kitty. i didn't catch what they were going to do with the money, nor did i catch the name of the company and it doesn't seem to be up on the TV2 website as of yet. when it appears, i'll update this post.

in the meantime, i think i'll go cut all of the articles which reference the crisis out of the two newspapers we get on a daily basis, just to see what's left. who knows, maybe it will help.

5 comments:

Just Jules said...

I think we should all follow suit. I am tired of the American news telling us how to feel. Putting American's on the edge over every hyped up story they news system uses to sell their air time.
This is what I have been saying to my mom- if people were not bombarded with how EXTREMELY bad off things are, via the news, how bad would people ACTUALLY feel about it? Except for watching our retirement stocks taking a $3000 drop last quarter we have been fortunate enough not to feel too much else of an effect. Things are tight- they have always been tight. But, hey, we have 4 kids! We should all look at our own pocket book, and make our own judgment. (but of course we haven't lost our job due to this "crisis" so, who am I to talk?)

larkspur said...

This is perfect. My daughter is a newspaper carrier. I have to deliver for her today. Do you think I should get out the scissors? :^)!!!!

There are some days I turn off the radio (NPR!!!!) I just get so tired of gloom and doom all day long. I was reading your post "it's a funny language" about fartcontrol and my husband came out of the bathroom because I was laughing so hard. Then when I visited Jo @ MajorityofTwo she had a list that set me off again. My daughter told me to settle down. I reminded both of them that it is better to laugh than cry. Thx!

Laura Doyle said...

What's funny is I actually did that a couple days ago out of pure exasperation at work and my coworker got angry with me when she picked up the newspaper and found a bunch of holes in it.

But seriously, I applaud the brave man for taking the first step towards a better world. Once I lived in a haunted house. I was in a perpetual, panic-stricken terror for months. Finally I learned this simple rule of thumb: if something is upsetting, turn your back on it and occupy your thoughts with other things. This simple action, executed correctly, works every time.

Unknown said...

Fantastic idea! Panicking about it is not helping! We should look at the opportunities this could bring, and learn from our past mistakes, rather than panicking.

tangobaby said...

That's an awesome idea! I have to say that not having owned a television for over a decade has greatly improved my outlook on the world and humanity.

The extent to which we are inundated with bad news constantly can't really be appreciated until you remove yourself from the middle of it.