Le mieux blog dans le monde!

Lately, I've been spending my evenings/nights multitasking on totally unimportant "tasks": watching a variety of television shows, playing Mah Jong Tiles, and looking at the social network sites. I'm pretty tired of the social networking and Mah Jong. Reading has been put on the back burner since none of the four books I'm in the middle of are particularly gripping (a couple are very well-written but slow going).

So that leaves television (and a smidgen of spring cleaning; my makeup and toiletry baskets are organized and my wardrobe reduced). What am I watching? All the crime shows I can and the Lifetime Movie Network.

We had a writer who used to use the Branch's computers for writing her self-help books. These self-help books included such topics as alcoholism and divorce. Her qualifications? Reading other self-help books, talking to people who have been through these difficulties, and Lifetime original movies.

I think my grandma was (and may still be) a fan of the channel too.

There are two themes that these movies use: kick-butt women (although, they are still very feminine and your run of the mill romance novel "strong") and women who are victims. Last night I watched a show with Diane Ladd who was in an abusive marriage, and when she tried to leave the guy he hired someone to knock her off. I also watched a movie (not a Lifetime original but aired on the station) about a woman whose sister died by falling off cliff. Turns out the woman's husband wanted her money and house so he sabotaged the rail on the cliff so she'd fall and die, but his scheme was thwarted when her sister fell through the rail instead. And the third movie (I only saw a quarter of it) was about a woman who took a trip to Mexico with her husband, but it turns out her husband had skeletons in his past and wife had to go against a crazy cult leader to save her kidnapped husband.

This is certainly too much Lifetime watching, not to mention too much television watching. Rusty is ashamed to call me wife and fears that I will end up conditioned to hate him. But there is an appeal to these kinds of shows and I have fallen victim to it!
1. After working long shifts and some overtime it is nice to not have to use one's brain and to sit and watch shows that don't take a considerable amount of brain power.
2. After spending all day helping patrons and managing staff, I don't want to socialize.
3. Watching other people's drama (no matter how far-fetched or how bad the acting is) helps me realize how lucky I am.
4. I find it inspiring and realize that I too could write these plots so maybe I do actually have some talent.
5. It is one of those guilty pleasures that will end in two weeks, when Rusty finishes working nights.

Also, warm weather is on the horizon and I almost feel more motivated to live life, rather than let it pass me by (see, winter holds me back so I should really live somewhere without the season).

Gossip Girl

It's funny! The big ad campaign for the TV series Gossip Girls is under fire. I'll bet those upset about it never read one of the books that the television series is based on. The books are pretty raunchy themselves!

Space...The Final Frontier

Last night we watched When We Left the Earth: The NASA Missions , a documentary on the first flights into space (The Science Channel).

There were casualties in the early stages of space exploration. The United States first sent a monkey that died on its return when its parachute didn't open. Laika, the first animal to actually be sent into orbit, was a stray dog. Laika died in orbit due to stress and overheating. How would you like those odds? The people who pick you off the streets wants you for an experiment, not as a pet.

The Russians also beat the Americans by sending the first man into orbit. While, Alan Shepherd was impatiently waiting for NASA to finish tests to see if he'd be able to survive a flight into space and awaiting other delays, the Russians sent their guy up. The funny thing is their astronaut underwent rigorous tests, too; either willing to take more risks or just more advanced in their technology than the Americans.

On the day that NASA had scheduled their trip to space, NASA's flight control kept delaying the flight until finally Shephard made the executive decision to just do it!

I'm sad to see that the American cowboy mentality is fading away. Other countries, including India and China, are interested in space exploration and making steps to do spacewalks, design new rockets, and put satellites into orbit. Now we have wars, monetary problems, and other "more important" concerns in America. Many resources are necessary to pursue space exploration; resources that we don't have and/or not willing to allot to a, let's say, "trivial" pursuit?

What would further space exploration achieve? Would it help us to fight our wars, cure cancer, or stop global warming? Maybe, maybe not. But perhaps it would help to unify the world. Healthy competition made space exploration possible in the first place. It would be nice to have a commonality with the countries of the world besides fighting terrorism, poverty, hunger, or global warming--you know, problems.