Some Steam on a Rainy Day

Firstly, I just wanna ask this: WHY DO PEOPLE NOT KNOW you are legally required to have your headlights on when your wipes are on? It's rainy, it's the rush hour commute. How do you NOT realize you're the only jerkazoid without your lights on? SO annoying. I can't tell you how many cars I saw today driving sans lamps. That just makes me mad. Almost as mad as the people who drive for miles with their turning signal on. Uuuuggggghhhhh.

Also, I'm SICK and TIRED of reality TV. Sick of it in general, yes (though if it goes away, what will I do without one of my favorite shows on Earth, The Soup?!), but mainly sick of shows like VH1's Tool Academy (which I discovered through The Soup), and just about anything that casts "hot" chicks from music videos to cohabitate and fight all the time. Now, the basic principle of Tool Academy is this: girlfriends take their cheating, loser boyfriends to the Tool Academy to reform them. Uhm...hello? Instead of taking your moronic man waste of space on national television (God help us if it's internationally broadcast as well) and showing us how awful he is with the intent of making us feel bad for you, then proud of them--and you--if and when he changes, why not just leave him? I mean, I guess I could refute this and say, "But if the girls just left them, they'd just go and mistreat some other girl." The show's intent is to make the guys look awful, but really it's the girls who look like the losers. There are some things love can't fix, and being a Tool is one of them. What message is that show relaying? It's okay to settle. You may even get $100,000 and a (first) husband out of it. In this time of real female empowerment, I feel shows like this are completely reversing everything we've gained. And this is the image we're sharing with young girls who are inevitably watching this crap: be drunk, stupid, lewd, and scantily clad, and you'll get everything you want in life: attention, money, even celebrity! Hooray!

I don't often think about having a family, but I think these days, with instant access to everything, younger and younger children "needing" cell phones and laptops and tiny clothing and bleeped out versions of the latest music, it's a terrifying age in which to raise children. How do you combat something as huge as global media? How do you take what you establish at home, and make them carry it in their pocket as theygo out in the scary world? I guess you just have to hope for a good piece of clay and take it from there.

But let me stop myself before I go too far. I just needed to outgas some of the things occupying space in my head.

Till next time...