Since I’ve been at homr during the daytime, I’ve gotten familiar with daytime TV programming. But I have cable, so I’m not stuck with Jerry Springer.

I’ve really gotten into West Wing. They show it on Bravo. Let me explain, I’m not the kind of person who sits still and watches TV or movies straigt through. I like to have it playing while I do other things.

So, Bravo has been playing the same set of episodes of West Wing for a while. I catch snippets as I’ve been writing and emailing and doing other things.

Chris declares that he hates the show, because it always takes place in the dark. I ignore him, and he goes into the bedroom to watch the history channel on the occasions I refuse to relinquish the remote.

Anyway, I was getting confused about what was happening. And right about this same time, my friend Jenn started talking to me about how she liked the show. This whetted my appetite.

I wanted to dig in and figure this show out. Break out the library card! the LA county library has the first two seasons of West Wing avilable on DVD.

So I’ve spent the last two days…okay, including today, three days, wathing 22 episodes. I’m on the last episode.

Watching them all in order, and paying attention, has dramatically increased my respect for the crafting of the show. Oh, and hey, the WRITERS are impressing me.

Thr pilot itself was bombastic. The characters that I had already come to know from reruns were not really the people I had come to know. They were new, and not really who they were yet.

But watching the show in order…There were stories that had been started, then laid to rest, then brought up again. It was like a nice tapestry.

And they have this device, where they say, “Previously on the West Wing..” and then they take clips from other episodes that give you the setting of what you are supposed to think about before they go into the current episode.

Very smart. They respect the viewers to follow what is happening over time, and yet they still give the Cliff’s Notes for it.

Smart. I am very impressed. I liked the show before, but now I am a real fan. It made me want to go to a chat board and talk about the different characters and the way the story evolved.

But I realized quickly that discussion of that sort was not the kind of thing you’d find on an internet chat board. And really, it’s in season 6, I’m late to the game.

And I thought about what the people who do the show were dealing with a vrey distracted audience. Their craft would not be noticed by people who maybe tuned in once a week. Most people who encounter the show would not be able to grab onto the good stuff they were putting out there.

And it made me feel a small sense of kinship. I have this blog, that is not usually paid too much attention to. My audience does not read everythng I write.

This is not to say that I am crafting this graffitti board. But I sometimes think about putting more effort into it. Maybe even spell-checking.

Sometimes I think about writing long posts with links to prove certain opinions I feel strongly about. And then I think, It would be a waste of time because no one reads this blog.

But then again, they do. I have upwards of 50 readers a day. Why they heck anyone would read this stuff, well…Hard to say, if they were total strangers.

I do know that my homemade popcord recipe is consistently in the top 10.

But anyway, I was inspired that the writers took so much care to make the show good, even if noone was going to notice.

Celebrate the women in your life!

So it’s coming up on the two-month anniversary of my last day at work. I confess, I have come a long way. A long way from the hippie credo of my no-tv family.

There is a lot of choices on my cable network. It took at least a month to be totally sick of everything on TV. At last, I am availing myself of my boyfriend’s DVD library. And when I want to see something in color, the LA library let’s me have them for free.

So I’ve been watching a lot of movies. The trick to watching movies, for me, is to watch ones that you’ve seen before. Because I just want it on while I’m doing other stuff. Folding laundry, writing, emailing, taping packages.

But that means I have to see them the first time. So here are the movies I’ve watched lately:

Meet John Doe
Network
One Fine Day
Lust for Life
Intruder in the Dust
Muppet Movie
Babe

When I list it out like that it seems like a lot. I don’t usually watch that many movies.

Movies are a lot different from writing on paper. And paper writing is what I’ve been doing. So, I want to appreciate the movies and understand them for what they do.

I want to understand what they do, so I can learn to do that do, but also to do what only writing can do.

People are very used to movies, and they expect excellence from them. That’s changed what people expect from books too.

I think movies show external action, dialogue and visual images very well. Obviously!

But books can pop open the heads, show the thoughts and the psychology of the characters in a way that movies cannot. And books can carry a scope that is much larger than the two hour time frame of a movie.

Even if I were the master she was, I can’t write like Jane Austen. Things have changed. The dendrites and synapses of readers have realigned themselves and I have to use a new roadmap.

It’s exciting, I tell you.

We just got back this afternoon from Belgium. Our most prominent souvenir was one I picked up on Monday, and that Chris picked up today.

_I_ thought I ate a bad waffle. Turns out it was bigger than that. The flu has been going around.

Poor Chris didn’t know he had it until we were landing in chicago. He tried to make it, but he ended up projectile vomiting in a corner of O’Hare.

The crew there was incredibly good natured about it. The guy came by and said, “Don’t worry about it; Don’t worry. It happens every day. Now today it’s over. Don’t worry about it.”

Chris felt bad that he’d messed up their hallway. But I think he felt worse that he still had to travel from Chicago to LAX.

Poor thing. He is sleeping.

My friends! Blog readers! I am leaving for a European vacation tomorrow! I’ll be in Belgium for a week.

And my blog will be blank. I’ll have lots to say when I get back though!

See you!

I know it’s late…And the day is over for many of my readers. But happy valentine’s day, everyone!

I am happy and in love. I hope that other people have felt love today, too.

1 Corinthians 13
Love
1 Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I have become sounding brass or a clanging cymbal. 2And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries and all knowledge, and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. 3And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned,[a] but have not love, it profits me nothing.
4Love suffers long and is kind; love does not envy; love does not parade itself, is not puffed up; 5does not behave rudely, does not seek its own, is not provoked, thinks no evil; 6does not rejoice in iniquity, but rejoices in the truth; 7bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

8Love never fails. But whether there are prophecies, they will fail; whether there are tongues, they will cease; whether there is knowledge, it will vanish away. 9For we know in part and we prophesy in part. 10But when that which is perfect has come, then that which is in part will be done away.

11When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. 12For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.

13And now abide faith, hope, love, these three; but the greatest of these is love.

This Sunday, in Los Angeles, 13-year-old Devin Brown was killed by 10 police bullets.

“Police said Devin ran a red light then failed to stop when police tried to pull him over for allegedly weaving between lanes in a Toyota Camry they later found was reported stolen. After a brief chase, the car ran up on a curb and stopped. Officer Steve Garcia, a nine-year LAPD veteran, got out of his cruiser, then fired 10 shots into the Camry when it backed toward his vehicle, officials said. It is unclear where Garcia was standing when he fired the shots.”

I heard an interview with a representative of the police department. He admitted that at the time of the shooting, the car was not reported as stolen. So the police officer shooting did not know that it was stolen. All that officer knew was that the car was backing towards him. And he shot to kill. Shot 10 times to kill.

This saddens me deeply.

When I first heard african americans making noise about America being a “terrorist state” for blacks, I thought they were being over-dramatic. But I stopped to listen.

The more I see and learn, the more I believe they are right. What’s going on around here is wrong, it’s evil, it’s nearly unbelievable.

We are not supposed to be like that. American values are directly the opposite of these kinds of actions.

And yet, this particular incident, which seems to call for city-wide mourning, is not even on the front page. It’s too common-place. Many people in the community are thinking, it happens too often to get upset about it.

I find it interesting that in this article, many people are asking, ‘Where was his mother? If he hadn’t have been out he wouldn’t have been shot.’

What? Are we supposed to assume that uniformed authorities have the right to shoot people for being outside after dark? That thought chills my blood. Fact is, we don’t have to assume anything. We have proof.

We have some cleaning up to do at home. Sure, there are troops in the Middle East. But charity begins at home, and we have to get our house in order.

THIS IS TOO CUTE!!!

Bremerhaven Zoo in Bremen … found that three of the zoo’s five penguin pairs were homosexual.

Director Heike Kueck said … that the birds had been mating for years and one couple even adopted a stone that they protected like an egg.

Maybe they should let that couple adopt?

Walmart is notorious for union busting. They’ve taken measures to keep all unions out of their stores. Today, I heard on the radio that there had been a union finally formed in a Canadian Walmart, but that Walmart would be closed rather than allow a union to form.

Walmart has the pleasure and the pain of being the best at what they do, the first in the crowd. I don’t think that other stores are so much worse than walmart.

Walmart got to its level of prominence because it gathered together its buying power and leveraged it to get prices and products that were beneficial to it’s goals. They get the most amazing prices across the board.

That’s why people shop there.

Now, in a huge ironic twist, they want to keep that leveraging power all on their side. Unions are about a group of laborers, who individually might be insignifiant, banding together to demand things beneficial to them.

Guess what? That’s not fair. Walmart needs to know that what’s good for the goose is good for the gander.

Whose budget items need to be changed? Store managers make more than the greeters do. And the corporate people are not making 7 bucks an hour.

There has to be a way. A way that is equitable. I challenge the corporation to find it.