A Theory, But Not A Conspiratorial One

So, based on a few things that came to me this morning upon waking up, I've come up with a theory that I'd like to flesh out and get out there. Pooky thinks I've lost it, but hey! I never had it to begin with! So, here goes:

Most, if not all, popular dramas glorify people working for the government.

Definition of a drama: An hour-long television show that focuses on more serious issues that is scripted. May be based on a "true story," but not a reality show.

Definition of popular: Shows that are high in ratings and DVD sales.

Definition of glorify: Main characters are cast in positive light or so we can identify with them.

Definition of working for the government: People that are either directly under the government or have to deal with it every day. For the latter part, an example would be a main character that works for the government that interacts with the other main characters.

Now, for my examples:

ER: Just finished, I realize, but one of the most popular TV shows of all time. Where do they work? County General.

Law and Order

House: The teaching hospital is run by a university.

Bones

CSI

The Closer

NCIS

The Shield

West Wing: If this doesn't glorify government, what does?

Raising the Bar

Burn Notice: Yeah, I know, he used to work for the government. But he's trying to get his job back!

Cold Case

Monk

This is just what I could come up with off the top of my head and what Yahoo! says is on tonight. I tried to put Lost on the list, being that whatever organization it is that's mysteriously behind everything (Wiki says it's the DHARMA Intiative) acts like the government, but I don't think it really fits.

What does this all mean? I don't think it's a grand conspiracy, but I do think Hollywood needs to branch out further than "We're doing reality shows now!" The typical liberal view of things is that government is the only thing that can save us from ourselves. By glorifying those who work for it, they can make us forget the horrendous experiences real people have when they actually interact with the government. I.e., when you're dealing with the Post Office, trying to get Medicare to fully reimburse you, dealing with traffic court, or all those poor souls deluded into thinking you get to carry a gun and do cool stuff when you're a Crime Scene Investigator who suddenly realize it takes 15 years of college to get to that point.

Will we ever see the real side of government from Hollywood? Probably not. Any time the main character gets stymied by it, they become a maverick and somehow get the respect of their superiors for "getting the job done." As anyone who has butted heads with bureaucracy can tell you, that's not how it works.

It's all fiction, but I thought I'd make the general populace more aware that what is on TV is not an accurate portrayal of reality. As if you didn't know that already!

Picture time, Kiwi style

Ok, Kiwi, the 4th picture in the 4th folder was of Pooky and myself, so I couldn't do that. I chose the next one, which was this:

This one's a little difficult to explain. When we lived at Goodfellow AFB, our hotel was next to the clinic, which was next to an open area of a pond and scrub grass. When they built the base, they unknowingly enclosed in a few herds of deer, which will randomly wander around base and get hit by cars. I was walking to the hotel after dropping Pooky off and saw them by the parking lot, so I attempted a picture. This is one of the better ones out of several. The deer down here aren't that big, but he's in the middle of the picture. Look for four skinny little legs. I think he was nibbling on that bush and I startled him.

And now, for a super-cute picture of Mykle and Savannah (she's pretty worn out from her baptism):

I'd post more updates about my life in general, but I'm still fairly groggy, so you get a nephew and niece picture instead.

Spring is Coming!

Yes, I realize it's 35 degrees as I write this, and it's going to be in the upper 60s today, but our temperatures are stabilizing as spring is coming! My goal this year is to do something with the patch of dirt that's supposed to be a lawn. Anyone got any tips on what to do when half your lawn is covered in acorns? I'm absolutely positive that the tree we have next to our house is the biggest tree in Texas, and also leads the way in dropping acorns year-round. Some things were just never meant to be transplanted...

I imagine that this blog will become my main ranting source in the next four years, mainly because my husband is in the military and does not appreciate me undermining his commander-in-chief. I appreciate his efforts to stay neutral, even as he disagrees strongly with a lot of Obama's policies so far. He agrees with me, though, that a lot of what Obama has done so far is to give concessions to the Left while trying to reconcile those positions with the sharp dose of reality that comes with taking the highest office in the land.

Take closing Gitmo, for example. Obama says he'll close it within one year, but left the loophole that CIA black sites can hold prisoners temporarily. Gitmo is one of the main sites that we use for housing detainees temporarily. I'm guessing the CIA review panel that Obama just created will find a new home for these detainees that will essentially be black sites with new names. The CIA has its political side that has to look pretty for the cameras, but the last thing they want is another giant black hole on their record like 9/11. Also, the military now considers terrorists "unlawful combatants," which means under the Geneva Convention, they can shoot first and ask questions later.

Also, Obama's political capital just took a huge hit with the passing of the $1.1 trillion "stimulus," which 177 House Republicans and 11 Democrats opposed. Despite all the cajoling, wining and dining Obama did with the House Republicans, and for all of his "bipartisanship," they listened to the constituents melting their phone lines and emphatically rejected him. Message to Democrats and, ultimately, Obama: You own this. When it's proven that this pork-laden bill did nothing for the economy, all eyes will be on you. You can say you tried to save the economy in your re-election, but this was not the way to do it. Kudos to Republicans for coming up with an alternative bill!

On a lighter note, I'm learning how difficult it is to keep up on blogs when BloggerCat decides he wants to go to the end of the page by hitting the space bar with his paw. Silly cat reads faster than I do...

Kiwi, This One's For You

My brother had his fifth son, Mykle Benjamin,


and we got a cat, with the Pooky-inspired name Hexadecimal.


I think we may have gotten the better end of the deal.

The Aftermath of the Holidays

The light posting, while shameful, has been mostly due to the hectic pace of the holidays. I'll try to get to political rantings later in the post.

Thanksgiving was a lot of fun. We're over a thousand miles from family, so we got invited to the house of one of Pooky's coworkers, along with about half his shop. We participated in Operation Homecooking, taking along two Army students from the Defense Language Institute from Puerto Rico that weren't doing so well on their English tests and stuffing them full of food and Wii games. Seeing the tired joy on their faces as they made their way out to the car made it all worth it.

The day after Thanksgiving, Brandon and I exchanged gifts, since we were leaving on December 17 for home and coming back on our anniversary. My husband loves extending Christmas as long as possible, so we've had the decorations up for at least two months now. After holding him off from opening our stockings all week, I found out he'd stuffed mine with an Iowa coin bear, a stuffed kitten, a small magnetic penguin (long story), and the Princess Bride on DVD. Turns out he'd wanted to watch the DVD all week, hence the bugging. Men are soooo patient..... I gave him a whole variety of chocolate things and some cocoa mix. The mix was for his gift of a travel mug with the caffeine molecule imprinted on it, along with three geeky shirts (thank you, ThinkGeek.com!). He got me one gift: a white gold amethyst necklace, to go along with the already-given bracelet and wedding ring. Naturally, this caused many happy noises. We spent the rest of the day finishing up LOTR, as is our tradition.

We went back to the Land of Below Zero Temperatures and Five-Foot Snowdrifts for Christmas, surviving two snow storms and record windchills. We got pretty much everything we wanted for Christmas, along with some great anniversary gifts. I have to say, Christmas Songs by Jars of Clay is wonderful. I can't stop listening to it, which means, unfortunately, Redemption Songs by them and Revelation by Third Day aren't getting listened to. I was worried "Little Drummer Boy" and "God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen" wouldn't be as good as the originals, but they're almost better, if that's possible.

We spent our anniversary stuck in the Dallas airport for four hours while I battled with the nasty bug Pooky's nephew gave me. Our plans for going to the Riverwalk once we got home were postponed a day, and, naturally, when I started feeling better, Pooky got it even worse than I did. He wound up missing a day of work, but not much gets done between Christmas and New Year's at the shop, so he didn't miss too much.

He was feeling well enough to get on the road for 10 hours on New Year's Day to go and retrieve the car his uncle had towed down to Texas for us. I found out how boring the desert really can be when you don't have someone to talk to and you can't get much on the radio. Oh, and someone forgot to check the battery of the mp3 player before handing it off to me, so it got even more dull. I think it would have been more "scenic" had I not had to drive and it wasn't the dead of winter.

So that's our holidays-a lot of traveling, but lots of gifts and family time. It was good seeing all eight nephews and the expectant mothers (two more little ones coming within the month). Oh, and any Iowan can positively tell you that global warming is something we wish would happen.

I'm not terribly hopeful after this past election. My husband is going to give Obama a fair shake for the first few months, and I'm trying, but it's very difficult after all the positions he's taken and his Cabinet choices. I agree with Pooky that militarily, Obama won't do too much damage, but I worry about the domestic side of things. The Freedom of Choice Act isn't just a horrible idea because it lifts resctrictions on abortions, but it also takes away every state's right to legislate in that area. It's a slippery slope on more than one level, and I don't have the confidence that Obama will stand up for Federalism, one of our key founding principles. Card Check is also something that worries me. Unions are no longer necessary in America, and this is just another way of keeping them alive.

Speaking of bloated unions, bailout-mania disgusts me. The stock market is risky, and sub-prime loans are even more so. Deal with it, people. Sorry, I had to get that off my chest.

I said that Obama's Cabinet choices worry me, and I'm being proven right even before he takes office. Richardson's out, Browner's got a lot of baggage, Holder's confirmation hearings will be embarassing should Marc Rich come up, Rahm Emanuel still has a cloud hanging over his head from his communications with Blagojevich, and don't forget that Obama's saddled himself with Her Majesty of Whitewater fame. I'm wondering who in the world would hire his vetting team after this fiasco. Of course, the Left rewards incompetence, so they're set for life.

Have a good one!

Thoughts

Sorry about the light posting, but the great man I've referred to on here as "my other conservative grandpa" suffered a severe stroke and a minor heart attack two weeks ago and passed away Sunday morning. I was able to fly and drive out to visit him last weekend, but was unable to attend his funeral yesterday morning. I'm finally to the point where I can talk about him without balling my eyes out (most of the time), so I thought I'd say a few things.

First, above all else, my grandfather was a farmer with a poet's heart. Lorraine, a friend of the family, received from my grandma the poem he'd written for her birthday a few weeks before while she was at the hospital. She and Grandma had a good cry reading the typical Grandpa poem with the usual reference to her nickname of "Hillary." She and her husband were "Hillary and Bill," while my grandparents were "Al and Tipper." My grandpa got such a kick out of pillorying the Clintons (much to his wife's brothers' dismay) that this year's primary battle was practically gift-wrapped just for him. Lorraine told me she had a book at home, full of Grandpa's poetry. I'm told that many of his poems were displayed at the funeral home in full glory. He passed on a bit of his poet's heart to my dad, leading to some hilarious exchanges after certain games in October (involving a blue dust pan). If you met my grandpa, you might not immediately think that a sheep farmer such as him would love coming up with clever rhymes. But having gone back to the farm out in the middle of nowhere, I can't see why he wouldn't be inspired by the pastoral scenery to craft verse. The last time I saw him, he was craning his neck to see out the window at the trees in full color. I'll never forget that.

Having grown up outside of Chicago, my grandfather had more than a passing interest in those lovable losers, the Cubbies. My father's defection to the Yankees may have solidified his passion even more, causing a good chunk of the monthly calls to the farm to be back-and-forth between the two, especially late in the year. When my brother moved out on his own, the tradition continued between them. Grandpa was a faithful NL fan, always rooting for whatever team they put in for the World Series. The day I left the hospital, I was telling him about the last game of the World Series this year, that it had been rain delayed and the Phillies might win the series. "We'll root for the Phillies, won't we, Grandpa?" I asked. In reply, he nearly broke my hand squeezing it. He always kept the faith, saying "There's always next year" when his Cubbies would go home in defeat. As a gift, my uncle carved a bear cub wall hanging out of several diffent woods with that phrase on the back. I teased my grandpa about "picking a winning team," but I do wish the Cubs had pulled it off this year, of all years.

He was a staunch conservative, even when (or maybe because) it drove his wife's family nuts. I've told the story here about what he thought of Fred Thompson, and I'm reminded of how much he admired "Ronnie" Reagan. I think the cesspool of Illinois politics offended his common-sense approach to life and helped cement his firm place on the right. Even in his age, he never stopped keeping up on politics (a real feat, given the daily indictments at the local level), and it rubbed off on my grandma, who asked that the TV in the hospital waiting room be turned to FoxNews. He'd be glad to know his family, despite the timing of his funeral, was able to cast their ballots in absentia (almost all to the right).

What I'll miss more than anything is simply the way he said things. He called my grandmother either "Mother" or "Grossmutter" (the latter when she wasn't listening). I was "Sadie-doo" or "Squirrelly" until I went to college. Even after that, he'd catch himself calling me the nicknames that I can't even remember the origins of. He, like Grandma, knew German, but neither of them used it often. Whether that's a legacy of the second World War or not, I'll never know. His humor was inherited by us all, and when all his children and some of their children were in the waiting room, more often than not we were having a good laugh.

These are just some of my impressions of my grandpa. Words really can't describe the images I've been thinking on the last few days: seeing him work on the farm, riding his Minneapolis Moline tractor, being swarmed by grandchildren (and later great-grandchildren), hooking in my nephews with his cane, and the sly grin on his face in throwing two surprise birthday parties for my grandma.

I'm going to miss you, Grandpa.

Weeping, Wailing, and Gnashing of Teeth

For my beloved Dodgers allowed the Phillies to win the pennant after five games. I watched it to the bitter end, and called my poor husband late in the night for consolation. He thought it was cute (insert eyeroll here). My takeaways from the series: Rafael Furcal should not get the Golden Glove award for this year (4 errors in the series, 2 in one inning in the last game), Brett Myers should keep whatever lucky rabbit's foot he's managed to pick up, and Manny Ramirez needs to stay with the Dodgers. He was a consistent hitter, and the blame for the losses cannot be laid at his feet because the Dodgers kept stranding him. I hope, as he's considering all those $25+ million contracts, that he remembers the club and the fans that welcomed him (MAN-NY! MAN-NY! Plus the dreadlock hats) after he left the Red Sox. Speaking of the Sox, last night's game was very interesting. Whoever wins that series, I hope the Phillies stomp all over them. It may sound strange, but I've found my father's saying to be true: If you're going to get beat, get beat by the best.

I've found this past week to be fascinating in the political world. The polls (the reliable ones, not the ones with a 40-20 sample in favor of the Dems) are tightening, McCain won the debate Wednesday night, and Obama was revealed as a socialist. Seriously, "spread the wealth around" as a campaign slogan?! What I found interesting was the Obama and (as Ed Morrissey calls them) the Tanning Bed Media reaction to the quote. They didn't defend it, they went after the man who dared question The One. Good grief, do you have to be a saint to ask a question of a potential elected representative? He didn't consent to appear in a campaign commercial, he didn't volunteer to be on anyone's political payroll, he just asked a question when Obama came to his neighborhood. It just sickens me that Obama and his minions have no qualms gunning for an average American.

Pooky's coming home tomorrow! I had to call the airline this morning to change his reservations, but once you say the magic word (military), things flow smoothly. I've got to wrap the last of his birthday presents and do a little housecleaning, but I'm definitely ready for him to come home. Apparently he misses his wife's cooking. And maybe, just maybe, his wife as well.