Random Monday

1. Climate Change: It's 60 degrees outside (15C). I live in Pennsylvania, and it's January. That's about 30 degrees higher than it should be. (Highest normal temperature in PA for January: 32F/0C.) And just so everyone will get sick, the high for tomorrow is indeed 32.

2. The Weather (Wo)Man: In the Northeastern United States, winter is cold and snowy. It regularly gets well below freezing, and it regularly snows. If you so much as mention a snowfall of less than 6" (15.24cm), you will be forever known as that nervous person who is afraid of snow. So why does every single weather(wo)man treat 1/2" of snow as the first stage of the apocalypse?

3. Extreme Makeover Home Edition. My MIL loves this show. If you've never seen it, a bunch of terminally cheerful people replace a falling down home for free. I think it's exploitive of the poor/suffering, and a wonderful example of drive by charity (Here's a bunch of stuff- your life is all fixed now!). At this point, however, I am wondering when we will see the apex of pathetisad.

You see, the first season of the show, they picked poor families whose homes were falling down around them. Apparently, however, simply being so poor that you can't maintain your home, so that it becomes actively dangerous, just isn't enough. You need to deserve all this charity, so the recipients became increasingly pathetisad as seasons went by. Nowadays, you not only have to have an unbelievably sad present, you also need a pathetisad past and you have to give outrageously to charity- generally in terms of time, because none of these people have money.

So far, I've seen family with child dying of cancer who started a charity for other children with cancer. (The family got a nice house, the child died.) I've also seen Native American family living in a trailer without electricity with a wheelchair using family member. Last night, the featured family member was a Jamaican woman who, as a child, walked 8 miles to school and 8 miles back barefoot.

Then, for some reason, I had to listen to Ashanti blabbering on about how fixing this woman's house, and doing cosmetic work to other houses in the neighborhood, would teach the entire world to sing. Or something.

I figure we'll hit the apex of pathetisad sometime late this season, and then hopefully they'll end the show on a high note. Or, low note. It's a little hard to say.

4. Mass Effect 2: I actually don't need to say anything.



The music, btw, is Heart of Courage by Two Steps From Hell. It owns me.