So I'm sitting here during my lunch break, and I'm thinking about how last night was a typical evening in the Strohman
household. We arrived home from work/daycare, and I
immediately went outside and fired up the grill to cook some hamburgers and
hot dogs for dinner. My wife made the
hamburger patties, and we bought some Chicago-style hot dogs that we wanted to
try. Thunder rumbled in the distance,
but the skies overhead were mostly clear, and so I cooked outside and my wife and I put together a nice little
dinner. I can’t say I liked the
Chicago-style dogs all that much, but I did pick one of the first jalapenos
from my little garden, sliced it up, and put it on my burger, and boy was that tasty. And spicy!
Yum!
As we were chowing down, the topic of wormholes and black
holes came up, and so I went on ad nauseam about what they are, the science behind
them, the implications if they do/do not exist, etc. My wife always has trouble understanding
space-time, and so I think she walked away from it with a clearer picture and
maybe even perhaps a better view of what it’s like to live with my brain
(hahaha), as I’m always thinking about weird crap like time travel, alternate
dimensions, mind control, etc.
After that I rummaged around for my art supplies and began
working on the cover of my latest finished novel, Terminal Restraint. I went back to my bedroom in search of some
peace and quiet while drawing, but it didn’t take long for Adam Bomb to come
rushing in, wreaking nuclear havoc on my plans.
I actually got him to draw alongside me for maybe, oh, 30 seconds, but then
he wanted to climb on me. Yeah, it’s a
little difficult to sketch when a three year old is using you as a jungle
gym. After tossing him off of me and
grumbling at him for about fifteen minutes, he switched tactics, instead
wanting me to don his Spider-man mask and Hulk hands—I guess I was Spider-Hulk—and
fight him. He’s been on this kick about
wearing his Captain America or Spider-man pajamas as soon as he gets home, and
his Uncle Anthony bought him a Spider-man ski-mask and gloves to complete his
ensemble, and so he was all decked out and ready to go. Suffice it to say, I didn’t get much drawing
done, although I have the overall concept down and started working on shading
and coloring.
How does Leann Rimes tie into all of this? I'm getting there...
From there I played some games of SongPop on my phone with
my wife. I absolutely detest that
game. It probably wouldn’t be so bad if
I played it on my tablet, which I think I’ll try tonight, but my fat fingers
are always pressing the wrong choices on my phone, and in the few weeks we’ve
been playing it, my wife has just obliterated me. I think, at least at the time of this post, she’s
winning 34 to 17. Apparently she’s really good against everyone
else she plays, so if you are up for a challenge, request to play her. She’s even beating me in genres that I
absolutely know more about than she does, i.e., metal, industrial, and
punk. Even TV show theme songs! Grrr…
I wrapped up the evening watching A.J. Burnett of the
Pittsburgh Pirates try to pitch a no-hitter.
My wife wanted me to turn off the TV so that we could go to bed, and so
I had to explain the importance of a no-hitter to her. Of course, AJ gave up one measly run to a
pinch-hitter in the eighth inning after the umpire failed to recognize two
previous close pitches as strikes. The
Buccos still won though! Let’s Go
Bucs! Anyway, I turned it off as soon as
the game was over and fell asleep within minutes.
Why am I telling you all of this? Who cares, right? Well, I do have a point to my madness.
Yesterday I was reading an article about Leann Rimes, who I admittedly know very little about. I do know she is a
country singer, I think she was rather young when she first met stardom, and I might have heard that she maybe had an affair with some guy that was on CSI: Miami and, I think, possibly married him? Other than that, I couldn’t
name one of her songs or even come remotely close to guessing her work on
SongPop. Grrr…hate that game. But anyway, in this article they were
describing her tweets regarding some emergency dental issues she was
having. She supposedly had to have an emergency root canal done, it was extremely painful, and she posted all about it on Twitter. I read the article, read her
tweets, thought to myself “so what??”, and then I read the comments underneath...
Man, people freakin' HATE Leann Rimes!
I realize that most of the vitriol you read in Internet
comments are typically entered by spiteful, loathsome people, but some of these were
extreme—saying she should have all of her teeth knocked out by a flying brick
and other such hateful verbiage. I don’t
know what Leann Rimes did to these people, and I don’t know why people feel so
inclined to post such negative comments, but I feel sorry for the poor
woman! And it also got me thinking…
Why do we care so much about other people, so much so that we will spend five minutes reading their tweets or blogs about their daily lives...wait, err...let me rephrase that. Why do we care so much about celebrities? Why are we so fascinated with every aspect of
their lives? TMZ.com has become huge,
and People magazine has been around since the 70’s and is still going strong. Twitter has become a huge stomping ground for
celebs, and they all have hundreds of thousands of followers. Why?
I’m a regular on Twitter
and I have to admit that I follow close to a hundred celebrities (not Leann Rimes though). I do always get a kick out of how normal some of them are. Take Wil Wheaton, for example, who played
Wesley Crusher on Star Trek: The Next
Generation and has a recurring role as himself on The Big Bang Theory. That
guy tweets about his love for video games, brewing his own beer, etc., and he
just seems so...normal (albeit this is coming from me, a geek). Others like DJ Pauly D and Simon Pegg and Kal Penn are just the same.
I just find it amusing that we are so interested in everyone
else’s life. Chalk it up to plain
curiosity, or perhaps it’s the competitive nature in humans, and we just want
to see how everyone else is living to see if we—or they—are “normal”. Call it whatever you want, but wouldn’t we be
happier if we focused more on our own lives rather than what everyone else is
doing? I’m not trying to drive away my
readers, but I just think sometimes we concern ourselves too much with the
thoughts/actions/feelings/gardens/facial hair of others.
I love sitting and talking with people, listening to their little
anecdotes and life stories, but that’s not what I’m talking about here. When people sit at a computer, read tweets or
news concerning said tweets from a celebrity, and then write hateful statements
in the comments, well, that’s a problem.
Am I right? I mean, if that's what you consider a productive use of your time, I really think you need to get a life. Go to a library or a church function or join a running group or something and meet some new people. Take up a new hobby like sketching or playing with your kids or playing SongPop or whatever.
Who is with me on this???
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