My mother was right. The show is too violent. A while ago I asked her to watch an episode on Wednesday night. It happened to be the one where Sayid beat on their Other hostage Henry. I explained to her that she needed to understand the backstory as to why the people behaved this way. Well last night the producers pushed me closer to that line where I will no longer watch the show. This morning during my morning routine I realized that I still reeled after last night’s events.

I’d like to place a reminder on my weblog. It’s aimed more towards the news media, who tend to be making a big stink about rising gas prices. Contrary to popular American belief, driving is a privilege, not a right. There is no constitutional guarantee to driving a car or receiving cheap gasoline prices from vendors. Let’s face it people, demand is rising and supply is falling. Anyone who took a high school economics class can tell you that prices will rise. And there’s nothing anybody can really do about it.

No, this is not a nod to my present state of unemployment. I just (finally) watched Rent. I have mixed feelings about the movie. The broadway musical I love. The movie I do not. It had its good moments, even some truly remarkable moments, considering how much I disliked parts of the film. One of my passions is musical theater and musicals. They have not fared well lately in film adaptations. The bit that really irks me is the numbers do not feel motivated at all: the energy isn’t heightened and there is no need for the characters to break into song, with a couple of notable exceptions— I thought “La Vie Boheme” and “Take Me or Leave Me” started off well.

Last night at the annual Los Angeles County Disaster Communications Service general membership meeting April Moell, WA6OPS, spoke about the Hospital Disaster Communications service in Orange County. Her brief lecture was informative and spoke about the nature of hospital communications in an emergency situation. To my knowledge, DCS doesn’t do anything like this. But it is what I’d hoped to be doing when I joined DCS. Emergency communications. So far we have not had one single activation in which I have participated in the 3 years I have been with DCS.

Sunday was the 21st annual Los Angeles Marathon. The first one across the finish line won $100,000 + $25,000 + a new car. But this is a person who runs everywhere. Howabout 1,000 pairs of shoes instead? There has only been one other time in the history of the L.A. Marathon when there was a fatailty. This year there were two. This year there was also the highest number of runners—over 26,000—so statistically it was bound to happen sooner or later. I did not run the marathon but I was on my feet all day.

It’s about this cold, detached, online “connection” thing. Does it really bring people together or does it just make us think so? A friend of mine—yes, someone whom I know in real life—recently posted his addendum to one of those bulletin surveys making its way through myspace (which, by the way, is a messy, clunky, slow website, but I digress), and the bulletin asked people to semi-anonymously reveal how many of their “friends” they had actually met in real life. Only one of those people had actually met all of his friends.