History Happens ... Occasionally

Today is a momentous day, at 7am the history channel finally played the first show remotely related to history that it has shown since Saturday though I doubt this will last and it will resume showing its usual fare.  I use to flip through the channels and land on the Discovery Channel or the History Channel and usually find something worth watching and that just doesn't seem to happen for me anymore.  Luckily, I have the internet to entertain me so I rarely surf through to see what is on TV anymore anyway.

http://mytvoptions.com/truth-in-programming.php

I remember actually being excited to watch National Geographic Explorer when I was little.  I haven't watched the show in quite a while but I am disgusted by National Geographic re-branding itself as NatGeo.  It is a ridiculous simplification of a name that use to have a positive and respectable connotation for me.

I use to get the National Geographic Kids magazine (well I think it was still called National Geographic World when I got it).  When I look at a more recent copy of National Geographic Kids I can't find the value in it anymore.  It is usually a gigantic tie in to some Disney movie that is coming and composed almost entirely of ads and product placement and little else.  It is another example of something I loved being dumbed down and commercialized to the point of being unrecognizable.

We also have the Discovery Channel ... which seems to center its programming around what involves showing explosions.  They also have the Deadliest Catch.  I really don't know what else they show because it has been a while since I have tried to watch anything on the channel.  I think my real issue is that these channels always trick me, I think that maybe there will be something good on and then am always let down by the lack of programming I have any interest in.

One would think that the History Channel would be more difficult to subvert.  After all, it has history in the name and thus the shows should probably at least involve history.  No they seem to have gotten around that inconvenience.  Every time I turn to the History Channel, I find shows either about UFOs or the apocalypse ... and Pawn Stars.  Yes Pawn Stars, that one I can't even begin to understand why it exists at all never mind why it is on the History Channel.  I know that they have their slogan of "history happens everyday" but I can't help but wish that they would focus a little more on the history that didn't happen just the other day.  There is a lot of history that could be explored that has nothing to do with Ice Road Truckers and Ax Men.  Sadly, I just saw that they have a show called Ancient Aliens and thought to myself well at least it does involve history so that actually puts it one step ahead of many of these shows preposterous as that may seem.

I went to the History Channel's website to look at the show schedule for the day.  I noted that one show was called Sliced.  I wondered what the show could be about, well apparently the name says it all and it is about slicing things.  Yep, it has the pretense of explaining how things work but does so by cutting them in half with a chainsaw.  I watched the little clip explaining the show and was baffled because of course I want to see how things work but cutting them up seems to be a poor way to achieve this.  I can understand a careful dissection of an object to see how it works, I did that all the time when I was little with broken electronics, but a chainsaw is not required.  It is just such a destructive and simplistic way of explaining how ordinary objects work.  I miss the shows that had the all knowing narrator or host.  I like to believe that the person telling me about a subject such as how an object works actually has the knowledge they are conveying and aren't like so many hosts of these shows now who like to pretend that they are learning with us and know no more on the topic than we do.

Well at least I have Frontline, podcasts, and the internet to keep me informed ... and of course my public library.

Oh Wait, I Have a Blog Don't I?

Once again I have failed to post anything in the past few weeks.  I have every intention of posting regularly on this blog but for some reason I just have a hard time doing it.  It is because I think too much about everything, every time I have an idea for a blog post I then over think it and then it never happens.  I am highly aware that once I put something online it never goes away so I am very conscious of what I post and it makes it difficult for me to commit to posting what I think or feel.

I have been having trouble expressing my thoughts through writing.  It use to be quite easy for me but in recent years not as much.  That was the whole reason I started this blog was to get back that piece of me that I lost in college.  I was that girl who wrote everyday.  I wrote short stories and poems.  Now, I haven't written a poem in years, I have many little snippets of short stories but it never seems to get anywhere.  I don't get inspired the what I was before.  I miss how I was able to be sitting somewhere one moment and then a thought would strike and I would scramble to find any writing utensil and something to write on just to jot it down before it was gone.  Now I have fewer of those epiphanies and even when I do I fail to catch many of them.

I know that sitting here and complaining won't help me find myself again.  I have simply been mired down by life after all.  I wrote a lot in high school and even at the beginning of college.  I felt more creative had more ideas.  I also had more hope then.  I didn't yet know that I would graduate with a good degree yes but into a bad economy where have a degree just makes me average and there is no company out there that wants to hire me.  I know I am fighting tooth and nail against all the other graduates out there for these non-existent jobs we were promised when we signed up to take out those loans we took upon ourselves to get to go to college.  I have tried my hardest and still find myself to be nothing more than a burden to my family and even though I try not to think about these things all the time I still know it weighs heavily on my mind whether I choose to acknowledge it or not.

I did not start writing this post with the intent of talking about these things but I let my mind go where it wanted and here I am.  I do have to address my problems and my worries and concerns if I want to be able to get past this perpetual writer's block I find myself facing.  I will keep trying to move myself forward.  This entails my constant job search yes but it also includes getting my mind back from this fog that has encompassed it.  So much of my life feels out of control but this is one place that I can improve on.  Once again I promise myself, I will write more, I will post more, and I will try to stop worrying what others will think and free myself to say what I want to without placing these artificial constraints on myself as I have been.