reality t.v. and inspiration

i'm jetlagging. i wake up promptly at 4:30 a.m. these days. and because i'm wide awake, i just get up. i actually quite like it, because i can sip my chai in quiet, early morning darkness and ponder things...things like how although obama won, we still aren't rid of sarah palin. she's busily being spoon fed fox TV opportunities to appear innocent and maligned by the meanies in washington. and people are still writing her love letters like this one (it's really quite hilarious, do go read it). and it struck me that she actually thinks she's some kind of winner on some (far) stranger than fiction reality show. then again, what reality show isn't stranger than fiction? the problem for me is that although we voted her off, she's STILL HERE, so it's like some especially perverse twisted reality show from hell. i do wish they'd stop broadcasting it soon.

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but, thinking about reality t.v. reminds me of some concepts that husband and i once came up with for reality programs. one of our best friends is head of entertainment at the danish t.v. channel that i like to think of as the CSI channel. but, in addition to CSI, they also have a few locally-produced reality programs. gems like "farmer wants a wife" and "gay army" and "the young mothers," which could soon offer a spot to bristol palin (but i digress).   husband and i pitched the following to her:

1. gay construction--very flamboyantly gay men are given asphalt and paving equipment and asked to lay some road.
2. near miss--ordinary people as air traffic controllers in some of the world's busiest airports.
3. quack docs--ordinary people performing surgery on willing victims. we figured with the whole me-me-me culture of fame that there were enough stupid people out there on both sides to make half a dozen episodes or so.

strangely, despite how clearly inspired these ideas are, our friend didn't actually take any of them further...

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and speaking of inspiration, in order to escape the SP channel, i went looking in the blogosphere for inspiration. and i found some here. and here. and here as well. and i totally love this, i mean who doesn't need some encouragement? and there's always so much inspiration on flickr.

i love the echoes journal so much, the notion of selecting and photographing objects, then trading them with three others and photographing them again is so appealing. does anyone want to do something similar? i'm seeing a cross-continental collaboration...won't you please play along?

too much CSI

so i came home from having lunch in the city with a friend and found that husband had dug THIS giant hole underneath the stairs in our kitchen. i couldn't help but have instant flashes like those in CSI--the graphic kind, with blood flowing and plastic-wrapped bodies. now, i'm not keen on having thoughts like that while standing in my own kitchen. i'm wondering how i'm going to sleep tonight, knowing that giant gaping hole is right there, lurking underneath my stairs, just below my bedroom.

it's weird how you can scare yourself silly with thoughts like that, even while you wish you weren't doing it. it happened to me last week as well. in an uncharacteristic moment, i switched on the t.v. in my hotel room and watched some bad american t.v. show late at night on norwegian television (medium, i think it was called). it was a two-parter and they showed the first half. it was enough to scare me totally silly and i couldn't turn off the lights and go to sleep. suddenly every noise of someone going by in the hotel hallway and all of the generally strange sounds that weren't the sounds of my own house were just about too much for me. i was, at my advanced age, too scared to go to sleep.

right about then, a text message came in from husband, wishing me goodnight. it almost scared the living daylights out of me. i jumped a mile when the phone beeped to signal the message. all because of a stupid t.v. show and an imagination run wild. the more i told myself not to be silly, the worse it became.

in the end, i had to read myself to sleep (which i generally do anyway)...simply reading until i was too tired to think the fearful thoughts anymore. i'm a little worried because i'll be in oslo again on wednesday night when part 2 is on...i'll have to restrain from watching it.

and in the meantime, there's that hole underneath my stairs. this might be a week of sleepless nights.