07:54 – We have only one episode left to watch in series five of Gossip Girl. Series six, the final season, is running now, and it has only 10 episodes. It’s a real shame to see what this series has become. In series one and two, the writing was excellent and the characters nuanced. Beginning with series three, the writing started to go downhill fast. Series four was bad, but series five is terrible. Ham-handed writing, embarrassingly bad dialog, plots that make no sense at all, and the characters have become cartoonish. It’s a waste of a good cast, particularly Leighton Meester and Ed Westwick, who’ve shown themselves to be the finest actors in the cast. If it were just me, I’d have given up a couple episodes into series three, but Barbara likes to see things through to the end. She’s loyal to series she once liked. I’m not. I’d much rather watch reruns of an excellent series than new episodes of a bad one.
I’m still working on the new batches of biology and chemistry kits, as well as writing the manual for our next kit.
16:01 – There’s nothing like a natural disaster to remind us that a large percentage of Americans are apparently morons. I was just reading an article about items in short supply in the affected areas. People paying $5 each for D cells or waiting in mile-long lines to buy gasoline. I can just imagine the thoughts that must go through whatever these people use to substitute for brains: “Duh. The storm has passed, duh. The area is devastated, duh. I guess I better go out and buy some food and water and flashlights and batteries and gasoline, now that they’re no longer available. Duh.”
I mean, how much foresight does it take to realize, particularly when a massive storm has been forecast several days ahead of its expected arrival, to make sure you have sufficient supplies to weather that storm? How much foresight is needed to realize that the power may fail, or that it might be a good idea to fill your car’s fuel tank? I used to think that these people couldn’t possibly be as stupid as they seemed to be. Then I realized, Occam’s Razor. Yeah, they really are that stupid. And, come Tuesday, they’ll not merely be permitted to vote. They’ll be encouraged to vote. And people wonder why things are such a mess. Geez.