A look back in mild interest: Idol and Republicanism

I'm a little late revisiting some of last weeks topics, but I have a new, not-so-exciting blog feature to unveil. Check out the picture I've put in below, and you'll see that through the magic of digital manipulation, I've managed to put people from TOTALLY DIFFERENT PICTURES into the SAME PICTURE! In my spare time, I often like to play around with images and create "wag the dog" pictures. Once, I amused myself for an entire evening taking a vacation photo of my friends Eric and Christine and pasting them into every location we visited on our Mediterranean cruise. I use Paint Shop Pro during these hours of giddy ecstasy. You can too! Sadly though, I can't think of anything to use my boredom-sharpened skills on besides my Idol recap for this week.

So it turns out Eric was right, and America just wasn't ready to see Chikezie go, but I'm sad to see Danny Noriega go in his place. Danny was pretty bad, but he made for some comic relief. The other three of my four picks last week did hit the skids:

Kady, Danny, Luke and Asia'h (WTF?) burning in the eternal fires of obscurity and the viewing public's complete lack of interest.

My two favorites are still David Cook and Brooke White:

George's favorites, surrounded by a saintly blue glow.

In other news, my last post (about our inability to fix things like we used to) pulled in a couple of interesting responses. Here's one that has not been chosen at random:

Michael: "[Sentimental value] should not be a factor. If it is cheaper to buy a new than fix the old one, than it is inefficient to fix it. If everyone acted on inefficiency, wealth would be lost (or at the minimum not created) and new technology would not be developed. Companies would stop (mostly due to lack of funds) research and development. Static advancement is never good! Also, Marissa is correct. Americans live fast paced lives. Therefore, if you want to add another variable to your equation (besides a & c), you should add b. b should equal time spent fixing the piece of shit. In other words, time cost and not sentimental cost should be the factor!"

Bravo! Spoken like a true Republican! This is a well thought-out, articulate point that takes into account all kinds of interesting economic concepts like "time costs" and "inefficiency" and "static advancement." However, as a liberal, I completely zone out when I hear anything that doesn't have to do with myself and my feelings. After all, what good are concepts like "time costs" when I'm trying to work out my Oedipal issues with my therapist? And so in my world, the sentimental issues rule! Why wouldn't I sew another rip in my torn up woobie? I wuv my woobie, and I don't want another one!

Seriously though, the point I'm not quite making is that the whole crux of the issue is that our consumerist instincts are overriding our sentimental instincts, and maybe that's not such a good thing. The little tidbit I mentioned about wanting to fix the light bulbs in my car when they burn out is a good example. I've seen the guy at the car place do it. It takes him about one minute to change a taillight, and he doesn't charge me a dime. It takes me closer to twenty minutes to do it myself, and that's not including the time it took to drive to Napa Auto Parts or whereever to buy a bulb, which costs a couple bucks at least. But I still want to do it myself, because I like feeling like I fixed something. So it's good for my emotional well-being. If I could fix more of my stuff, wouldn't it follow that I'd have something like that "I just built a computer" feeling more often... and wouldn't that be great for my mental health? To put it in Michael's terms, there's a value to the fixing that can't be measured in terms of costs, whether time or monetary. Or maybe it can... fixing stuff adds value to your life that you're willing to spend a significant time cost and a little bit of money on.