3 cups of tea

I finished reading the book 3 cups of tea two weeks ago. It's a decent book, inspiring in its way, but the one story that I found the most remarkable in the book is the story about Greg and his wife.

Greg was "dating" some woman who was, in marine parlance, a fucking asshole. She leaves him for some guy with more whatever (money, security, etc.). Then he leaves for Pakistan to build a school. At some future date the asshole comes back and wants to be with him. He tells her to fuck off.

Then, at some black tie event, Greg meets his soon to be wife. They spend all night talking. She says "welcome to my life" and he responds "welcome to my heart". They spend the rest of the week hanging out together. Get married 7 days later. Procreate. Etc.

Of all the things in the book (kidnappings, abject poverty, etc.) this is the part that left me the most stunned. I'm sure this happens to people all the time, but every time I hear a story like this it revives the whole myth of meeting some person who is so perfect you can figure all of your relationship shit out in 7 days or less and go on to live happily ever after together. Most of me does not think I believe something like that could actually happen. But I guess part of me believes that it can.

In theory, at least. Of course, in theory there are 11 dimensions in the universe. Good luck experiencing any but the first 4.

why I dislike TV

TV is about the most disorganized thing I have encountered outside the government. It's a wonder people still continue to watch it after all these years.

For example, last night I was trying to find this show about detectives that track down killers (it's called something with the word "48" in it and it's about real people who died). It used to be on channel 32, but now that channel is a different channel. I don't understand why every TV can't use the same numbers all the time. Stupid.

Anyway, I found this show called History or something that was about Osama Bin Laden. I started watching it because I'm reading The Looming Tower (great book). Anyway, I never would have known what show I was watching except that they kept flashing this History thing in the corner of the screen. I guess that is the name of the show.

Then, when that show was done, they had a commercial for another show. I don't know why you have to have commercials for shows when people know (theoretically at least) what show is going to be on that channel. Isn't that like having a pop up on the Yahoo web site that says "next on...Yahoo!". Anyway, the commercial for the show said the show was going to be on Tuesday, but then it was on right after the commercial! What sense does that make? If I were relying on the TV to know what day it was I would think it was Tuesday. No one said anything about the show being on Sunday and Tuesday. So annoying.

And a final thing, at my sister's house, my mom showed me how to push this button that makes an index of everything in the TV and what time it's on. The problem was the index was wrong. It said this one channel had a show on it but it wasn't on and the channel was something else entirely. I guess there's a web site to look this stuff up for a TV but that seems like too much work. Also, I pressed a bunch of buttons on the TV in my hotel room to try to find that special button but it didn't seem to work on my TV.

I think TV would be better if it were like the internet. I could just type in a web address for the show I wanted and it would be there. I hate having to look at channels to see if I can find the one I'm looking for.

And that's why I don't watch TV and refuse to own one.