I'll see you on the other side

I have just finished watching every single Jericho video available on CBS.com, something like 20ish episodes. Its a decent show, although watching it makes me wonder why shows like this- the 'group of ordinary people in dire circumstances' genre- always reinforce gender stereotypes so forcefully. I mean really, would it be too much to have just one woman in the town who can shoot a rifle? Shooting a rifle is well within the physical limitations of a woman. Or is the black FBI agent exactly the right amount of multiculturalism? I guess maybe I should be glad that the women were allowed to be 'strong women' as long as they stayed in their Biblically Defined Roles of nurse and schoolteacher and waiter-at-home-while-the-dashing-men-go-out-to-save-the-day.

Not that I'm objecting to dashing men, not really. And the FBI agent has the most deliciously rich voice I've heard on television in a long while; the best male voice anyway, the woman who plays Beth Turner in Moonlight has a wonderful voice also, although she over-plays hers. I think his voice is the only Southern accent that I've ever really liked, instead of just tolerated.

As a direct result of watching way too much television lately, I've got an Aquabats song stuck in my head. "Chemical Bomb" is a song that I haven't heard at all recently, despite my 20 minute search for the CD this evening. Since I couldn't find it, I'm stuck with "We Will Become Silhouettes" by The Postal Service, another soft and sweet song about war with WMDs. I remember reading stories written in the 70s that were full of abject terror about nuclear war, they were dark and difficult to read. I don't know by what mechanism this terror has changed, but it has, to the point where the most poignant art about these fears is light and resigned and listening to it, you almost get the feeling that the bright light of the explosion might be beautiful.