PR: Lifetime Sucks

No, seriously. I just went to try to go look at finishing up E2 and found out they have taken down the full episodes for everything prior to E6. That means the four hours or so I spent on the E2 recap was a total waste, because no way to finish that one without the video handy. Oh, I probably could go dig up some other people's recaps and figure out which designers I hadn't yet managed to get to and get them in the right order, but, well, screw it. I'll just skip up to E6 and straight into my "shorter recaps" plan, and be caught up that much sooner, I guess. If I ever get ahold of E2 video again I might go ahead and finish it, but probably not.

PR recaps; Top Chef; Top Chef: Just Desserts

Because of the length of time it takes me to write a recap like the one I did for S8 E1—it's a good 5-6 hours of watching for a few seconds, pausing, and writing something, then starting the video up again—I'm clearly not going to get caught up. I'm going to try to finish up the one for E2 anyhow, since I was near the end of it, but then I'm going to try to find a way to write much leaner recaps for the rest. No promises, though; my painkillers aren't, lately.

On Top Chef DC: Totally disappointing season. I didn't really ever connect with someone I wanted to root for—the closest I came was deciding to root for Tiffany, and then she got eliminated right after I decided that—and one of the people I thought was not all that strong a chef won. Whoopie-doo. And apparently the next season of Top Chef is going to be an "All-Stars", starting in December. I haven't decided how I feel about that. It includes people from every season, many of whom made it near or into the finale but didn't win. (Thank goodness it doesn't include winners, or I might have to see that cockmeister Ilan again. Seriously, guys: stop inviting that douchebag back, okay?)

Top Chef: Just Desserts is probably not going to hold my attention. Basically, most of the contestants annoy me, and of the few I kinda liked, two are already gone. But I'll give it another couple episodes. And that's... seriously all I have to say about it.

The official lineup of Top Chef: All-Stars has already been announced, and I have some opinions:

Things I don't get

Here's one thing I don't get: A lot of people seem to think the Republicans are being taken over by crazy right-wing extremists, but also think the Democrats are a bunch of liars who make promises about how they're going to change things but then support the status quo. So, uh... why is no one seeing "vote for a third-party candidate" as the obvious answer? I mean, here we have a fair bit of evidence the two-party system just is not working for us, and yet... somehow it doesn't occur to people to try to change that.

Here's another thing I don't get: Why is it so hard for people to accept the word "moderate" means "actually holds positions in between the 'left' and 'right' positions", and that people who demonstrably don't do that aren't really moderates? No one seems to have a problem calling people on labeling themselves "liberal" and yet expressing non-liberal positions, or people labeling themselves "conservative" and yet expressing non-conservative positions. But if you call yourself a "moderate" yet express non-moderate positions, people will apparenty use this as "evidence" that "moderate" means something other than, well, moderate.

Here's another thing I don't get: The context of the following quote is that the Texas Board of Education—that bastion of eliminating accuracy in the name of upholding their narrow views, but I guess that's another topic—has decided that there is a bias in textbooks promoting Islam and condemning Christianity.

In interviews, Mr. Rives has likened his concerns about Islam to those he and other Americans once had about communists infiltrating American society. [source]

Why would anyone think this was a good position to publically take? The Americans who once had "concerns about communist infiltration" included people who did things such as use blacklists to keep people from being hired based purely on accusation, rather than evidence, and those people are fairly widely regarded as having been extremists and witch-hunters who damaged American society and played fast and loose with the rule of law. Why would anyone want to associate themselves with that?