Hard Times

"NOW, what I want is, Facts. Teach these boys and girls nothing but Facts." So begins Dickens' novel about Thomas Gradgrind and his children. He believes in nothing more than teaching them facts because other thoughts and ideas are just flights of fancy. I have a feeling Mr. Gradgrind would not appreciate a good science fiction tv show. Never mind the scientific inaccuracies, the stories are beyond our day-to-day life and have no grounding in fact. But that's not the point of a sci-fi tv show - it's about getting us to think beyond the day-to-day and sometimes explore our own world through the eyes of fictional characters. And the lead characters are usually pretty hot, too.

Right now we are without cable so if we want to watch something, it has to be a DVD or something I've got on itunes. There lies the problem. All of my current stuff is somewhat sci-fi related. We don't have the same taste in movies, books, or tv shows. Yeah, there's a reason we have two TVs. Last night wanted to watch something together so we agreed on Flight of the Conchords but that was only 27 minutes long. After that, we went through my entire collection in itunes, the entired DVD collection, and my current Netflix offerings (all Torchwood). Nothing. So I went into the bedroom to catch up on Battlestar Galactica and he watched something in the living room.

When we met up again a couple of hours later, I asked him why he didn't like sci-fi and that's when he threw the Hard Times quote at me. I get it, he'd rather watch History or Discovery or NatGeo and I'd rather get lost in SciFi. But like my friend Laura said yesterday, "sometimes you want to be able to turn to someone when something really amazing happens and have them understand." I guess that's why I have this blog. So...did you see that first season of Torchwood? Wow. Loved the episode "Random Shoes." And that's a fact.