Alien Nation

Summers soon over. 3 weeks and then the autumn semester begins (of course I have my statistic course exam 1,5 weeks from now, but who cares). Thank god it's soon over. It gets really boring during the summer (could probably be due to me never doing anything but thats beside the point). Due to this I tend to flood my eyes with TV-shows. It's actually possible to spend a whole day watching TV from 10 o'clock when I wakes up till 17 o'clock when there is one hour of nothing to watch until it Bones begins at channel 3 and then onward to 1-2 o'clock in the morning. Bed, Wake up, rinse and repeat. On top of that you study for the statistic course ("of course" you do). Conclusion, there is a lot of unnecessary shows out there in the ether, some I don't get at all.

One of my weaker moments was when I "stumbled" across the According to Jim that runs on channel 6. This show really give me mixed signals about the culture of Americans (or those stereotypes that I have but who doesn't). Usually in Western media overall there is a huge dislike for the parents-in-law, portrayed as they are like evil and overly embarrassing. Even characters own parents are horrible. In this episode Jim somehow competes to get his mother-in-law to stay at his place at Christmas against his sister-in-law. Why? Shouldn't he be glad to not have another person commenting on him or push him around? Compare to like Everybody loves Raymond and 2 1/2 Men. Those parents are horrible and I don't know why they put up with them. Cut the cord already.

Of course this could be just me as I up to this day only have met any of my family members for 14 days of the 218 days of this year. And if I put in the whole year it will probably be around 37 days out of 365. Probably even less next year as I "should" start working and lose 12 days over the summer. That means that the only days I meet the family is during midsummer, the annual crayfish party, Christmas, my birthday and New Year (the last three could be counted as one as they pretty much are one and the same). Where does this attitude come from, especially when everyone around me predicted I would be the last of my siblings to leave home? The easy way to explain is that the "big old government" has undermined the family authority by taking on the responsibilities that in more conservative countries lies with the family instead of the state. The whole welfare system instead of the dependence of ones own family to give everyone, in theory, an equal opportunity in life. Yes, I am a child formed after the Swedish welfare system and I'm proud of it (but of course there is some flaws in it that needs to be addressed).