I'll spare you the pun.

So, I know we're all tired by now of hearing about the guy who's suing the dry cleaners about the lost pants. Ridiculous, yes? The comparisons between him and the hot-coffee lady have been drawn, the American civil law system has been derogated and defended, and the pants man has been confused with Marion Barry (?!). Digression aside, I probably wouldn't bother to comment on it, except for one thing that kind of bothers me: I heard about it on the Australian news.

Now, I was only in Australia for ten days, and during those ten days, I think I might've watched a grand total of four hours of TV, one of them being an episode of SVU (shut up, okay? The obsession must be fed). Point is, I didn't watch a lot of news, so I can't say I have a great handle on the Australian news perspective. But I did see some (mostly because my roommate seemed to love obsessively watching the weather feed across the bottom of the screen), and I remember hearing exactly two things about the U.S., one being a brief mention of the alleged theft of George W's watch, and the other being a brief mention of the pants suit. (God, the puns really are unavoidable, aren't they?)

Assuming that this is a reasonably well-spread sampling of the Australian media (and as I said, that could be assuming a lot, but for the sake of argument, let's say it's not), what must they think of us? And this is Australia—as countries go, the U.S. is less of an anathema there than in many other places. *sigh* I really do hate the bubble that so often seems to surround this country. I need to surf foreign news sites more often.

(For anyone interested, it seems that there is at least some semblance of justice left in the world. Not much, but some.)

On a completely unrelated note, one of my lifelong dreams has been shattered: I will never be a contestant on The Price is Right as hosted by the inimitable Bob Barker. His final episode aired June 15, and I (being out of the country) couldn't even watch it. So I am left to console myself with various highlights on YouTube.

And finally, I would like to note that jetlag really, really sucks.