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I was going to write about why I like being good looking but it occurred to me that new people wandering over from Mormon Mommy Blogs might be left with a totally correct impression of me, and we can't have that, can we? So suffice it to say, my thoughts can be summed up this way: you can be too good-looking (Liz Lemon's bubble, anyone?) and it's best to go through life as a good solid 7 on a scale of 10. Once things have settled down around here, I'll get back to that thought, but we'll wait until the gawkers pass, new friends stick, and it's just us girls again. (And Chaka. And CaJoh. Hi.)

Anyway, what's on my mind after that is that I hate local television news. I mean I really HATE it. Oh, wait, let me check with the last fiber of my being....Nope. It loathes local TV news, too. It's not just because we get the LA news and I live in Orange County where we have 2 million of our own residents and are still treated like an L.A. suburb. Um, hello? If we wanted to live in L.A. we'd have migrated north twenty minutes. You know, to where the shootings and the smog are?

Because that's pretty much what LA news is. Fourteen stories on who got shot, a human interest story on some weird health trend, three stories on celebrities (they're all "local" in L.A.), and then an overly buxom (and I'm not exaggerating that--check out any of the weather girls {Alita Loresco, snort}) girl gives the weather. Oh, or else it's one of the old guys with a dumb name like Johnny Mountain. Or Dallas Raines. Not making those up, either. It makes Fritz Coleman sound normal.

I mean, does it seem wrong to anyone else that even the weather guys have stage names in L.A.?

And the hard hitting exposes? All seem to involve which restaurants have roaches. Or news flash: car places rip you off.

I actually reached my snapping point with local news in Utah, though. For a month, one station (cough, cough, KSL, cough) advertised some story they were going to do on pantyhose and the truth about quality versus prices. Since I haven't yet met a pair of pantyhose I couldn't put a run in just by looking, I was pretty interested. The promos were relentless. This was going to be their big ratings hook for February sweeps. Here's what I learned in the 90 second story: cheaper pantyhose don't hold up as well as expensive ones. Glad I made a point of tuning in. It's not like there wasn't an Olympics scandal to lead with at the time or anything. Oh, wait. Yes, there was. And I quit wearing pantyhose, anyway.

I finally refused to watch the local news altogether about five years ago. I just thought it might be bad to end every day by wanting to throw a shoe at the TV. Unless there's an earthquake, I'm pretty much cruising cable for Seinfeld in syndication. Or Jon Stewart.

I prefer to read my news, anyway. I'm a big fan of city newspapers and the OC Register is pretty good. And I subscribe to different news services (CNN, USA Today and BBC). Mainly I just skim the headlines. Sometimes I pull up a whole article if the headline is good enough. You know..."Obama announces new tax plan" (skim), "G 20 Summit erupts in violence" (skim), "California budget held together with a safety pin and Arnold's chewing gum" (skim), "Bobcat attacks bar patrons" (Oooh! Click to expand).

I pretty much always have NPR on in the car. In major emergencies I'll turn to CNN because it's the most balanced of the cable news channels. If by balanced you mean it swings wildly from one extreme to another to project "balance" rather than just driving completely in the fast lane (MSNBC) or slow lane (Fox...way over on the right. And I don't mean it's right. It's just on The Right. And so's the slow lane. Get it?)

Anyway, I plan to continue this self-imposed local TV news ban until I'm a cranky old woman in a nursing home with no one to come and visit me. Then some orderly will turn my room TV to the news thinking all old folks like watching the news. But that's not true. They only like watching the weather. They just have to suffer through the rest of it to get to it. But anyway, I'll be stuck watching it because I'll be too frail to throw my shoe at either the orderly or the TV.

Aargh.