First of all, of course, the boredom has truly gotten to me, I sat and watched most of the Miss Universe pageant on TV. And aside from Miss Paraguay's single earring, which was about the size of a school bus, the other thought that crossed my mind is......we in America have lost a lot of our superiority in terms of ability to produce technical achievements, and other meaningful creativity, have we sunk that low that we can't even turn out a winning BEAUTY PAGEANT CONTESTANT?! This really DOES make me wonder what kinda world we're living in! And Miss U.S.A., who was from Kentucky, and barely made it into the top five, was the first to get shot down from there, and sounded like a total moron when she opened her mouth. And although I now know better than to think Asian culture is all that damned superior, I suspect First Runner Up Miss Japan, who was standing there on stage speaking four different languages, was probably giving Miss U.S.A. English lessons. It must be hell trying to find a Redneck Translator in L.A. And ultimate victor Miss Puerto Rico, cut loose with that Latin passion on one of the final questions in such a way as to make you fear for the lives of anyone in her favorite ristorante if the man at the counter announced they were out of the chicken burritos. Sheesh.
And don't come at me with any crap about exploitation, I'm still one of those guys who figures if any one of these women didn't want to do this, and wanted to serve the world as a doctor, biochemist, or teacher, any one of them, theoretically would be entirely able to. Miss U.S.A. included, although she's still swimming in the intellectual kiddie pool. And for the benefit of my Tip Topper friends, Miss Canada was 6'1", and to my mind shoulda been top 5, but wasn't. My picks were Miss Paraguay, despite the outlandish earring, nice look, good presence, pretty smart, and Miss Japan, who was really smart, not quite as much presence, but also had a good, if somewhat over-ethnic Asian look. There was some talk of her ethnic costume, and a performance with a samurai sword, but I didn't see the whole thing. Kinda wonder how she got the sword on the plane, though. Ah well. This is a long enough post about a subject so vapid, so I'll stop now. If you want coverage of the Nobel Prize results, let me know.