Battlestar Galovetica

Who knew? You can learn nifty new phrases from watching re-runs of Battlestar Galactica.

Just for the record, I hate this show. I'm trying to remember what my feelings on it were when it was first aired some twenty years ago, but I guess the part of the subconscious that blocks out traumatic memories was in full working order for me. Okay, it's not so much that I hate it, as that I find it ridiculous. Why was everything in the seventies so big and chunky? Had they not discovered sleek neatness? HMMM? Hair was big, furniture was big, cars were so big (though not quite as big as your average 1950s Cadillac, perhaps. Don't quote me, I don't really know anything about a car that isn't going at least 200 kph around a racetrack in Europe.) that you could have quite the comfortable orgy in daddy's borrowed backseat. (Blame the baby booms on the cars, my friends; it's because of the back seat.)

Today we learned the phrase romantic malnutrition.

One could take that in several different ways, I s'pose; but it really is just what it says it is - someone who is starving from lack of love. Mind you, in the show it was used in reference to some woman who was desperate for a husband - so her level of starvation could only be illusiory, or perhaps even comic -remember, there are people who think the highest goal of a human's existance is to get a mate; and they will do or say anything to get one - for the sake of having one. This attitude seems to be falling more by the wayside as decades pass, thankfully; as people realise that there might be other facets to existance other than proving yourself only through the attainment of a partner. The idea that a human being who failed to get a mate was an abject failure always bothered me; but when you think about it, our biological imperative is to procreate. You can't exactly do that without someone of the opposite sex to help you.

It's true, though, that we as humans cannot survive without love, affection, and attention. Well, we can live without them, but it can become somewhat of a dry bones existance. We're social creatures built to be, and have, some kind of companionship. We need it.

We're still trying to figure it all out though; what is healthy, what isn't, what's good, what's not, what's proper, what's wrong... I know any number of people who equate unwavering attention with love; who think devotion is someone pandering to your desires and wants alone, with seemingly no heed for anyone else; themselves included. I don't think we'll ever be able to analyse it to some quantiable result. I think it's always going to remain a haphazard mystery; and perhaps that's just how it should be, including all the pain and hardship it can sometimes carry with it.