117. Brief but important

I keep mentioning Ellen, and for good reason. I do adore her. But this is not so much about that. This is a serious post. A young, openly gay boy was killed by a boy he asked to be his valentine.

Again, I think she has some very inciteful things to say about the gay jokes that are so rampant, even in our "tolerant" society.

Sometimes the world scares me.

Now I'm off to go hang with some preschoolers. They always make me feel better about the world.

116. 6 Random Things

Well, I’ve been tagged again, by no subject, so here goes. I’m to list six random things about myself. So here goes.

1. I LOVE superheroes. I’ve been known to get quite passionate in arguing why Batman is, in fact, not a superhero (depressed rich guy with a lot of toys and a leather fetish? Yes. Superhero? No.), or to try and explain why I find Spiderman more interesting, but have an emotional attachment to Superman. I actually own a Superman ring, which is one of my most prized possessions… when I couldn’t find it after my recent surgery I had a bit of a panic. It was missing for several weeks, turned up in my mom’s closet. I’ve also got a theory about superheroes and homosexuality (that has nothing to do with Batman and Robin) that I think might be why I love them so much… it’s not a well formed theory, but it’s this idea that there is something about you that is inherently different and the fantasy of the superhero is that it is something that makes you more powerful than everyone else instead of less. Like I said, just a theory...

2. I write poetry. Maybe one day I’ll post some. Who knows. I haven’t written any in a while though.

3. I really want to go to space. I’m hoping that ‘space tourism’ becomes financially feasible in my lifetime. I want to experience weightlessness, I want to see a sunrise over the curvature of the earth… basically I want to be an astronaut for a day, but without all the horrible training. I mean, some of it looks cool, but most of it just looks like it would make me sick.

4. I’m embarrassingly superstitious. I try not to be, but I am. Not about bad things, like, I don’t care if I break a mirror or a black cat walks across my path, but I can’t seem to stop the reflex of wishing on the “first star I see tonight” (which is part of why it really bothers me when I can’t see any stars), or even wish chips. I always want to catch those floating dandelion seeds, and even though I don’t celebrate my birthday, I want to wish on the candles on a birthday cake. Basically I just wish on things.

5. Actually that reminds me of another thing, the one thing I’m superstitious about in a bad way. My birthday. I don’t celebrate my birthday. I had a series of really awful birthdays so now I’m rather paranoid about it, and I just try and skip past the day if I can. Most of my friends don’t know exactly when my birthday is, and the ones who do know enough to either ignore it or be very sly in their birthday greetings. I just never want a big thing, because there has just been a history of big birthday things going very badly, and it’s to the point that the one time since I instituted this ‘no birthday’ rule that someone tried to throw me a birthday party, my paranoia ruined it and I ended up having a panic attack and sobbing my eyes out. So yeah, no birthdays.

6. Well, that was kind of depressing so… how about something completely superficial? I’m totally attracted to ass-kicking women. (You know, I think this is a first… I don’t think I’ve ever written specifically about any characteristics in a woman that attract me before). And by ass-kicking I mean ass-kicking. I don’t know if it would translate to real life, to be honest, mostly because I don’t get a lot of opportunity to see people fighting in general, but I know that fight scenes in film that involve women always pique my interest. I actually didn’t realize this about myself until the movie Serenity came out. I’d watched (and loved) Firefly, and totally loved the River character – I found her really interesting, but nothing more. Then the movie came out and River suddenly went from being this completely helpless little girl to kicking all that ass and I was suddenly all about River and then had a moment of “whoa… what’s that all about?” and going back and realizing that I have a bit of a history of being attracted to female characters that kick ass. Starbuck, Sarah Conner (in her new incarnation too… you should totally check that show out if you haven’t already, it’s good even without the strong woman -- actually, it has 2 strong women -- although… then it wouldn’t be a show really), B’Elanna Torres, and while I was never into Buffy, I totally had a crush on Faith. There are loads of others, but I’ll stop there before I embarrass myself further.

Okay, those are my 6 random things. And I think I’m supposed to tag 6 people. So… Eric (even though he ignored my last tag), Eugene, Armored City, Peterson, Liadan and Christine.

115. World's Colliding!

So, it’s not really a secret that I love Ellen. She’s funny, smart… I love the way she dresses (seriously… I think she’s one of the best dressed celebrities out there)… she just makes me happy. Now I don’t watch everyday, but I do tivo it and usually do manage to catch up before my tivo decides to start deleting old episodes. Well, I was only a day behind today and so if you watched Ellen yesterday you saw this… you saw my worlds colliding – in such a good way!



I couldn’t find a clip of this on youtube. I actually ripped this myself – the first time I’ve ever done that! I just had to share it because it brought me such joy. I sat here in my living room, at first with my mouth just open in shock, and then grinning like an idiot. Kirk Franklin! Are you serious? Was I actually watching a lesbian rocking out to Kirk Franklin? I remember when that album came out and everyone in my church youth group was all over it – Stomp was the only song that I could stand on that CD actually. Watching Ellen dance along to a gospel song, and actually appearing to know the words… totally just rocked my world. (Not to mention the birthday greeting to Portia… I love it whenever Ellen even mentions her name.) Kind of like when I was dancing in the lesbian club in Korea and there was this song playing, and it had a certain sound to it so I turned to my friend I was there with and said “Man, this sounds like church music!” and went home and looked it up and low and behold – it was! (That link heads over to a youtube video that someone made featuring the song, I couldn’t find an actual video for it, but it’s a good song.) They played it a lot at the club actually. Made me happy everytime. When I was telling a good friend of mine about it, I explained it thusly – “It is just so amazing when they play that song at the lesbian club. It combines two things I love… Jesus and women!”

Perhaps not the most pious or profound thing I’ve ever said.