It's been a busy week

Alright, so it’s not really Wednesday, but I had a really rough week with the unexpected death and subsequent funeral of a close family member. That'll put a crimp in anyone’s week and plans for blogging. But, all is not lost as I have managed to accumulate a whole slew of interesting tidbits that I found as I've been poking around.

So in reference to my disdain for Adam Lambert who we all knew was gay, but managed to keep his fame alive by not actually saying the words "Dude, I'm gay" or some other trashy Lambert-esqe equivalent, I came across this which I was going to use to make my point. Unfortunately as keeping news around doesn't seem to be a big deal for interweb archiving, it's gone. But you can see my point by the "keep guessing" part of the headline. (Another post will be devoted to the idiocy of keeping historical records on something as fleeting as computers, and the utter stupidity of the Kindle thingy).

Now for a repeat issue, (even though I feel like I'm beating a dead horse) this really irritates me. Not the whole anti-bullying legislation (which has been a LONG time in coming) but the reaction to this from the Christian groups and the Catholic Church that is mentioned. I find it reprehensible that the bishop in question would compare a legislation that would protect children from being bullied by their peers and offer sanctions to those who would continue to bully others using homophobic language with the gay marriage debate. That's like comparing apples and pineapples. There's absolutely no correlation. And to say that this legislation is a prelude to allowing gay marriage, is just plain ridiculous.

Not only that, if you read the article the one faith based group is afraid that "...if the bill passed it would lead to the expansion of the state’s hate crime law and anti-discrimination laws to cover gays." I'm sorry, is that such a bad thing? Perhaps in your eyes, at this point in time, it may be so. However, I cannot believe that if one of your children was beaten to death for being perceived to be gay, you'd be in the front lines of trying to get a hate crime legislation passed in your state, if only so you could see justice done for your child. Even if that's not the case, hate crimes are very real, and I for one believe that they are under-punished (or whatever the term is).

Another interesting story caught my eye, and I just couldn't resist making a really interesting comparison. We have fought over keeping religion out of public schools and other institutions that have ties to the state for, well, for most of my lifetime of (nearly) 24 years. And from what I can see we've been incredibly successful. This is fine, if you’re going to go all the way and completely separate church and state. But isn't it interesting that we don't want religion in public schools, but religion and religious institutions have a great deal of influence when it comes to marriage which grants all sorts of civil benefits and rights?

Along that same line this article by Time Magazine illustrates just what I've been saying ever since I started paying attention to the gay marriage debate. If you don't believe me, just find a previous post about gay marriage on this blog, I'm fairly certain that it's around here somewhere. But it’s about time that someone with a touch more clout than I have finally decided to take the idea and run with it. Good for you!

I'm pleased to see that someone else also dislikes the bad boy/pretty boy combination vampires (that break all vampire rules) that Twilight has introduced to mainstream society. Although I'm intrigued by his new book about vampires and the interesting take that he's bringing to them, I have to say, as I've said before, I'm a vampire purist and that's what I look for in a vampire tale. Ok, enough with the vampire proselytizing.

I discovered something interesting about blogger.com, which is that you can post your blogs by email. This is a nice idea should it actually work. So needless to say I tried it and if failed. No worries, there will always be more time to blog. Also, if anyone out there who reads this darn thing knows anything about formatting block quotes in blogger, let me know, because your skills are in demand. At least from me.

Regular Wednesday updates will resume next week, provided that nobody else in my life keels over and/or the world doesn't end

A whole week of nothing but AI, Prop 8, and Twilight

So here I am, sitting at work realizing that it's Wednesday and I need to update. All while dealing with being buried under a buttload of work at work. Not that I'm complaining. Having lots of things to do while at work is job security. This is a good thing.

I also realized that I haven't been able to/interested in reading much of the news, because my experience with the news lately has been nothing outside of listening to things about American Idol,Prop 8 stuff, and listening to my mother and my sister tell me how amazing Twilight is. And while I'm an avid Anti-Idolater (cute huh?), an empathize-r to my people regarding the whole gay marriage issue in CA and a die-hard vampire purist, I have to say, when am I going to stop hearing about it?

Before I get off on a tangent, let me just say that I think this is a horrible thing. Something like this would be akin to a school not allowing a report to be presented on...oh...I don't know...Martin Luther King Jr. because he upset the social norm. Well yeah...that's the idea of civil reform...at least that's how I work with it. Even better would be the prohibition of a report on George Washington because he was a rebel against his sovereign government. To deny a student who but in the work to come up with a report/presentation on a political figure that has been brought to light by recent movies and whatnot is just horrible and goes lengths to destroy a child's creative and autonomous spirit. I'm very happy that she made a big deal out of it, because it is a big deal.

Moving on...

American Idol is one thing that just really gets me. I've been polite up until now, listening to the whole of Idol stars and their mostly horrible voices become music phenomena that have taken the world by storm. Goody for you. I still think that Kelly Clarkson has the most horrible voice ever. And while I'm pleased that Kris Allen (I think that's how you spell his name) won AI, because I thought he was the cuter of the two finalists, once he won I had hoped that would be the last that I heard about it.

But, of course, that could not be. Adam Lambert who was purportedly gay, and did nothing to dispel or confirm rumors of his sexuality was very popular. Now let me say that I dislike Adam Lambert because he used his sexuality and the ambiguity surrounding it (not to mention the pictures of him kissing other boys) to sort of clinch the gay vote (which I assume is not small considering AI). It was sort of a shitty marketing ploy to get people to think that he was gay, without actually coming out to say it. While I applaud people who actually say and think that their sexuality is nobody else's business but their own, I cannot abide by being purposefully ambiguous about it in order to become popular. BAD move Adam. And of course now, people are saying that the whole final voting thing was rigged. Uh...DUH? Hello? American Idol uses telephone votes...and it just occurred to you people now that the whole thing could be rigged? Hrm, the collective intelligence of AI supporters and fans is suspicious...

Of course no blog this week would be complete without me mentioning the failed Prop 8 ruling in CA. While I'm not a huge fan of gay marriage (see previous posts about my stance, since there aren't that many of them) I still empathize. Even I can see that this is a huge step backwards in the fight for equality. But, like a great many people, Dan Savage among them, I would think that patience would be a much better reaction than some other militants who would claim that marching all over the place and burning and killing people/things would solve anything. As Dan points out, its slow (agonizingly) but we're gaining ground. I've no doubt that we'll see a vast majority of rulings in the favor of equality in my lifetime. Which is good, but like all civil rights battles it takes time. Patience is a virtue that in regards to our rights as out and proud homosexuals we will afford.

Alright. Now this issue might be a bit touchy, but probably less so than the whole AI issue. My mother and my sister are devout Twilight readers and supporters, etc... They have also managed to corrupt my roommate into this literary fad. I myself, refuse to have anything at all to do with this drivel. Not only does the fact that it was even published show the degradation of American Literature, but it's also a bastardization of centuries of vampire lore! Most notably, vampires out in the sun without immolation? WTF?! NO, NO, and NO! From conception of the vampire monster, sunlight has been fatal for a vampire. They are creatures of the night, whether they are sensual or feral, beautiful of beastly, sunlight has always been a HUGE no no for vamps. While I'll agree that interpretations of the whole sunlight thing are okay [read: Buffy, Angel, Underworld, etc...] the fact remains that any significant amount of sunlight exposure causes vampires to become barbecue. To have them glisten or sparkle or whatever the hell she has them doing in sunlight other than become bonfires is to spit in the face of centuries of vampire myth, legend, and lore and does nothing but cause avid vampire enthusiasts to boycott your book.

Now it was recently pointed out to me by a friend that it's all make believe anyway, so why get up in arms. The problem comes when somebody decides to change centuries of lore. That would be like somebody rewriting the Bible. It just doesn't work. And there should be rules governing who can change these things about myth and legend. Of course that leads us to a free speech and censorship argument, but I'm not talking of banning rule changes, but presenting reasons why you want to change them, especially with centuries of lore saying the opposite! Not to mention that I liked vampires before they became the cool thing to like. Kinda like this webcomic indicates. That's my sentiment...the lawsuit notwithstanding.

Blah. I'm done. I promise I'll have something more productive next week.