Fickle Hysteria

Many thanks to freelark and tithenai for making me aware of Transgender Day of Remembrance, and to freelark for bringing the following video to my attention (as well as the sad fact that they already have a name for the 2010 list.)



Tithenai sums up how I feel exactly when she says she wishes it would stop.

A picture of some tall Irken that Sarah drew and coloured in photoshop one night when she had trouble sleeping. I absolutely love this picture. Very holiday season-y.

( The girls are getting really good at photoshop. My younger sister who's an architect does a lot of her work in photoshop and said the girls were quite proficient at photoshop, especially Connie. )

Sarah has also branched out to creating flash videos. They're nothing fancy, but still pretty cool for her first videos.

DEATH OF APPLE
Happy birthday Juliet!

I was hoping to see them this weekend. Bitterly disappointed that I won't. I've only seen them once since the semester started and I won't be seeing them until Christmastime.

I hate how far I live from Ottawa. Montreal was only two hours away so I could easily hop down for a weekend and I was there for the entire summer. Oakville is a ridiculous seven hours away so weekend visits are more difficult and I've only seen them for a few days this summer. Sarah asked me to go see her in the school Rememberance Day play and I couldn't make it. I really wanted to be there. I was seriously thinking of moving to Ottawa because I miss them that much (also because I miss being able to read a bloody book), but then reminded myself that Connie was probably going to move up to Oakville in less than three years. I just have to be patient.

My posts have been more serious lately, the levity is at an all-time low. Life is good, but it still feels dull and empty without them. I'd phone them, except that just makes me miss them more.

I'm going to say a short Connie story because it makes me smile.

About a month ago I get a frantic phone call my from mom because it was almost midnight and she didn't know where Connie was. I told Mom she was probably with friends and not be too worried about it, but Mom continued to be hysterical and that made me hysterical and I remember thinking that when Connie got home I was going to rip her eyes out and break her limbs for not telling anyone where she was. Mom then phones me to let me know that Connie got home. All previous hysteria and thoughts to rip eyes and break limbs vanish. I phone Connie.

Me: So did Grandma give you an earful?

Connie: Oh my god.

Me: *laughs* What did she say?

Connie: She just yelled and yelled.

Me: You did worry her. You should have let someone know where you were.

Connie: What the hell? I'm out all the time and I never tell anyone where I am. I've been out for over a year and a half and no one said anything about having to let them know where I am. (That's kind of true. Connie's parents give her free reign to pretty much do whatever she wants. They're lucky she's a such a good kid.)

Me: Well, you're going to start now, at least with your grandmother. Or just tell Sarah so she can tell grandma when grandma asks. She was really worried about you. So was I. I was freaking out.

Connie: Why? I was just with friends. I've been going out late for a long time. Nothing is going to happen.

Me: We hear reports about girls being kidnapped and it makes us worried.

Connie: Geez, you guys are totally overreacting.

Me: It could be worse. You could be in a family that has no idea you weren't missing until six months later, and then they call the police and the police tells them they found your body three months ago in a ditch.

Which I know is a completely uncool thing to say. I now understand why parents say such crap. And if Connie had rolled her eyes at that comment and snerked about how stupid it was (because I totally would have if my mom pulled that on me) I wouldn't have blamed her.

Instead, she paused thoughtfully for a moment and said, "that's true."

Dude, she is THE BEST FIFTEEN-YEAR-OLD EVER!

I WROTE SOMETHING INCREDIBLY HEARTFELT.

LJ ATE IT UP.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

Salsa is insane!

My Latin ballroom class did Merengue for the first three week which I caught on really well, but salsa O.o I almost didn't go to class tonight because I was so frustrated with salsa last week. I'm glad I dd because I figured it out and it's so much fun, but holy hell, is it ever fast.

Check out the Tara-Jean/Vincent salsa in this season of So You Think You Can Dance Canada to see how fast it's supposed to be.



It's also my favorite routine of this season. The first time I saw it on TV my mouth dropped open in glee, and I've lost count how many times I've rewatched it on youtube. I love the choreography to death and Tara-Jean and Vincent nailed it. I'm glad ballroom shone in the second half of this season.

A big reason is because of Gustavo Vargas, who I now want to marry. His first choreography was a rhuma for Natalie/Danny. Danny is a good dancer but has no presence and Natalie tries hard but she's not a ballroom dancer so the dancing was lacking. I still really liked it though and it took me a while to realize it was the choreography (and that for all Natalie is a krumper and totally out of her league here, she actually did pull off a smokey sultriness that really helped.)

Gustavo also choreographed this awesome mambo for Jayme Rae and Everett, which Jayme Rae just killed.

And of course that amazing salsa <3 <3 <3 Gustavo makes me happy.

Another ballroom routine I have to mention is the samba for Tara-Jean and Emanuel that Tony and Melanie choreographed. I wasn't too impressed with Tony and Melanie this season, but this samba was hot.

Woo, ballroom! Now if the show could step up the hip hop...

...and fire the cameraman...

(and Jean Marc and Tre while they're at it)

I'd be a really happy camper.

I don't get the Biblical examples a lot of Christians use to support adoption. Let's look at some from this webpage.

Giving children up for adoption can be a loving alternative for parents who may, for various reasons, be unable to care for their own children. It can also be an answer to prayer for many couples who have not been able to have children of their own.

I must mention that the examples this webpage didn't include were Sarah and Rachel in the book of Genesis, both women who were barren and tried to create offsprings by getting their husbands to sleep with other women. Didn't quite work out. The moment they had their own child, one sent the adoptive son off with his natural mother to die out in the desert and the other didn't consider the children her husband had with her maidservant hers. Doesn't seem like those children were the answers to their infertility.

The book of Exodus tells the story of a Hebrew woman named Jochebed who bore a son during a time when Pharaoh had ordered all Hebrew male infants to be put to death (Exodus 1:15-22). Jochebed took a basket, waterproofed it, and sent the baby down the river in the basket. One of Pharaoh’s daughters spotted the basket and retrieved the child. She eventually adopted him into the royal family and gave him the name Moses. He went on to become a faithful and blessed servant of God (Exodus 2:1-10).


I love it when Christians use the story of Moses as proof that adoption is good, and the fact that they do so often makes me wonder if Christians actually read the story. Yes, Moses was adopted, but it wasn't a story of his adoptive parents being such wonderful people that took in this poor child who grew up grateful and loyal to his adoptive family and took on their identity and culture. It was the story of a slave abusers who took a child that they would have otherwise killed, made him an Egyptian prince but he still considered himself a Hebrew and killed one of their own and then flees from his adoptive family. He comes back forty years later and proceeds to help rain plagues on them, plagues that bankrupt the entire Egyptian society and kills their firstborn sons, and then takes from them their main source of cheap labour. After that, he helps drown most of their army in the red sea.

You want to talk about ungrateful adoptees? Dude, no one is going to beat Moses at that title. He caused destruction and mayhem to the adoptive family/country. I think all those movies and books about creepy orphans and adoptees come from the story of Moses. How any Christian sees that as a positive adoption story is beyond me, and if they're the same people who insist that "it's only blood, your real parents are the ones that raised you", then they're really out to lunch to favor the Moses story. Moses didn't even acknowledge fact that the Egyptian royal family raised him, much less call them his real family. He saw himself as Hebrew, and the Hebrew slaves were his people, and in the end he disowned his adoptive parents and join the people that he was born to. By all accounts, Moses should be the adoptive parent's worse nightmare.

In the book of Esther, a beautiful girl named Esther, who was adopted by her cousin after her parents' death, became a queen, and God used her to bring deliverance to the Jewish people.

Esther was still raised by blood relatives. She still knew who her ancestors were. She kept her Jewish roots and her family's name. She was raised by her cousin, but she never called him "father". That's vastly different from taking a child from its family, changing its name, often changing its culture, and replacing their parents by getting them to call the adoptive parents "mom and dad", which today often comes in the form of amended birth certificates. Those are two different sorts of adoption. You can't use the situation of being raised by a relative because your parents died to justify the child trafficking and legalized lies that is modern adoption.

In the New Testament, Jesus Christ was conceived through the Holy Spirit instead of through the seed of a man (Matthew 1:18). He was “adopted” and raised by His mother's husband, Joseph, who took Jesus as his own child.

I'm glad Joseph was far more accepting of his spouse's child by another person (snerk) than Sarah or Rachel were, but like the story of Esther, it's two different sorts of adoption. Joseph's so-called adoption of him didn't replace the role of God as Jesus' true father. In modern day adoption, the natural parents are replaced and lose all rights. God never lost any rights over Jesus. He was still The Father. I don't see Joseph so much as Jesus' adoptive father as much as I see him as Mary's husband, and Jesus continued his parent-child relationship with God. It's more like a divorced family than an adoption of any kind.

Once we give our hearts to Christ, believing and trusting in Him alone for salvation, God says we become part of His family—not through the natural process of human conception, but through adoption....

Conversion, the act of choosing to change one's belief, is so vastly different from the relinquishment/removal of a child from its family where the child often doesn't have a choice that saying one idea supports the other is ludicrous. They're two totally different concepts. And just like the stories of Jesus and Esther, no parents lose their rights with conversions. In modern adoption, many parents did and still do.

Christians who use these Biblical examples to show that adoption is wonderful need to learn that the adoption they're talking about is different from the so-called "adoption" they point to in the Bible (except the story of Moses, heh).

( While I'm still on the topic of adoption, thoughts from reading a blog of a prospective adoption parent )

tithenai wrote an excellent post on racism that I think you should all read, especially in the wake of the Fort Hood tragedy. There's a lot I'd like to say, a lot I'd like to add and rant about, but she already so said it far more poignantly and succintly than I ever could. Even if you disagree with it, it's good to read it, listen, and think about how one perceives race and the various ways one can discriminate against others.

I have to link a site mentioned in the comments called Derailing for dummies. Making descrimination easier. Genius all around. Especially the part, You Are Damaging Your Cause By Being Angry.

"After all, everyone knows the Marginalised™ have an obligation to conduct themselves with quiet dignity in the face of infuriating tribulation."
 
That, x 100.

You'd think it would include a mini wooden stake, mini bottle of holy water, and a mini cross (or crossbow! which would be highly rocking), but then, these aren't your garden variety vampires that go poof in the sun.  These vampire sparkle, so they must have a very different kind of kit. 

STICKER BOOK AND CULLEN CREST CHARM!   Guess what my overseas flist folks are getting this Christmas?   

(That's right, soap on a rope.  Or yarn.)  

(but if they really want a Twilight sticker book and Cullen Crest Charm, they will not be denied.)

Last week, one morning after several miserable days of rain, I went to work though the usual wooded path outside the college.

( I was astounded by the amount of sunlight  )

In non-photo news, I realize how much the Christians I was, still are, or have become friends with kick ass.   I've read how some exChristians had their Christian friends turn their back on them when they left the faith, and I find that incredibly cold and cruel.  It's like because they're no longer any use to those Christian they're not longer human so they're shunned and despised.   Is human life that cheap to them that a person loses all their worth and value the moment they stopped believing?  That's so sad. 

I'm lucky that my church friends never shunned me when I stopped believing.  If anything, it was I who pushed them away (it wasn't that I wanted to get rid of them - I just needed space to figure things out and get my head screwed back on straight.)  They gave me my space but they also made it clear if I ever wanted to talk to hang out, they were still there for me.  The Christian friends on my flist have been absolutely lovely and squidgeesushi and bearlyhapnin are some of my favorite people on this planet.  They never never tried to push their beliefs on me, and if we do discuss or argue about religion, it's because I started it.  They've been nothing except friendly and hilarious with me. 

I'm actually not against religion, simply because I think of the communist or other similar regimes that imprisoned, tortured and executed believers in an attempt to stamp out religion and that scares me as much as extreme religious crimes like The Spanish Inquisition, residential schools, and the Magdalene laundry institutions.  I get miffed by extreme atheists who thinks stores should stop selling nativities at Christmas.  Dude, you don't want a nativity for Christmas, don't buy one.  No one is forcing you.  Which when you get down to it is the crux of what I believe.  Or don't believe, since I don't believe in forcing your views on others. Let people be, is my current opinion on this, as long as it doesn't hurt others.  I realize what constitute as "it doesn't hurt others" is subject to debate, but I always did like a good debate. 

Another point of debate - "forcing your views on others", since I think early indoctrination is forcing your views on children, but that's a whole other post.  Right now I just want to emphasize that the Christian friends I have are made of extreme WIN to the max. 

Augh, my mother just left another message for me.  I spent the weekend helping my brother and his family move.  It was supposed to be done last night but my family being the idiots that they are, I didn't get home until eight this evening and then my sister phoned and now my mom left a message, and wow, that's a lot of family for two days O.o  I'm going to bed!

I finished watching the entirety of HBO's Rome.  For the second time.  

I haven't been this excited about wanting to share a series/movie with my family since Doctor Who (not that it's anything like Doctor Who, and with how graphic some of the scenes are I doubt I'll show this series to my nieces).  I can't wait to watch it with my mother.  I've  even been translating the dialogue to Teochew in my head** since they found the blue paint in episode 1.  She'll probably wonder about the state of my soul and sanity during the less savory sequences (I've lost count of the number of times I   shook my head and said "oh HBO") but she'll thank me for it when it's done. 

That was an awesome ending.  

It's also one of those rare shows where I lusted for more menfolk than ladies.  Not that I didn't have my breath taken away by Eirene and Gaia,  (Gaia particularly on second viewing - she really grew on me)  or wasn't (very) appreciative of Cleopatra's magnificent breasts, but the only woman that had me biting my knuckles was Octavia.  Which, btw, check out icon.  Kerry Condon is gorgeous, and more importantly a really appealing actress.  Octavia, along with young Octavian, was my favorite character.  

I did like Simon Wood's protrayal of older Octavian on rewatch.  I was comparing him too much to Max Pirkis the first time around to truly enjoy him, but once I stopped that, I actually did catch some fabulous nuances in his expression.  My main problem with him was that he was cold in that flat way as opposed to Pirkis who was cold in that intense, seething way, but as the series got closer to the end, Woods did bring across an underlying passion to his hard coldness.  It made him that more intriguing and menacing, and gave the ending that more of a kick to the teeth.  
 
Yes, guys.  I found Lucius Vorenus very good to look at, was always extremely happy to see Agrippa :D and Mark Antony is quite possibly the prettiest male thing on screen in years.  I didn't like Mark Antony much in Shakespeare's version of Julius Caesar because I always found him to be an insufferably arrogant shit (I was always a Brutus fangirl, and speaking of which, Tobias Menzies was excellent as Brutus and his famous honour broke my heart over and over again in the series *sniff*), but Mark Antony in HBO Rome?  Still an arrogant shit (ha, I love Atia for calling him that), but he's definitely not insufferable.  He chewed up the scenery.  James Purefoy must have had a ball with that role.  His sarcasm and scorn was delicious. 

Can't forget my very chaste crush on young Octavian.   I'm still not over how incredible Max Pirkis is in that role.  He's one of those rare actors who can register a change of emotion or perception without changing anything in his expression.   I loved the almost regretful way he said, "I don't want to use force."  It really sounded like he didn't want to, which made it seem more believable that he would than if he said it as a threat. 

This series makes me happy. 

(**Because my Teochew sucks, translating Rome to the mother when we watch it is going to be a hoot.  I translated "you stupid drunken slut" to "you stupid drank too much alcohol perverted girl" and "torture a slave" to "put that servant but they're not really servants but more like humans that are seen as animals in a lot of pain in a very slow and deliberate manner."  I have no idea how I'm going to translate "sucking slave cock.")

Running on one hour of sleep. Don't blame Rome. I went to bed at a decent enough hour and couldn't for the life of me fall asleep until some time after five in the morning. For some boneheaded reason, my body isn't tired and I foresee another night of limited sleep, but my mind is insanely exhausted right now. I had all these ambitious goals to do after work today, and the brain simply flatlined when I got home.

Thank the stars daylight saving starts next weekend, so hopefully that will kick both mind and body to work together in giving me some decent sleep.

Good Frith, you know your mind is bone-tired when you start coming up with questions about where am I in this relationship of mind and body. No, you are not getting philosophical in this current mental shape. I'll probably end up worshipping dung beatles that aren't indigenous to my country. This is probably how cults were started.

Anyways, what I really wanted to say (dear Frith, that was a rambling beginning. When I am in my right mind again, I better delete it) was that I'm blown away with Max Pirkis right now. He's the actor on Rome who plays Octavian, and he's bloody fantastic. He's basically this scrawny unfinished teenage boy, but holy god, the gravitas of his speech and the steel in his presence is something to behold. He develops this feeling of "a threat" about him as the series progresses and it's not menacing as much as it is his intelligence and calculating nature are forces to be reckon with it. You don't want to cross him. I can't believe someone else wrote this character and he's basically reciting what they wrote. As far as I'm concerned, someone went up to him and said, "hey, you're Octavian" and he said "okay" and became Octavian.

(Ha, I can so see Pirkis giving me a "I'm not really a Roman noble. I just pretend to be a Roman noble" speech here. Actually, that comment about becoming the character also applies to the cast of The Wire as well.)

I've been dying for a big sweeping ornate drama for a while now, something in the budget and scope of "Master and Commander", "Gladiator", and "The Song of Fire and Ice" saga, which I have been re-reading lately. So I've picked up HBO's "Rome" and it's oh boy, is it exactly what I need right now! It's scrumptious, with war and politics and treason and people backstabbing each other, and some really kick ass characters that I find addicting and fascinating. It does remind of "The Song of Fire and Ice" saga in a way, and now I'm very impatient for HBO to get that adaptation on the screen.

I just wish I wasn't watching this historical drama with its rich setting and big action pieces on a crappy laptop. The moment I get my own place, one I'm not sharing with a landlady or roommates, my very own place with my own living room, I'm buying a TV. And couches. Good Frith, to sit on a couch and watch something like Rome would just be heaven right now.

So that's pretty much my evening today. Came to a even bigger fruit flies infestation, cleaned the kitchen with my landlady, and then sat down and watch "Rome" for four hours straight. The fruit flies thing is disgusting. ( Pictures can found here. )

I started cleaning the kitchen in frustration when my landlady came home and then she pitched in, probably due to guilt in seeing me clean up the mess. She's actually a great landlady and I love her lots, even if she's allergic to cleaning. We figured out the food source. One of her black cloth groccery bags had some old take out that she forgot about. The explosion of flies that went up in the air when we open the bag was pretty gross, but at least we got the source and I'm hoping this means the infestation will go away in a couple of days.

I failed at the two-sweets-only rule again. I bought a pumpkin spice muffin (with frosting) and told myself that was it, but then the Esthetiques program had a bake sale. Not just any bake sale, a bake sale with mini cheesecake, lemon cupcakes, and white chocolate cranberry brownies. Yes, I bought one of each (but only the cupcake had frosting). I can't say no to bake sales. Correction - I won't say no to bake sales. I have not missed a single bake sale since I started working at the college and I've got a reputation amoung bake sellers as the lady who always buys cupcakes. I will not bring scorn to my good name by not participating in a bake sale. Those programs needs to raise money, and by golly I am going to help them.

(Anyone who mentions buying a cupcake and then giving it to someone else will have bricks thrown at them.)

Though I probably could have done without that brownie.

Caught about 10 in that trap I made from instructions found online.  (Take a cup, put in some fruit and water, seal it with serane wrap, and punch holes.  The flies are attracted to the fruit and go in but have trouble getting out so they drown.) It's really gross going down to the kitchen >_<   This is what I get for living with a landlady who hates cleaning.  (I do clean my messes, just not others.  Regretting that now.) 

Today I totally failed at the one-treat-a-day rule.  Here's the tally.   

1 cookie (with frosting)
1 almond bar (with frosting)
1 muffin (with frosting)
1 pie (with whipped cream, so a step up from frosting)
1 timbit (with coconut sprinkles)

Yes, we put frosting on our muffins. We put frosting on anything that doesn't move fast enough. And then we wonder why diabetes is an epidemic here.   
 
( I borrowed The Bridges of Madison County for Purple Prose Month ) Don't know if that counts as purple but it's cheesy enough.  Remind me to write a post about the difference in purple prose and lyrical literature.  I have been re-reading bits of "One hundred Years of Solitude", which uses ornate and flourishing prose and imagery, but it's doesn't make me snort the way that 20 minute skim through Bridges of Madison did.  

In other literary news I've started The Magic of Recluce right now and so far so good :)

It's called victim-blaming, and I think it's cruel, it's not taking people's problem seriously. Even worse, it disables us from being able to say what's going wrong and how do we change it? What are the problems here and how can we get together and solve it?

That is Barbara Ehrenreich's response to one of Annamarie Tremonti's question of the consequences of "positive thinking." You can find the podcast here Scoll down to 15/10/09: Pt 2: Positive Thinking. It's a terrific podcast and I highly recommand it. Ehrenreich is dead on about the problems of "positive thinking."

I should clarify what she means by positive thinking. A lot of it is what I believe most of us think of, thinking of possibilities in the affirmation and telling yourself you can and will achieve your goals, and yes you are worth it. There's also the ubiqitious "the cup is half full" concept, that one must always look at the bright side of things and feel good and be grateful for what they have. Then it bleeds over into telling others not to be negative about their situation, and they must get over it and find the good in life.

I came across it when I first read comments written by adoptees who saw issues with the way adoption is done today. They spoke of loss and feeling second best, coercion and the lack of choice, corruption and and greed, and number of other things I was unaware of. Much of the general response they receive? "You need to get over it." "You should look at what you do have be grateful for that." "I'm sorry your life is so terrible. I pray that you'll get over your bitterness and find peace."

It's so dismissing of the actual issues. It's putting the responsibility on those wronged by an institution to forget about the issues and "move on" and "make peace", instead of looking at the things like poverty, coercion, and alternatve ways to make the system more ethical.

Hell, there was a youtube video of a young man who went through the horrific foster care system and one of the comments he got was that maybe he went through all that so he help reach out to others, and inform ignorant people like that commenter about the truths of foster care. It made me want to slap that commenter. Way to go and say the abuse he went through was a good thing. That was one of the thing Ehrenreich mentioned in the podcast, when she mentioned people telling patients who were just diagnosed with cancer to look at it like learning experience where they could grow and evolve spiritually. Telling someone to embrace terrible things that happen as a good thing seems delusional in my opinion.

Okay, there are some times when one is wallowing in self-pity and not seeing the big picture who should be reminded it isn't so bad. I was bitching incessently about having to wake up at 6am every morning for work, and Enyka answered my complaints with a, "Hong, lots of people wake up at 6am to go to work." It was what I needed right then, and put things in perspective. But she wasn't asking me to be cheerful and see the cup half full, and she certainly wasn't lacking empathy (Enyka, btw, is quite possibly the most empathetic friend I have. Those years of unemployment would have been unbearable without her.)

Not to mention, there's a huge difference between whining about waking up at 6am and finding out you have cancer. Or losing your family. Or being laid off. Or being abused (and yes, I've read things where people have said abused victims needs to get move on and learn to appreciate what they have, without once touching upon the fact that those victims had been wronged.)

I think the lack of empathy is one of the big problem of all this "think positive" line of thought. Instead of listening to others and allowing them to grieve we're telling them to shut up and get on with life. With that lack of empathy, why bother tackling issues like poverty, health research, corruption, etc.? You don't even have to give people rights, they need just to learn that negative thinking is bad for them and think only happy thoughts and be happy with what they have.

First of all, check out that uber cool Super Jupiter icon I snagged off the talented bearlyhapnin. I even changed my layout in honor of it :D

Then I saw some pictures of squidgeesushiin her school uniform and %$#J&K#! IT COMES WITH A HAT! School uniforms to my uncouth peasant brain is already Harry Potter Posh, so the fact that it comes with a hat is like eating pie with a fork instead of your hands. It's so beyond cool.

Tomorrow I have no plans which means I'm spending most of the day in bed.  Words fail to describe how much I'm looking forward to this.  To spend sweet hours in my glorious bed, with its myriads of divinely stuffed pillows that welcomes me like the ripely tinted lips of a lovelorn maiden, and blankets of celestrial warmth and fluffiness that enfold me in a carressing embrace as it whispers to me into gentle slumber, this incomparable glory are sun-kissed ambrosia to my trembling soul. 

Yes, that is my purple prose way of saying anyone who tries to wake me before noon is getting punched in the face. 

I'm so looking forward to having a couple of easy days, catching up on comments and links that people gave me, and maybe even getting a chance to hear some poetry and read a few more chapters of the fantasy novel I've started.    It's going to be sweet. 

As usual, the best part of a visit to Ottawa.   This visit had its share of me wanting to fit my head in a meat grinder, but they balanced it out and put a plus on the side of Team Sanity.  Did I mention my girls are amazing?  Because they are. 


( Pictures of crafty and cookery goodness under the cut )

A quote for Purple Prose Month!  This was taken from Episode 2 of Season 2 of 30 Rock, when Jack was reading a passage from Don Geiss in "Yachting Illustrated" -

"The ocean, like business, with a pillowy abyss of a lover's bosom, seems infinite, but all things must end."

Pillowy abyss of a lover's bosom. 

CLASSIC. 

I finally did something I should have done a while back and that's join a livejournal community for ex-Christians. I was reading some of the older posts when that old familiar feeling of horror started to choke me. I thought I was going to punished for reading these blasphameous entries.

I realized I was still afraid of my religion and then it hit me.

I've spent the majority of my adolescent and adult life in terror of Christianity.

I've touched upon this before when I talked about being 13 and coming home from church and freaking out my younger sister because I burst into tears over the prospect of hell. Hell fucking terrified me. GOD fucking terrifed me. I had more than my share of nights where I'd wake up and my heart would skip beats or pound irregularly and I thought God was going to kill me and send me to Hell and I was bloody freaking out.

I'd go out with friends doing non-Christian things and the fear would kick in and I would go home and have mental break downs. I still can't refer to God as "He" or "Him" with a small "h" because I'm scared of offending him. Just writing this post is making my heart pound too fast and my mind go in places I don't want to go. I'm still as scared and in terror now as I was when I was eighteen and wouldn't stop re-playing scenarios of "what torture will they use in hell now?"

Now that I think about it, living in that constant terror of hell and judgement was somewhat like being abused. I'm not saying I was abused, or that Christianity is abusive. I mean, for 99% of its followers it's a wonderful religion full of love and forgiveness and I don't deny there is a lot of good in Christianity, but for me, it was a life of paralyzing fear.

I always thought that my extreme rage with Christianity (of which the heat has mostly gone out of thankfully - I need to move on) had to do with the guilt it put on me, but what was behind that guilt? Why did I feel so bad when I thought certain thoughts or did certain deeds? Because I was fucking afraid of being punished (and now I'm afraid of being killed in my sleep because I came out and wrote this. Nice going, you dingbat.)

How can I say what I want to say? Not that I was abused, but this living in terror, this not being to do anything because I was afraid of punished, has really fucked me over in so many ways.

Now that I realize it, I'm angry again. I know I have no right to be, because Christianity and the church did not set out to have me living in fear (I'm the only one out of a hundred Christians I know who ended up terrified of it) but I think about the times I told Christians I had issues with Hell and not one of them could understand why it bothered me so much, and that made me feel so lonely because it was horrific to me.

I feel better now that I got this out (provided that I'm don't get smited in my sleep tonight.) I'm getting very nice messages from ex-Christians as I type this, and yeah, I feel much better.

There are three kinds of Hong Kong movies to me. The first kind is filled with movies like Wing Chun, Swordsman II, Chungking Express, and Wu Yen which are SUBLIME BEYOND REASON and remind me why Hong Kong entertainment is my favorite bar none. The second kind consist of movies that don't fall in the first category or the third category and those I either like or dislike depending on the quality of the movie.

Then there's third kind, where you have movies like The Intimates, Yesterday Once More and Moon Warriors that have aspects of greatness so pure and wondrous (or in the case of Yesterday Once More, a kickass idea with a kickass cast) that it makes me want to drill holes in people's head because the rest of the movie is either ridiculous, poorly written, or badly executed. A lot of these movies have so much to work with it and with just a little less lazy writing, they could have been great. They should have been great. There lies the sting.

(Though you could argue Moon Warriors was an overblown movie that due to its amazing cast and the evocative atmosphere ended up far better than it should have, and I would agree.)

Hellboy II is not a Hong Kong movie, but it still falls in the third category. It had some great ideas that ran away with my imagination and heart but the movie never went anywhere with them. The tooth fairies were probably the most awesome thing I've seen on a Western screen. I love that mix of fairy tale, horror, and "agents from the bureau of has a scientific explanation for them"!real-worldliness.  If only the rest of the movie had been that inventive and clever.

It had the potential. The faeryland plotline blended in nicely in that universe and was believable. I wanted to see more of that world and how they would interact with the human world and normally I don't care for "worlds meet" plots. Having an eco-terrorist go about his goals in the wrong ways could have been a thoughtful storyline that explores intent vs. means and indeed, could have gone further to question how pure the intent was and if there was something darker quality to it (not to mention ask about the possibility of alternatives. I'm all about alternatives.) Hellboy's temper could have provided some real character drama. Nuala's character, the thing that really captivated my attention, had AMAZING possibilities.

Instead, we get a lot of attitude, and while I love Hellboy as a character, I thought he was trying too hard to be tough/cool/snarky. What made him so appealing in the first movie was that he had a heart underneath all that.

It wasn't a bad movie. There was much I loved about it and that's what really gets to me. It had the potential to be better, especially the ending. Hell, if they changed one tiny thing it would have saved the entire movie for me. This review, entitled "Hellboy 2: Selling out strong women" mentions that one thing as well as some other possibilities that would made it a stronger movie. I like the ending the reviewer came up with. It's also a good read about the flaws of the movie, especially in regards to the female characters.

Speaking of female characters, I was fascinated by Nuala, as in "eat my brain in a way it hasn't been eaten since Lethal Weapons of Love and Passion" kind of fascination. I always was a sucker for woman who are less self-assured and have self worth issues but who have a lot of potential to be great if given a chance (which most aren't given, but it's the wishing they could have that gets me each time.) Probably why Karen Kasumi is still my favorite female character of all time, and why I liked Boomer from BSG, Kate Lockley from Angel, and Megara from Disney's Hercules. They all had someone or something that knocked down their sense of self and is still (or had been) eating at them or holding them prisoner one way or another. With Nuala, it was ( SPOILERS! )and it reminded me of how I wanted Karen to live without the memory of her mother dictating how bad she was, or for Kate to let go of the hurt regarding her father or Boomer to find herself in all that identity confusion, and for them all to find a measure of peace and self worth.

And I REALLY wanted ( BIG SPOILERS! )

Thank God for fanfic. This one gave me what I really wanted and it's absolutely stunning.

The meds experiment I mentioned in my last post is doing one hell of a number on my braincells. I unsubscribed from the wrong livejournal community, and then while I was adding my two cents to the live thread on the SYTYCD Canada forum, I mentioned how I was waiting for Jayme Rae Dailey to dance a ballroom routine, and it totally slipped my mind that I just an hour earlier RAVED about her mambo routine.

Good Frith, I am out of it. Feel like a firetruck ran me over.

( Cut to spare anyone who doesn't want to know about my stupid woman body issues. )

Some very pleasant news - third Latin dance class was awesome. I definitely want to take more.

Just got back from a very busy weekend visiting friends and family that ended with a very late buffet lunch with my landlady and her boyfriend. Not kidding about the buffet part. I am in extraordinary pain right now. Buffets are a total double-edged sword with me :(

Thank god fma_fic_contest extended the voting period. I think I need the rest of the evening to recover. Augh, what is it about seafood that always makes me order too much?

ETA: Confidential to Squidgeesushi - *HUGS*