Cinderella Got A Prince And a Kingdom

I can not say I hated this movie. No one dies in this movie, and, for me, that is already a winner's situation considering that this is a gay film -- or a film where the main character is gay. I can say that I didn't like the movie though. Mostly, because I have seen this movie before in this way and that way. The premise is familiar and I found it to be sad in the oddest way possible. I've noticed, in a lot of gay films, everybody dies, one of the lover's dies leaving the other alone, or ... something like what happened in this film, which I will not give away because the film is worthy of watching ultimately. 

I will say that I sympathized completely with the main character. I felt his inner turmoil and confusion, his absolute fear in discovering and having to deal with the fact that he was gay and in love with his best friend (who, I guess, is supposed to be straight even though he likes jacking off with this kid, but whatever). Hell, that confused  me, so there's no wonder it confused the main character.

These young men do that whole boat rowing competitive thing, and they go to camp in order to practice before the big competition. At camp, one of the teams they will be competing against is comprised of a bunch of gay boys called Queer-Something-Or-Other. Here, you have gay boys who are unashamedly themselves coming into contact with the main character who is just realizing this about himself. All this is coming to a boiling point because the best friend has gone and gotten himself a girlfriend that he is serious about. Chaos ensues. Hearts are broken. All to the beat of a summer storm that lasted a few minutes and knocked down some trees. 

I don't like watching hearts breaking, so, when I say I don't like the film -- this is, mostly, the reason. But all in all, it's deeper than that. Like ... why tell this particular story over and over again? I understand that there's a brutal kind of reality to this ... but ... people reject other people for all kinds of reasons. Hearts get broken for all kinds of reasons. Why is this a ... formula ... for a certain kind of plot? What is gained by repeating this over and over and over ...?

...without, at least, adding something to it?

_____

The likelihood that Cinderella got the prince in real life ... is so small as to be ridiculously minuscule. In reality, that bitch would have to do some severe thot-walking in order to get that rich, handsome, wealthy man's attention with her broke ass. The likelihood that he would have just USED her and walked away is far more realistic. And she would have been cast out afterward with her bastard child that he didn't claim to become a prostitute or a beggar. 

And, yet, girls across the world have been gifted since time immemorial with this image of the lovely girl getting the prince. Dreams were born of it/realities were carved from its backbone -- and lovely stories were inspired everywhere that took away the bad 'you can't do that' bits and made LOVE the key. 

As far as fairy tales go, Summer Storm is the genuine Grimm's version of The Little Mermaid (though he did not die and he did learn to be himself, which is why the movie gets a pass from me--being yourself (and letting other people be themselves) is always good, no matter what, and maybe that is the thing that bears repeating over and over again until people FINALLY get it). 

But if you, like I, want to watch Cinderella, then go watch: North Sea Texas.

I grew up in a country that told me it was the land of the free. This fictional county was founded on freedoms--freedom of religion, freedom of a whole bunch of things. This country had a constitution that was, for the most part, a beautiful thing to read. And all throughout  school, I was told that I was a free individual, that my freedoms had been fought and died for and paid for in blood. 

Lies--all of it. They were lies in the beginning and they are still lies today--and, yet, that shit was preached to me hour after hour day after day in classroom after classroom. And I believed it as the sheep believes the Shepherd, even if the Shepherd is a wolf in disguise. 

Today, I watched a man being gunned down by the police in Pasco, WA--a few minutes ago, actually. This man was causing some kind of disturbance. He was tossing rocks or something stupid like that. There's a theory floating around that he was mentally disturbed. He hadn't hurt anyone. In front of whomever happened to be there to watch (children included) the police shot this man down like a dog--even after he raised his hands in the universal gesture of absolute surrender. 

It was murder most foul that the police did commit against this man. He ran from them, and they killed him. 

Watching the news here is like being trapped in a nightmare on repeat--a nightmare that will not stop, and, sometimes, I can't believe this is my life, or life in general. Trapped here. Subject to this. 

The police are killing people--putting them down like animals--and there are those who would still defend them, that find some reason in all this madness. And I just can't. I have, you see, a big flaw in my character. I think that all people are people equally. I can't justify, in my mind, the murder of a person for superficial reasons.  Comments on this particular shooting run the gamut of people trying to reason out this unthinkable crime into something that they can deal with mentally and emotionally. They put distance between themselves and the victim for all sorts of reasons. 

And I am left wondering how they can do that. 

How they can watch him be riddled with bullets like that, and die like that, and feel ... nothing. 

My thoughts aren't as naive as they may seem. I study history for sport and understanding. I understand that history has a tendency to repeat, and I understand that those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it. 

I understand, truly, how the people watching justify themselves, what mechanisms they use and why those convenient mechanisms are there deep within them. There is a lack of humanity in it all thought that repeats itself like an ugly song throughout history--again and again and again. 

I watched a murder today by those who are paid to protect us. I watched the callous extinguishing of another life by the guardians of this society. I felt that shit deep down inside and it actually made me a little sick--but I couldn't move, couldn't turn it off, and saw it through to the very end of the short little video. 

And life will go on like it didn't happen. People will stare at Kim Kardasian's ass, they will work their full time jobs for their full time masters, they will continue to be the same way they always are and always have been. Nothing I say here will matter at all, and I'm not really saying it to make any kind of difference. I'm writing here to take that weird queasy feeling out of my stomach--because writing things always makes me feel a little better about whatever's going on. 

But, every once in a while, someone asks me about my tendency toward isolation. A woman who lives across the street from me said that "You are a very private person" and she wanted to know how I can do that -- be this way. 

I wanted to know why she bothered to notice, ya know?

The truth is:

I do not respect stupidity.

I am subject to stupidity on a daily basis in more way that I can ever write down here. I walk around looking like shit on purpose most of the time--and I catch the odd stares and disapproval for my baggy pants and gym-fucking-shoes--relatively cheap ones at that cause I'll be damned if I spend three hundred dollars on a pair of fuckin' kicks. I walk like a thug, talk like a thug when I feel like it and am a thug every mother fucking day of my mother fucking life and I do it on purpose -- not because I want to be hurt or die and certainly not because I have some point to make -- but because I just don't care anymore, ultimately. 

In the end, I will wink out like a match in the wind, and this shit will keep keeping on like it's been keeping on. 

There's hope for the future. *rollz eyes*

One day, there may be a world where a man gets shot down in the street and people demand retribution for the senseless life taken. One day, one man may not feel the burning hot urge to kill another man so casually like its a badge of honor to have 'bagged' another human being. But in the wake of human trophies and gator bait and slavery and human zoos and witch burning and human pillars and human sacrifice -- all condoned by whatever society they were practiced in -- I believe that day is a long time coming. 

Preaching Hatred

"... naked pictures of naked men doing sex to each other..." Pat Robertson

(I couldn't resist the quote actually. It's so pornographic coming out of a preacher's mouth. I had this fucker on repeat for at least a half an hour.)

Gay people should be able to get married. I think its a stupid issue, actually. It is, to me, arguing about nothing. The whole world holding its collective breath to see the outcome of ... nothing. It is an 'of course' kind of thing. It may seem as if I am downplaying the issue on some level by saying this. I have never seen the big ole hairy ass deal, yo. The cost of suffering and pain outweighs any thought to the contrary of letting people who want to marry ... marry. People are dying over this shit. People are being denied the ability to LOVE whomever they want in this cruel and rather loveless world. If a person can find happiness, then I want them to grab it and hold it for all its worth and as long as they can. 

Jim Veach, a pastor from Georgia went on a rant against gay marriage that I watched today. He is the inspiration for this, my own, mini-rant. He says that god created Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve -- a popular dumb ass thing to say by those who do not support love between consenting adults. And one I am sick of hearing considering god 'created' Adam and Eve and Steve and everyfuckingthingandbodyelse, according to that book. This person went on and on about what is and what is not normal. He spoke with a certain measure of hatred and mockery that is not supposed to be the message of his book, and I could only think while listening to him that a few hundred years ago, he would have been just as passionate about the dissolution of the state of slavery that held this country in its grips for four hundred miserable, inhumane, fucking years.

Hatred and disrespect always sounds the same, shouted loud, from the pulpit. Its sad, really. In all truth, he is outmatched by James Manning and his Manning Report on Starbucks spreading ebola -- EBOWLAAAAH!!!-- via gay sex and semen or something ridiculous like that. Manning is a black man and he's written a couple of books, I guess, since they're up on the screen while he's ranting. I don't know what those books are about, and I don't want to know. What I wonder, instead, is whether Mr. Manning is aware that a lot of people are blaming The Dreaded Ebwolaaaah on black people--African's specifically, and there was a period where A students from Africa weren't allowed to attend American universities because of the Ebowlaaah! Meaning that hatred is circular and it is always going to swing around and bite you in the ass in the end. 

I do not understand a concept of god that allows for hatred. People like those I mentioned above are funny to me -- except for the fact that they are dangerous. They preach love on one hand and fear and hatred on another -- all the while passing that collection plate. They feed fear and collect dollars. And it is obvious to the unafraid. And, most importantly, they don't care who they hurt in the process. There are people who believe them and go out and hurt other people based on the things they say. It is both irresponsible and predatory.

I can not be grateful for the simple common sense and human decency that has a lot of people laughing at the men I mentioned above. I worry instead that it takes humanity so long to do the right thing in almost all cases. For me, gay marriage isn't even an issue. I didn't have to waste five minutes in consideration as to whether it was right or wrong. Love between consenting adults is NEVER wrong--the fucking end. The fact that it needs to be fretted over and picked at like it is ... is, truly, beyond me on spiritual levels. And, anything that stands against love, I have to question. Srsly.   

It's one of the few good things we have in this -- coporatized, work-yourself-to-death, dignity for your dreams, pay this bill and that bill, we are better than them, cut down the trees and build more shopping malls, poison the water, spray pesticides on the food, cancerous, Ebowlaaaah!, everybody's got that one creepy uncle -- motherfucker. 

_____

STORYTIME

'cause ... why not?

I wrote Chosen for a contest on a gay website. I didn't think anything of it at the time. A story is a story. There was no monetary prize, but, at the time, I didn't care about things like that. I wanted the challenge of creating something that the individual who ran the site would like. He seemed picky and selective. I can't resist that. 

Anyway, the rules were simple: 2,500 word count and the story had to take place in outer space. There was a naughtier rule about it all -- but I won't write it down here. I wrote the story in one night the night before the entries were due ' cause that's how I ROLL. I sent it in and let it be. 

About a week later, I got a response from the site's owner who told me that he loved the story but asked a lot of personal questions -- mostly in regards to my name. Ultimately, I will never actually know what the problem was but he seemed to be in awe that I had hung out on his site without running the fuck away the second that I could see it ... let alone had written a story for his contest. 

I found him, truthfully, mesmerizing, and, likely, always will for that conversation. In the end, he never could bring himself to reject the story, but, instead, closed the entire contest. I couldn't really feel bad about it as I published the story -- at least for a little while -- elsewhere. 

People are strange 

When you're a stranger... 

Especially me.