i find the after effects of the passing of prop 8 mildly amusing. i have received numerous invitations to sign petitions to prevent married couples from divorcing if there are children in the marriage involved. it makes sense, in a way, if the institution of marriage is there to protect children then the people creating the children should be held accountable, let's disregard the welfare of the children since after all, studies show that children with two opposite sexed parents supposedly fare better than those of same sexed couples, let's ignore abusive parents, drunk fathers or mothers... after all, it only matters if they are both there, right? since potential loving same sexed parents are not equivalent to different sexed parents.

it was a great morning to wake up to knowing that our new President would be a precedent for change. but at the same time there was a gloom to the silver lining because Prop 8 had passed. i couldn't grasp how people could agree to the passing of something like it. what happened to the people who moved the world fighting for the rights of women, of african-americans, of the underserved and the underprivileged? it seemed that they themselves had joined the witch hunt to put someone under their feet, how ironic and infinitely saddening.

It was the night before elections, there were two very important issues on the board for me, the new President and Proposition 8. President elect Obama was almost a sure thing, at least it felt like it, but Prop 8 was a dicey thing. I would have thought that with all the injustice that others have to go through, with such an important thing as having an African-American President, such a wondrous thing, that nothing as horrible as Prop 8 could pass.

I have joined the ranks of poseurs and hacks
of pies-in-faces and amateur pranks
of dinner time jokes with no tact
with harmful edicts disguised as frank

We come in wavse and droves
with glittery stars in our eyes
with no blacks or pinks
but fuchsias and mauves
with simple crossed t's and dotted i's

politics, politics, politics, that seems to be all that i can think about these days. it's enough to make me sick. it's a very important thing to everyone. it's hard to sometimes look at people you care about when they're not so politically aligned with you, it's like a slap in the face. people sometimes say, don't take it so seriously, but it's hard to really understand them when their ways of life are not at risk.

halloween has come and gone. it was definitely quite different from the halloween's that i'm used to. it was fun spending time with my family. we usually get together on all big family holidays, (sometimes just because on weekends) but it's usually that the middle-aged, younger cousins don't have much time to show up anymore since they're busy with their families or in-laws. election tuesday is almost here.

Halloween is almost here. It seems like each holiday is just a constant reminder of how things used to be so different. Growing older certainly makes the holidays seem so different than the innocence they were surrounded with when we were younger. We didn't have to worry about the state of the economy, whether or not rights would or could be taken away from us, or if the next President would or would not be more of the same ideologies -- we just worried about how much candy we would be getting and how much of it we would be allowed to consume. Sometimes it's harder to know the difference as to whether it would have been better to be kept in the dark about these things or to have full (or as full as our own knowledge permits us to grasp) knowledge. I suppose at least now we have a more perception, the knowledge that, if we could, we could make things better ourselves instead of letting others take the reigns.

"Father asked us what was God's noblest work. Anna said men, but I said babies. Men are often bad, but babies never are.

- Louisa May Alcott -

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I'm babysitting my sister's kid today, the poor kid is sick so he couldn't go to his day care and neither my sister nor my brother-in-law can take off work, so he goes to his uncle today. I must say, it's not always an easy task to take care of another person's kid, you always have to be constantly watching what you do and say, not that you don't that with your own, but it's just different, you can probably gauge your own kids capabilities and retention when you have your own. It just makes me examine myself though, how ready I am to have my own.

Things have changed and it becomes harder to imagine how things used to be. As society settles more and more into comfortable status-quo, we start forgetting that things didn't used to be as they are now. Women could not vote until the 1920's, African-Americans were seperate but considered "equal" up until the 1950's. It's so easy to settle into the whole mentality that life is good because it is good for me. And it's hard to impress to people who are no longer part of the "underserved" to become part of system that helps to serve. While it is true that there is still sexism, that there is still racism, how is it so hard to make a jump when someone else is being subjugated to what was once part of your own past struggles and lend a helping hand.

It's both a blessing and a curse that the weather has been so weird lately. Personally, I am not a big fan of cold weather (I hate hot weather as well, really, but I hate being freezing more) but this weird heat during Fall/Winter season is just odd. I love having the balmy weather and not having to carry around a thick jacket wherever I go. However, as much as I love the weather, I think it's also weird to have a summer day in the middle of winter.

I think that it's a little amusing how some things never seem to change. I've been on facebook for a while now, it's just recently that my high school "friends" have started to add me to their lists. I suppose, in high school I might have been known as the "gay" guy (but no one ever really knew for sure), they all kind of knew it but would not acknowledge it. It seems like the social pecking order still hasn't changed much, I didn't start getting added until some people higher up on the social pecking order (back in high school) added me, now the others follow suit. What they don't realize, I think, is that it's the ones higher up on the pecking order that added me, and not the other way around. Or maybe, I've given myself too much credit and them too little.

Nowadays I feel like there's a distinct disconnect between myself and life. I think it might be because my life has been pretty static of late, everything's the same from one day to the next. There's a sense of comfortable-ness that is hard to let go of. It should be easier, to go for what you want instead of just satisfying what it is that you need.

I've been hearing some news about people ripping up "Yes on Prop 8" signs. This proposition is supposed to be really controversial, but really it shouldn't be. I personally don't agree with ripping up "Yes on 8" signs, even though (honestly) I have very strong urges to do so. However, I do see where people who do so are coming from. Bigotry, in this day and age has become so discreet, it's become almost accepted and honestly, even ignored. If those had been signs that promoted racial segregation, people would be up in arms, as they should be. People say that homosexuality is about morals, but wasn't slavery once condoned by churches as well? I am so confused how gays and lesbians being married are a threat to marriage between opposite sex couples. It boggles my mind.

If you've got one drink, and one friend, and 45 minutes, smooth rides make for boring stories. A little calamity, that's worth talking about.

- Grey's Anatomy -

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Inspiration comes to us from many things, from a good talk with a friend, a beautiful sunset, wise words read from a book. They can come after many days of thought or gradually like a flower suddenly blooming into spring or out of the blue in the shower that makes you want to rush to your journal and write it down before it fades away, like the gloom of night from the rising sun. Inspiration, determination, drive, motivation, whatever you want to call it, is just a nudge, it's up to us how we use it to fuel ourselves up or simply to acknowledge it and let it pass from memory.

What's inspired me recently? Watching James Franco's interview behind the scenes on SNL and his talk about going back to Columbia University (although it also spawned a thought in me to go to Columbia University to study and stalk him, but that's a different story). Another one is Ronald's interview on Downe4U with Krys Freeman on downelink, but the reason behind that is more personal.

We came back from watching "Max Payne" tonight. I was excited to see it, at first, because I like Mark Wahlberg, he's a good actor and he doesn't really pick any stupid movies. My cousin, however, informed me that it got bad reviews. I don't place a lot of faith in reviews, at least only if they're mediocre, it could go 50/50. Although, "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" got good reviews and that was the only I've ever walked out on voluntarily (well, "Blair Witch" but that was because I was getting nauseous and at least I eventually went back in). I went in to watch it with a little apprehension, I had never played the game on the PS2, so I didn't come in with too many preconceived notions. All in all, it was OK, it wasn't bad, it wasn't great, it was OK. The plot took a bit of getting used to, I feel that they rushed the first part, the most important, the plot set up. You didn't feel a very good connection with the main character, I mean you don't always, but whether the main character is good or bad, you have to understand where they're coming from, I didn't feel that from the beginning. It wasn't until about the middle that the plot actually started getting involved, so by that time, a lot of people had already zoned out and it was hard to get their attention back.