Lost in Music

Another one of those "I really did not want to get out of bed" mornings. I think it had something to do with the fact that, because of the rain and the oncoming winter, it's still not really light out yet. Though at least with my job being 10 til 6, I stand a chance of seeing at least some daylight outside of my lunch break. This is a bonus.

I had an iTunes rampage the other day and made a couple of band discoveries that I at least think are really good. Instead of going through iTunes with a shopping list like normal people, I dig out film soundtrack playlists and dig through iTunes not so much for the soundtrack itself (which iTunes tends not to have anyway) but for the tracks off those soundtracks. I'm particularly enjoying Godhead ("The Reckoning" was on the Blair Witch 2 OST), and HIM, which I've heard in a lot of different free-with-magazine CDs, isn't bad either ("The Sacrament", which I've heard elsewhere, is also on the Resident Evil: Apocalypse OST, which I haven't heard). Next time, I might get myself a whole Project 86 album ("PS"; another BW2 OST selection, plus a couple of tracks I just liked the sound of) but I wasn't keen on the Machine Head album on offer. Or maybe I just wasn't in the mood for it at the time.

Oh, and my cheque to the DragonMeet people cleared the other day. This is a relief on various levels, as it spares me the mental arithmetic involved in remembering how much money I really have against how much I promised away on a trader's table and an extra con admission. And at some point in November, please, please remind me that I need to get back in touch with them to make sure I'm getting a demo table! Hmm. Wonder how close I got to my ideal spot.

This weekend, there is going to be much work. Work work work. Bashing away on the last tidbits of Affils (those of you who've read it, can you think of any 'secrets' or what have you that can go in the GM's Guide? Answers on an e-mail please?), with at the very least a break for the NaNoWriMo launch party on Saturday night. I apparently got my dates all mixed up originally and thought I couldn't go. Now I don't even know what's supposed to be going on for Sunday but I'm not sure I'm going to be able to do anything more than sit at the computer and work like a mad bitch, given that Monday night is a bust because there's supposed to be this graveyard vigil in Southwark with l0stmarbles. Well, at least I can give dodgyhoodoo the Player's Guide to work on and have as long as he takes on those for the GM's Guide. I still don't know what the decision eventually was about computer woes, but he says he'll get it done, and I believe him, so I need to get my part of it done so he can do it.

Right. Must go out into the grey dark mess and get to work. Whee.

[Edit: I must never check the score. When I check the score, we lose. But not by much, at least.]

Marvellous

Stephen King is teaming up with Marvel for Dark Tower VIII.

...Marvel?!?

Oh, come on. Please. Vertigo, I could get behind a little more, or maybe Dark Horse. Well, I suppose it could be worse; could be DC. It's just ... Marvel's so known for superhero stuff and Dark Tower just ... isn't. Well, I suppose one can expand one's horizons.

And today's duties, on top of working on the backlog, include making tea for 20 people or so. And James is not even here. He was so gung-ho about me being here because I should see at least one of these meetings (WHY?) and it turns out that he only wanted to make sure that I was here so that he wouldn't have to be and there would be no chance of him getting dragooned into tea service duty.

However, Hilary brought handmade fudge from Cumbria. So sugar soothes the savage beast.

Medication

In other news, there is apparently a drug to combat 'Behavioural Effeminism and Male Homosexuality Disorder'. So apparently, you can medicate yourself until you're just not gay anymore. I've done some Googling and Shetty Pharmaceuticals is apparently a proper company. There are some things that I simply cannot credit as being real until I look for myself, and then I just despair for humanity.

This sort of comes back to cholten99's earlier link to Orson Scott Card's rant about 'propaganda making people gay'. I don't believe that you're either born gay or you're not; hell, I don't even believe that terms like 'gay' and 'straight' are strictly speaking accurate. They're too goddamn limiting for me. What about the men out there who have the many girlfriends or wives and love a good Page 3 girl but, if they were really honest with themselves, wouldn't necessarily kick Nathan Fillion or Naveen Andrews or [insert poster boy here] out of their bed? What about the women who drool over those self-same poster boys and are madly in love with their boyfriends or husbands but would conceivably have a one-night stand with Alyson Hannigan if the opportunity presented itself? It's about love, people, and sexual attraction; it's not to be taken as an average of the whole. I don't sit there and say, "Well, I think Morena Baccarin is gorgeous and the way she moves is quite the turn-on but since I've always had boyfriends, I must be straight". I don't even give it wanky terms like "bi-curious". I don't like the terms and I don't use them on myself if I can avoid it. I'm not much for using them on other people, either -- no one should wear a label.

At the same time, no one who wants to wear a label should be forced to do anything, one way or another. Okay, so society as we know it at the moment may be more encouraging towards people who would like to try homosexual relations, if such is right for them. I don't think it's fair to say that this equates to "society making people gay". It's encouraging some freedom of expression; it's letting it be known that love is love and you should seek it with whoever you like. Hell, the chances of finding that Really Special Someone is low enough without discarding half the population just because they're the same gender. So a more open approach to same-sex relationships is a good thing, but does not necessarily mean a statement one way or the other. People can't help who they're attracted to, but that doesn't mean they were born with the predisposition. I doubt cholten99 was born with the hots for redheads, for example. Nature and nurture; not 'or'.

But then you have the medical community throwing around the homosexuality thing as a 'disorder'. Yes, some states are more open towards same-sex marriages, but many aren't, and there are fights about it, and now some bunch of medical fucksticks are calling it a 'disorder' like it's something you can catch ... or worse, like a mental illness. So you can medicate against those pesky desires; that's got to either fill a man's body with an unhealthy level of testosterone or kill the sex drive altogether. It's like antidepressants ... and worse yet, more and more parents will drag their kids into their doctor's office and say, "My kid is sick in the head! Give me pills to treat this!", and the doctors do. Kids get thrown on antidepressants because they're moody and angsty; that's mood swings and a sense of oppression and hormones! Now, before they resort to the Guantanamo Bay for homosexuals option (Love in Action, where they say that there is no such thing as homosexuals; just homosexual urges and behaviour, which I'd get behind if they weren't insisting that loving a member of your own gender didn't make you a sinner and that they must make the people who go to their refuges, whether or not they went of their own free will, see the 'error of their ways'), they can drag their kids to the doctors for anti-gay pills instead. People make me sick.

Sort of reminds me of a joke that did the rounds awhile ago. "They say homosexuality is a disease. I'm not going to work today; I'm calling in gay". Now you actually can sign off work for gay, at least until the meds kick in, with a doctor's note to boot. Argh.