Exactly How Far Over the Rainbow?

There are very few issues I have officially stands on and even fewer that I passionately make efforts to show my support for; I prefer to graze the center line and listen and appreciate both sides; however, the exception is gay rights. I would believe that love is undefinable and has no boundaries of race, religion, gender, ect anyway, but the main reason I feel so strongly in favor of gay rights has to do with a story of my first best friend and how I lost her friendship. I've mentioned it briefly in an earlier post, but let me explain a bit deeper.

Danielle and I met when we were three years old. Our older brothers were best friends, so it was only natural our paths would cross. We became inseparable instantly and stayed that way until that day in fourth grade.

It was lovely weather outside, and after lunch the two of us happily skipped out towards the playground, holding hands. Halfway through the hallway we were stopped by a large fifth grade boy we'd never talked to before. He pointed at our hands and laughed, yelling to his friends, "Hey look at these girls, they are totally gay."

I tilted my head questioningly. What was gay? I'd never heard that word before. I glanced at Danielle to see her eyes as big as saucer pans. She jumped and threw my hand away from hers as if it had burned her. My best friend ran away, leaving me standing there, clueless as to what had just occurred. The boys laughed and walked off. She did not say a word to me for the next six years.

I suppressed the memory of it and blamed everything on her new best friend, saying she had stolen my best friend from me. Then in high school, I befriended the most accepting group in the school. Among them were straights, bisexuals, gays and lesbians.

They are the type of people who talk with touch. For a while when they would try to touch me, my shoulder, my knee, my elbow, my head, didn't matter, I would flinch away. I never understood why until one day when I was emotionally upset, I remembered how Danielle and I truly broke apart.

I was scared of my friends touching me. What if people would think or say something? Would they leave me like Danielle had? Was it wrong for me to hug someone who I did not wish to have sexual relations with? That's when they told me that they HAD been told such things, thought of as what they weren't, but they did not give a damn what anyone thought. We know the truth and that's all that matters.

There you have it. I lost my best friend at the age of nine because someone suggested we were gay. I'm straight, but I've felt the sting of discrimination based on sexual preference. I believe that love transcends the boundary of gender.

Who is the government (or anyone else for that matter) to say who anyone can or cannot love? Or can or cannot be a couple? "Oh fine, you can get bonded, but we wouldn't recognize you or give you the same treatment as a heterosexual couple." Sorry, not good enough! Two people in love should have the right to get married and be treated like they are a couple by the government and our society as a whole.

Observant

I learned more from the ten minutes I sat in the cafeteria waiting than I did with an hour(ish) of folding clothes upstairs at the Baldwin Center. I felt like sitting there awkwardly in the rusty chair and staring at my hands, but I knew I needed to write this post, so I let my eyes wander the room.

I first noted the windows. The eerie frosted glass making the passing figures of children fuzzy bright colored silhouettes with echoing footsteps. I saw the bulletin board. Posters against drug use in English and Spanish. Instructions for giving CPR and first aid.

What threw me was the paper about Grandparents acting as Parents support group. I realized that there were not just a family or two like this, but enough to have an official group for them. My parents have always been there, providing and encouraging me; I can hardly imagine growing up without them.

After a pause for thought, I scanned more of the room and saw the giant freezers, the television, all the many sizes of highchairs, the table of books, and lasty, the piano. My first thought was, "I wonder how out of tune it is?" If only I knew how to tune a piano.

Truth or Fiction? Part 2

Prompt: Write two memory posts. One real; one fake. Let the readers figure out which is true.

Story 2: Bubbles on the Holiday Trolley

First off, I must inform that my four best friends and I are... unique and a bit... totally insane.

Anyway, one day over winter break, we got really bored and decided to take a ride on the Holiday Trolley downtown. Earlier in the day, our group had gone on a shopping spree in the dollar store and bought packs of fruit-scented bubble-stuff, coloring books, crayons, "grow your own" animal kits, and a pregnancy test. I said we are insane.

So we pulled out the bubbles and started blowing away on the trolley. There were a pair of little girls wearing matching fluffy pink coats in the seat in front of us, and they started to chase after the bubbles, giggling adorably.

After a few minutes, we pulled out the books and were coloring. One of the girls peeked her dark blonde pigtails over the seat and saw our coloring books. She began laughing and asked if we were allowed to color at our age. We told her, "Of course, you are never too old to color, silly!"

Upon abandoning the trolley, we left a few coloring pages, a half-grown polar bear (grown with water from a water bottle), and the scent of peach and strawberry bubbles in our wake. I wonder what the next people who took our seats thought.

Answer: Fiction

Truth or Fiction? Part 1

Prompt: Write two memory posts. One real; one fake. Let the readers figure out which is true.

Story 1: My First Day of Spring Break

On the way home for 'Spring' Break (In what why, shape, or form is this spring?), my mother and I stopped at the dollar general in my hometown. When we left the store, me holding bags, I caught sight of one of my old classmates exiting a car alongside her mother. She began to squeal and ran over to hug me.

The four of us gathered there in the parking lot and talked briefly. During this time, an 80ish year old lady backed out of her parking spot in a tiny gray car. She preceded, even though she could have avoided it no trouble at all, to turn and drive straight into our group.

Our mothers jumped out of the way as they could do so easily from their positions. My classmate was behind me and luckily was not hit. I was.

The car pushed me a few feet and I stumbled clutching onto my classmate, while her mother banged on the car's windows until the lady stopped. My mother stood there in complete shock.

After a second, the three of them began to scream at the woman for hitting me. In response, the little old woman stuck out her tongue and drove away. We were all too out-of-it to think to write down her licence plate.

My classmate hugged me tightly and I just fell into hystrical laughter in her arms. Sore, brusied, shaken, but otherwise fine. What a way to start a spring break, huh?

Answer: Truth

I am just saying...

One thing I learned from reading Stephen King's memoir is not to overuse adverbs or "fancy" verbs. I write anime fan-fiction, and I have a mild case of this disease. Since third grade, I don't think I've ever written "said" in a story, just the word said by itself.

He pleaded. He screeched loudly. He said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. Never just said. It is just how King says on page 121 (of my copy of the book); I am afraid of the readers not being smart enough to understand what I mean. Therefore, I must explain exactly how a character says something to be sure my point comes across.

But King is correct; my reader's are not complete idiots. They know exactly how the character is saying a line from the other things happening in the scene. I'm going to watch if I'm over-describing, to the point of annoyance, from now on in my work.

Quote from King's memoir of what I'm referring to: "Believe that when you use he said, the reader will know how he said it--fast or slowly, happily or sadly. Your man may be floundering in a swamp, and by all means throw him a rope if he is... but there is no need to knock him unconscious with ninety feet of steel cable." (121)

Acceptance Makes the World Go 'Round

This post is not exactly from a prompt; I mixed a couple of them together. I have a few things I need to say, all of which surround a single topic... acceptance.

Acceptance is the reason I love anime. The sad truth of the world today is that being accepted as who you are is often a rare thing in a person's life. Everyone wears a mask (sometimes several). When I enter an anime convention, I feel my mask fade away. Anime geeks are such accepting people. I can walk up to 95% of the people and ask for a hug, and they will just open their arms for me. It's a wonderful feeling.

Acceptance is what I want most. Back in fourth grade while skipping out onto the playground and holding hands with my best friend of five years (over half my life at that point), a fifth grade boy walked up and started laughing and pointing at us. He called us gay. Being nine, I had no idea what that meant. My friend was not so sheltered. She threw my hand away as if it had burned her, ran off, and did not speak to me for years.

Then in freshman year at high school, I befriended this girl named Brittney. She was even slower than me at running the mile in gym class. We would jog together and talk about everything. A couple months into school, I mentioned that I had never been baptized. Brittney froze like a statue and stared at me as if I had just blown up into confetti bits. "You... were never baptized?" "No..." "I can't talk to you anymore..." That was that; she turned and spirited in the opposite direction, leaving me in complete shock.

Acceptance is why I am the way I am. It does not matter your past, your looks, your beliefs, your sexuality, your race, your anything. I don't care about any of that. I have seen and felt rejection, and I will accept anyone.

This is my promise to myself.

Keep the Emmys Coming People!!!

Prompt: Choose a well-known public figure and post a blog using this person's persona to log a typical day in their life.

This is going to be fun.

WARNING: This will involve a bit of swearing due to my choose... and sexual references.

Hello all my wonderful ladies and gays! So today I was craving some more of that wonderful publicity you all know I enjoy so very fucking much. I had another meeting with Racheal True, and she told me that now that I have a facebook, I need a blog to get even more in with the young hollywood crowd.

Luckily, I learned my lesson with "faceplace", I'm not letting my mother anywhere near this page! I can see her now: "Daughter! I clicked another annoying button-thing, Jesus Christ! Mary and Joseph! Bring me a case more of wine!!!"

Yeah... no... not going happen! So, I've gotta go cause I have to smoke a couple pounds of Oxycocoine before the photoshoot for the poster of my next show. *cough, cough* Already sold out people!!!

Then, I have to teabag Snoop Dog. Go find some more "huge" clothes with Paris, which tend to be quite the opposite of huge, you know kinda really tight and showing off our young hot bodies. Oh God... I wonder if Barbara Walters has a blog on here. *smirk*

Of An Annoying Bullhorn and Mochi Torment

Prompt: If you could have anyone locked in a room so that you could torment them for a day, whom would you choose, and how would you torment them?

Tormenting someone… sounds… fun! MAW HA HA HA HA!!! I mean, I am a normal kindhearted human being. Okay, so if I have to pick someone to torment, my first thoughts involve people like Adolf Hitler, but he is already dead. Plus, I have no idea what I could do to torment him while still feeling like the better person. If I can torture Hitler, how horrible must I be?

When I think about it more realistically, I would quite enjoy tormenting that “Christian” bozo who led the protest at Fanime 2008 and 2009 (An anime convention in California). I personally am not Christian, but I have friends who are, and he just gives them a bad rap as close minded, mean, judgmental people. Video Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tvdljss2WWU Seriously, does this guy have nothing better to do with his life? I like Japanese cartoon characters with huge eyes, so I’m going to burn in hell forever? That makes perfect sense. *rolls eyes*

Above: Protest at Fanime

Above: Girl Cosplaying for a Convention

Point is… I would love to tie him up in a room, tape open his eyes, duct tape his mouth shut and make him wear furry ears and a ninja mask. Then, I would make him watch Yaoi (boy loves boy). Cute Yaoi. No Hentai (Porn, for lack of better explanation); that’s going a little too far in my opinion. I would send in a line of cosplayers (People who dress up as Anime characters) at least five hundred people long to hug him, and I’d yell at him through his bullhorn for a few minutes. Finally, pouring melted wax in his bullhorn, hug him for at least ten minutes, feed him Mochi (Yummy Japanese Sugar, Creamy, Delicious) and then leave him alone for many hours to think about what he’s experienced.

Above: Mochi for Torment

A lot of people (like my roommate) would want to cause him horrible scaring pain. In my opinion, that kind of shows his point of anime cosplayers being awful people. I’d just want him to see that unlike what he says we have love! Also, to destroy that annoying bullhorn would make me very happy. *smirk*

When snow melts, what does it become?

"When snow melts, what does it become? It becomes... spring!" (Tohru; Fruits Basket)

For my first official post (I do not count Testing), I've decided to entertain anyone who may read this with the thing that has pretty much consumed my life recently, ANIME! I find it hard to believe that a few years ago I did not know what it was, and now it's not only what I spend at least half of my free time thinking about, but it invades every aspect of my life. Every subject somehow finds a path to an anime or manga. Whether it be Honors College Class about China's rise in power leading to Hetalia, or potato-chips being served at lunch leading to Death Note. ("I'll take a potato-chip... AND EAT IT!!!!") There is a way to connect everything to anime!

Note (in case you have no idea what I am talking about): Anime is Japanese animation cartoons. Manga is Japanese comics traditionally drawn from right to left. Both are considered great art forms. Some of the most well known in America are Sailor Moon, Pokemon, and Spirited Away.


Anyway, I decided to go through the horribly painful task of picking my five favorite anime/manga and explaining why... why I am torturing myself to pick only five?! I must be crazy. There are SO many excellent ones to pick from. *sob*


1.) Axis Powers Hetalia - Where can you go wrong with countries as characters? I honestly could not have cared any less about history until I came upon APH. Now, I just cannot help but laugh at myself; since when can I say, "I am in love with China, Russia, and Korea!!!" and be completely serious?

2.) Ouran High School Host Club - Why can't Oakland University have a Host Club?! Wait... maybe I should rethink this plan... with all the drama that unfolds in this manga/anime... I'm not sure I'd want to actually live in that world. Still OHSHC is my love!

3.) 24 Colors - No one really seems to know this manga. It is a very short (one volume) story about this male and female artist that fall in love through their love of art. I think it's adorable! The fact that I am an art student who looks similar to the leading lady helps a bit too.

4.) Bleach - It's just epic in a way Naruto cannot be. *shields self from Naruto fans* It's my favorite fight manga versus cute manga (shoujo). The storyline draws me in, and I watch it with my brother. Family Bonding Time: Let's watch anime people beat the crap out of each other!

5.) Lucky Star/ Fruits Basket/ The Melanchonly of Haruhi Suzumiya (Three-way Tie) - Lucky Star makes me laugh so hard since the group of eighteen years olds spend three full episodes figuring out the proper way to eat a chocolate cornet. It's just like my friends! / Fruits Basket is cute. I love Yuki and Machi as a couple. She's a little unwell mentally, but... well... so is Yuki! / Haruhi is just an amazing anime/manga. That girl is crazy to a degree that I do not even wish to think about, and she controls the fate of the world... we are so screwed!

Testing.... 1, 2, 3... testing

Hello anyone who ever even bothers to look at this. I was going to wait until their was another class or two before I posted, but the blank wall with no posts was just too empty for my tastes. So... VOILA!!!