O.K...so I take it back. I'll watch Grey's after this, if only to see what direction they take Callie...if they have her straight again though I'm done.

But That's Why I Watched the Show!!!

Well nothing motivates me better than anger to write a blog post...Congrats ABC you have just made me angry.

I adore and check AfterEllen.com everyday for new blog posts and reviews of wonderful lesbian media entertainment to read (for the other end, AfterElton.com exists too). Today after work I decide I want to read the latest review of Grey's Anatomy, the hit prime time medical drama soap opera did something that did something groundbreaking and made me want to watch it again. They wrote in not only a lesbian kiss, but a full on couple featuring two of the main characters that would have been explored fully in this season. Even better, one part of this couple is Sara Ramirez who I've had a crush on since I heard her voice on my CD of Spamalot. Now, did I like how little we got to see of them or how Callie decided to not only get advice from Sloan on dating women, but had sex with him? No, but I was dealing with that.

Well wasn't I shocked to see next to the article on the latest episode of Grey's Anatomy there is an article about how apparently ABC has just fired Brooke Smith, the other half of my newly beloved couple and thus killing the entire relationship. You can read the full article here : http://www.afterellen.com/TV/2008/10/greys-fires-brooke-smith .

This was shocking news to clearly everyone, the writer/creator, the actress, media, and those of us who were watching for that very reason. They are not even going to give her a good send off, this Thursday will be Smith's final episode and all she's going to get is to drive off in her car. I'm sorry, what???? That's it?! No reason at all, not that she got so pissed off with Callie going back to sleep with Sloan for one reason after another each week, just driving off?? Fuck you ABC.

To add to my anger, ABC has also announced that

Melissa George's character is no longer bisexual. "Melissa came on as a lesbian character," a Grey's source tells Kristin, "but they changed the script and now she isn't. She starts off flirting with Callie but it never goes anywhere." From AfterEllen.com

Something that AfterEllen announced yesterday and had me all excited for controversy in our happy lesbian land. Now, this isn't controversy, this is a fucking dead duck.

Now why am I blaming ABC and not the writer/creator of the show? Well that would be because the rest of the article focuses on her and how shocked she was this was happening.

This is 2008 and people!!! Get your heads out of your asses and not only give us our gay/lesbian characters, but give us the same story lines you give the straight couples!!! I'm fucking tired of seeing either no one gay at all, or if they are gay they have to go with the safe story line showing as little as possible and heaven forbid that when we do get the gay characters they act the same way the straight ones do. And while it is nice and kinda morally uplifting to point at the daytime and nighttime soaps and go, "well clearly we are better than you because we don't sleep around on TV." I'm tired of this PC world where we can't risk offending anyone. I know there are too many people out in the world that would take what I want and use it against us, that is fine. But if execs are too afraid of even the safe story lines, how the hell are we going to get anywhere?

This also has me fearing for the future of another beloved lesbian character on a daytime ABC soap, All My Children. I love Bianca, I've loved her character even before she came out and now that she is out, I love her even more. Add to the fact that she is now back and in a committed relationship with another character Reese (another actress I had the hots for when she was on General Hospital) I'm loving that story line, even if we rarely get to see them kiss, let alone have sex. However, ABC pulled the plug on one groundbreaking lesbian relationship this week, what is going to happen to the other one?

I'm not going to boycott ABC, nothing will come of only me doing it, plus I still like Lost and Boston Legal a lot. However, I am not watching Grey's Anatomy after this week, I have no reason to, and if they do the same with All My Children, I'll have no reason to watch that either.

ABC you were doing great, breaking new ground on the gay character on the networks front!! Please don't stop now!!! Cause if you go the way I fear, I won't have a reason to watch at all...

Hug Your Dog For Me Please.

Well, so after I made the big post about posting more, work had me well, doing work so that didn't happen. So again, I apologize and I hope to be able to post more.

However, this is not the reason why I'm blogging today. Basically, I've just found out that our family dog, named Max, has cancer in his stomach and is going to a special place today where they will do an ultrasound to see if it has spread to his liver. If it has not spread then is he going to go into surgery, if it has, then the only thing that they can really do is make him comfortable.

I honestly never thought I'd be praying my dog had surgery today.

Now, he has always had a weight problem, not an over-weight problem, but an under-weight one. He is a little strange in that he has never been all that excited when we put food down for him, so we leave it out all day. Now, when he has a special treat like leftover eggs, steak and chicken juices he would go nuts for it, but otherwise, he wasn't such a fan of the dry food. This has never really been a problem, just strange in a house full of over-weight people that the dog is skinny. But lately he has been eating less and less and getting under the healthy weight zone, we thought he was getting better, but now it turns out that we have to pray he gets surgery.

He is older, 9 years old, and a small dog, which means that he has a shorter lifespan already. But not this short. What makes this worse is that I'm overseas. I can't pet, hug, and give all the loving I want him and I can't. So I ask all of you dog lovers and owners out there to please hug your dogs for me today. Because I can't and it is breaking my heart at the moment.

This is a picture of him as a puppy, it is the only one I can find at the moment which is really making this worse. Excuse me, I need to go off and cry now.

If Plastic is bad for Babies Then Why Am I Alive?

So, I'm on the phone with my mother and she tells me about how there are new news reports about how plastic is now bad for you. Or more specifically babies.

Now, needing more information I immediately Google and see what I get, ignoring the first two which are essentially Mom's going nuts for green, something I really want to avoid, I go to U.S News and World Report and read this article http://health.usnews.com/articles/health/2007/09/22/the-problem-with-plastic-bpa.html .

The article proceeds to go into how there is this chemical Bisphenol A, BPA, is harmful, especially to infants because well, they are still developing. Except, it seems that all the side effects happen when you are an adult, after all, I don't think babies need to worry about decreased sperm counts, prostate cancer or breast cancer...And apparently uterine fibroid and endometriosis affects women at the reproductive age...did we change when the reproductive age is? However, I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt and say that possibly we build up BPA and then it affects it later on. But then, how do you know it affects infants more? Also, going back through the wonderful world of Google I found only one other credible site other than sites featuring parents or other journalists/commantators freaking out over that at msnbc on the first Google page. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26531316/

What no CNN? Uh Oh I'm smelling something else wrong with this...And MSNBC doesn't even mention what the side effects could be!

Then there is the most important evidence of all: Me! Standing right here before you a healthy (if not slightly obese, but quickly loosing weight) 22 year old girl who drank from not only plastic baby bottles, but plastic cups, and is drinking a massive thing of water from a plastic bottle right now! I'm perfectly fine, not dumb at all, even though I'm sure my grammar and spelling could use work, but I blame my public school system for not teaching me in the first place.

Now, if you're going to say, "Oh but it may be a link to obesity!" Umm...no...my family pre-disposition and more importantly, massive amount of junk food and lack of exercise are the reason why I'm having weight problems, not plastic.

Not to mention, do you really want to go back to the joy of glass again parents? Think of all the times your baby likes to throw their nice, durable, plastic bottle/cup and how it can come back safe and sound with just a little wash, and then think of them throwing a glass bottle/cup and how often you will have to make a huge fuss of cleaning it up, because a baby won't know not to touch it, and how many you will have to go through...Can we be practical?

So, thinking practically, thinking that not only myself, but my brother and I'd say 98% of my friends are fine (maybe a couple had the glass thing, I dunno) I'd say this may be a bit of a hoax, overstretch, and possibly a way to shift blame again.

And I think I'll wait until the FDA announces their results on this testing before I even hint at worrying. Until then, I'm going to keep drinking from this plastic bottle and keep on planning on giving my future, way down the line, maybe 10 years from now babies, the same plastic treatment I got if another material doesn't come out before then.

Why my Parents Rock 1

This may turn into a running series if my parents continue to rock this way.

Today in the mail I got this card from them, random out of the blue, just something to cheer me up because they know I've been down.

See, the fact that they did this just made my day good. It has given me something to smile over and is going to make me laugh for a while. Especially since they like to say they planned how to make my life miserable anyway.

Things like this are the reason that I am going to fight to spend the holidays with my family at my new job, no matter what.

The right to refuse

The right to refuse someone is a very important thing. I'm not going to argue this fact, to take away someone's right to say "no" to someone else is horrible and essentially takes away their free will. However, there are certain instances where a person on a moral, good, HUMAN level should not say no to another person.

I have just read a news report from the BBC where California State Legislature passed a law stating that doctors cannot refuse treatment of another person for religious reasons. This was started when a lesbian woman tried to get fertilized artificially and two Christian doctors decided that it would be against their religion to help her and told her to do it herself, albeit they did tell her how. All this is taken to from the BBC website and here's the link for those who are interested : http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7569538.stm

Now, I'm not going to report anymore on this, I am going to say HOW FUCKING DARE ANY DOCTOR REFUSE ANY PATIENT FOR ANY FUCKING REASON!

I do not care what your religious beliefs are you took an oath to do no harm and to help people! To give a woman the instructions how to do it and with no care what may happen to her, props for them for eve giving her the instructions instead of leaving her to go to the internet for answers. It does not excuse a DOCTOR refusing a patient. I'm now picturing someone who has some sort of life-threatening disease and they go to a doctor and they turn around and go "I may be the only person in the world who can help you, but I'm not because you're gay." or "because you're whatever religion is unpopular and I hate because I'm another religion." You decided to take a career helping people, not specific people, but people in general.

Not to mention, as a human being how can you turn your back on a person like that?

Yeah California though! This definitely makes me consider moving to California at some point in time if the rest of teh states don't get their act together on this.

My Time At Pride

Well, this is something that I've been meaning to do for a while (try about 4 months now). But a few months ago I experienced Pride in South Korea. Now for those of you who do not know, Pride is a celebration of being a part of the LGBT community and still one of the best ways to get information out on issues in the LGBT community, especially in countries where it is hard to find anyone that you can be sure is LGBT.

I do not know much about the laws here concerning LGBT rights, but I do know that extremely few people are fully if at all out here. I do not plan to discuss those, just what I saw at Pride.

When people think of Pride in the Western world they often think of large parties, a parade expanding blocks and lasting for hours, and lots of alcohol, sex, and drugs, with a few gay issues thrown in to make it seem like it is more than a giant party, which it can be, but usually is not for most.

South Korean Pride is completely different.

There was also a great deal of political booths to promote health and awareness and it was clear that is was a big deal to them to get their word out, however is a huge problem in how the gay community wants to get their message out in Korea. No one wants to be seen. The first thing I noticed at Pride was the amount of South Koreans there, which is great considering how often they hide their sexuality, and that the majority were wearing these red-ribbons. I know most people are thinking that it is for AIDs awareness, and trust me I was too, until I realized that these red-ribbons were to keep people from taking photos of them. As it turned out I had to register my camera in order to even take picutres and was given this really annoyingly huge cardboard sign so everyone knew I had a camera. I also had to agree not to post, or at least blur out any photos with people wearing a red-ribbon. This is because while they wanted to be out and proud and so many booths talked about making change, no one wanted to be seen and risk being outed to their family, friends and job. To make matters worse, when the parade started, we didn't go very far, which was fine, but as soon as we left the main Pride area a few of the people I saw wearing the red ribbons were hiding their faces. That alone made the whole expirience rather pointless to me. After all, change doesn't happen without showing yourself.

Now for those who are expecting a lot of alcohol in Pride, there wasn't really. There was a convience store nearby that sold alcohol and one outside vendor selling not really good beer. So, first of all this is not a drinking event. Now, drugs are apparently ridiculously hard to find in Korea anyway (at least I haven't heard of it, so we drink a lot) so clearly that is not going to be there. Which is nice, if you are like me and not a too big of a fan of over drinking and such, but I was in the mood for Jello shots. So there was a culture shock, very little alcohol. But we manage, we deal, convience stores that sell whole bottles of soju are there for a reason. :-)

Now, do not misunderstand me, I love South Korea and the very few gay people I met at Pride were wonderful. However, people are hiding and while there were chants during the parade about change and not having to hide anymore, change is not going to happen if you do keep hiding, especially at your biggest event of the year.

So this is my plea to you gay people of South Korea. Stop hiding please, it is time to be proud of who you are. As an ex-pat I have no power to make change here, I am "only a foreigner who cannot understand Korean culture." And I am sure many will ignore me because of that and maybe I got the wrong impression, but based on what I saw please stop hiding. Although I know change won't happen over night.

Also, to those of us in the western world who are young and used to more gay rights and not really having to hide on the same level: we really need to learn to appreciate what we have more.

And if I am wrong, please tell me that too.

Now to end these things I'm going to post one or two picutes that I can on here, because someone needs to.

Actually, I'll only post one, I don't want to risk posting one of my pictures and missing someone I should block out.

The Mummy 3 - The Pain Must be Shared

Have you ever experienced something so bad that you had to share the pain with at least a few people, just so that you are not the only one and you all can express your pain? Well, that's how I feel about the Mummy 3 and here I am sharing the pain.

Now, let me preface with two things.

1. I like some really shit movies, Doom being my favorite example as to what bad movies I like.
2. I love the Mummy movies, the first two are a part of my favorite action films of all time. They have a very similar feel to Indiana Jones, and are things I love to go back to. They are movies that are purely meant to be fun. Brendan Fraser, Rachel Weisz, and John Hannah have a chemistry together that makes these action movies very funny as well, something that was rarely seen since Indiana Jones. They also made archeology entertaining again for the masses!

Now, that we have gotten the love out of the way, let's begin with the pain.

I'm not even going to go into the reasons why there needed to be a third movie when the second movie completed the story, we all know it was the money and Stephen Sommers desire to prove he could make something good again (after all, his last film was Van Helsing). No, I'm going to start with the plot of the movie and then we'll go with the other problems. First of all, it was practically the same story, complete with lines like "No one may touch her, she is mine." The only difference is that now the woman who is being objectified becomes the narrator and is thus the one we all know who is gaurding the "mummy" emperor so we know she will survive 2000 years somehow.

Secondly, the begining was too long! There is no need for us to spend a lot of time going over the back story as to why this guy becomes a "mummy," we are here for the O'Connells, all this stuff was just boring. I'm not even going to touch the obviousness of the plot progressions either, we all knew going in that it would happen and it would be a waste of time.

Instead, there was also the issue of the Dragon Emperor of course learning how to control not only one, but all five of the mystical elements that means he has magic powers, but then instead of really using them other than to throw fireballs and ice every once in a while he starts changing shapes at his full power. Why could he suddenly change shape and what happened with the at least different from the other two idea of controlling the elements? Is this because you are calling him the Dragon Emperor so he needs to change shape like the Scorpion King became an actual scorpion? They fought a bad guy who turned into a monster in the second movie, we didn't need it again.

Now some people will call me a nit picker (what does that mean anyway?) about this next part, but I really feel that accents can make or break or film. Maria Bello you cannot do an English accent to save your life. I can do a better one, and I suck at it. It was painful to watch and I felt that she was the reason the chemistry between the three main characters were gone. There was no romance between her and Brendan Fraser, and I felt like she was trying to hard to be this posh British thing that it just ruined any chemistry and any comedy that was in her scenes. Also, their son Alex O'Connell, in the the second film he had an English accent, like most boys who were growing up in London whose mother was English would. Now, I would almost, I mean almost understand if he no longer had much of an accent, if the actor was good (but is in fact, another black hole of talent). But why go Brooklyn? What about a man whose home was based in England, mother was English, and spent most of his childhood traveling the world getting in the way of his parents being spies during the war (really? They did that too?) leads to a Brooklyn accent? It was painful.

As for voices and bad actors, the person who played Lin was atrocious with an annoying voice to boot. Her voice felt like nails on a chalkboard to me, and I yell at people when they try to do that. Time to give that up please. Also, not enough John Hannah. He really brought out the comedy in the other films, and the slapstick between him and Brendan Fraser was great. It first takes way to long for him to show up, and then he is barely in it sucking out even more of the comedy that Maria Bello is taking out. As for Jet Li, this may have been just a costume thing, but he looked fat in the film and barely did any action that couldn't be seen with the way it was filmed. If this is all you are going to do now Jet Li, then please retire for good.

As for the action sequences, we had the same problem with this trend of putting the camera too close to see anything and it just leaves you feeling confused. I understand that it is suppose to make you feel like you are in the fight, but there was a fight between these three Chinese characters that was apparently suppose to be a big deal, but I couldn't tell who got whose assed kicked or who died for a full minute afterward. Also, the only reason why I could tell what was going on in the lack luster Michelle Yeoh v Jet Li was because one of them was wearing a dress, and even then it was tough.

There is also the crux of the whole thing of this being called a mummy movie. There were no mummies!! They kept referring to Jet Li and his army as mummies, but they were just people who got turned to stone. Mummies need to go through this process called mummification before they can be called mummies. And there are more mummies in the world than Egypt so they didn't have to stick there if they wanted the mummies. Or at the very least, don't call these guys mummies just because it is the theme of your movies.

There were so many other issues with this movie when it came to lack of exposition and people just forgetting not only what the other movies were, but this one. For instance, why did Evelyn give up archeology to write harlequin romances? Or the O'Connells were spies against the Nazis? Gee, how did that fully happen and wouldn't that make a good story? Then there is a line where Evelyn saying "The Emperor is back to full strength!" Wait, when did he loose his strength (the avalanche? how does that work?) and then how did he get it back? I understand that too much exposition is a bad thing - note the beginning of the film, but some there would be nice. I've never seen a film that had too much and too little exposition in the same film. I wasn't sure what to do with it.

I'm going to stop there because I'm sure I gave you enough pain, and if I made you want to see it for yourself to experience it, please let me know so we can share together. I'm also stopping because other wise I'm going to start talking about the Yetis.

I don't want to talk about the Yetis.