Perversions

This is probably going to be the most personal thing I've ever written and will ever write. People are free to hate me or think I'm weird; they are also free to love me and relate to me. It's the reader's decision. I don't believe in any force that judges us. People judge other people, that's the simple way of life. Sometimes they are right, sometimes they are right, but we all have the ability to judge others in any way we choose. No one can take that away.

"Pervert" is a negative term the majority of the time. Simply, it refers to a person that is different, sexually, or who likes to do non-mainstream sexual things. Sometimes these things are harmful, and sometimes they aren't. The word itself doesn't imply either of those, though people usually assume that a perverted person likes harmful things.

A person that likes to look up women's skirts without their permission or knowledge is a pervert. As is a person that likes to be tied up and whipped. As is a person that likes to fantasize about raping someone. As if a person that likes to look at drawn pictures of sex. All such people are perverts, generally speaking, but their interests are different, and the people themselves are probably quite different from one another. But because their sexual fetish isn't mainstream, because it strays from what is supposedly normal, these people may be seen as odd or disgusting by "normal" people.

The fact of the matter is, very few people enjoy only the most general form of sex. Even the couple that always has sex in the missionary position may feel a thrill at the idea of role-playing, pretending that one person is a suspect and the other is a cop, trying to get information. Or a quiet couple living in the suburbs may like to incorporate food, putting things on one's body and letting the other lick or eat it off. Or the nice gentleman down the street may want to put a woman's toes in his mouth and be stepped on by her, and the woman next to him may want to wear a strap-on and fuck a man in the ass. Fetishism isn't something you can discern by looking at a person. Sometimes, some things may be obvious, but you just cannot look at a person and know if they do or do not like to watch porn with maids or incest or peeing or anal sex or any of the many, many fetishes that exist out there. And here's an important note - fetishes exist because people like them. Whether you consider a specific fetish to be good or bad, it is a fact that some people, perhaps a great deal of them, like that fetish and get something from it. I think that scat (involving feces) is incredibly gross, but I don't think that the people who do like it are gross. That is an essential distinction, because often, people cannot help their fetishes. There may be an incident or series of incidents in the past that may explain someone's foot fetish, but it's more likely that it's just random. I have in the past, many times, compared this to liking chocolate ice cream over vanilla, or vice versa. If a person can't explain why one flavor of ice cream is intrinsically better or worse than another, then they also can't explain why one fetish is intrinsically better or worse than another.

Time to reveal some personal details. First off, I am very odd, sexually. I have heard that this is a common thing for people with Asperger's, but I've never talked to any other Aspies about it, so I'm not sure. Thus, I am not going to use it as an explanation for some of the stuff I like. I have Asperger's, and I'm odd when it comes to sex. Those two may be related, but they may not be.

The best way to explain how I am odd is to tell what I like and how or why I like it, or what appeals to me. Before that, let me state that I am, in most aspects of my life, like the ocean, with waves coming and going. I'll be super-interested in one thing for a month or two, and then I'll not care at all anymore and be super-interested in something else. Regarding sexuality, this means that my fetishes cycle. They don't come in any sort of order, but some days, I'll feel like watching or thinking about a certain activity, and a week later, that activity won't do anything for me, or it may even turn me off completely. Yesterday, for example, I searched for handjob videos, because that was what I felt like watching. I didn't try to find anything else. I just zeroed in and watched girls giving handjobs. Now, that has happened before, but the last time it did was months ago. The day before yesterday, I couldn't have stood to watch a handjob video. It would have bored the fuck out of me. (Unintentional pun, totally intended!)

So, what do I like? The biggest thing I like is hentai, or drawn porn, specifically Japanese drawn porn. (And despite what you may think, there is a lot of it.) In fact, there are two worlds for me, real life and hentai. Some days I only want hentai, and other days I only want real life porn. It's a common thing, actually, for hentai fans. Really, I've heard more than a few fans say that they don't even watch real life porn. One of the major benefits of hentai is that, as with any sort of animation, anything can happen. No expensive special effects needed, no shitty costumes or props, and there are some things that simply cannot be done without animation. Internal ejaculation is the first to come to mind. That can be done in live-action, but all you'll see if the cum leaking out afterwards. In hentai, you see the sperm shooting into the woman's body. If that's your thing, hentai is about the only way you're going to be able to see it.

There are a lot of fetishes in hentai. This is a list of tags from my favorite hentai site. There are forty-three tags, and most of them are different fetishes. (Clicking on a tag will take you to a page that explains what the tag is. The page for "chikan" will tell you that it's public molestation, and the page for "trap" will tell you that it's feminine-looking men dressed as women.) Some of the fetishes exist in live-action porn, too, of course. "Futanari," often shorted to "futa," is hermaphroditic women, and there is a market for hermaphrodites in live-action porn, though since they are hard to come by, usually hermaphroditic porn is faked. (There are some Japanese videos where a girl will magically wake up one day with a penis, which she will use to have sex with many other women. This is worth mentioning because the penis is laughably fake. It couldn't fool anyone. It looks obviously fake, and it is even attached to the underwear the woman is wearing, so she never takes off her panties. But hey, it works!)

I love hentai. I love anime, too, so this is no surprise. Hentai has been referred to as "anime after-dark." Specifically, I like futa, tentacle sex (exactly what it sounds like; some monster uses tentacles to have sex with a woman or women), rape (90% of hentai, and live-action Japanese porn, incorporates this, so it's actually hard to like hentai without liking it at least a little), schoolgirls (the uniforms, mostly, probably because of the skirts), traps/yaoi/yuri  (traps are explained above, yaoi is male homosexuality, and yuri is female homosexuality; they're kind of related), and lolicon, often shortened to "loli." That last one takes some explaining, and you may not that it's not on Fakku, linked above.

"Lolicon" refers to an attraction to, or porn involving, minors. (Semantics: "lolican" is underage girls, while "shotacon" is underage boys. I'm not very interested in shota though, and it usually doesn't carry the incredibly negative connotation that loli does, so it's not that important.) It is a reference to age, being under eighteen, but it can also be a reference to physical appearance. Looks can be deceiving, after all, especially with the world of animation, where a girl can look 10 years old but be said to be 30. (Yes, that has happened before, and will happen again, and not even in hentai.) A drawing of a flat-chested girl with a nubile body may be considered loli, or if it is known that she is intended to be at least 18 years old, she may not be. She may instead be "pettanko," or flat-chested. Lolicon can be a very confusing thing, sometimes purposefully so, due to legal concerns.

Izumi Konata, from Lucky Star. 18 years old

I like lolicon because I like the way lolicon girls are drawn. That sounds like a circular argument, but it's a hard thing to explain without mentioning what I like regarding live-action porn. So here I go . . .

Many of the things I like in hentai, I also like in live-action porn. I like lesbians, rape and forced sex, hermaphrodites and transsexuals, cross-dressing men that are effeminate, and young girls. I'm not going to define "young" because it's essentially pointless to do so. One 14-year-old girl will look 12-years-old, while another looks 16-years-old. It's impossible to pinpoint age, and since people age differently, at different rates and with different characteristics emerging at different times, it's meaningless to say that I only like girls older than 12 or younger than 16. It is a pointless distinction.

Body type is what is important. And here's a very important factoid - 18-year-old girls can have the body type I like. Hell, girls in their 20s can. I like slender, petite bodies and innocent-looking or cute faces. I'm not going to lie and say that there isn't a thrill when the girl is probably under eighteen, but that's really not what it's all about. However, it is a complicated issue . . .

I mentioned role-playing way back at the start. One form of role-playing that apparently isn't too uncommon is where the woman pretends to be a young girl, to turn the other person on, or to turn both people on. There are a multitude of porn sites that feature only 18-year-olds and that boast that their stars are "barely legal." In a lot of countries, the legal age for sex is sixteen. What does all this mean? Quite frankly, that's for you to decide. But it's clear to me that biologically speaking, women don't start becoming attractive once they turn eighteen and men don't start being attracted to them only when they're legal.

But that feels like it's neither here nor there. It feels like I am somehow trying to defend myself, and perhaps I am, so I'll add some info to show that I'm not the average person, and I'll try to say things clearly and matter-of-factly.

I can get excited looking at a 14-year-old girl. Being honest, if she's developed, I can get excited looking at a 12-year-old girl. Or, depending on how she's developed, I can feel nothing looking at a 16-year-old. Like I said, the body type is most important. I can imagine doing things to a young girl, and I can have an orgasm while looking at a picture of a young girl or thinking about one.

I don't think that's a crime. I don't really like that about myself, but I didn't make a decision to be that way, and I can't change what turns me on.

I also don't think it means anything. "How the hell can it not mean anything?" you might say.Well, I like to see animated girls getting fucking by tentacles; that doesn't mean I want to see a real octopus fuck a woman. I like to watch rape videos; that certainly does not mean that I like rape or want anyone to get raped. (Seriously, all rapists should die. If I could press a button that would kill all rapists, I'd press it in a heartbeat, and no matter who died as a result, all I'd think is, "They shouldn't have raped anybody.") I like to watch guys with breast implants jerk off and cum in their own faces; that doesn't mean that I want to do anything with another guy, transsexual or no.

Simply put, an idea that turns me on may not be something that I want to do or will ever act upon. I sometimes fantasize about getting fucked in the ass by a guy, but I hate guys and cannot seriously see myself doing anything with another guy. On the other hand, I can see myself getting fucked by a woman with a strap-on. I like the way young girls look, but the idea of doing anything with a real underage girl makes me sick to my stomach, and I hate anyone that molests kids even more than I hate rapists. Part of the reason I hate rapists is because I've known, and still know, people that were raped. I saw what it did to them and can see how it still affects them. I've also known girls that were molested, and though I didn't know them beforehand, I can definitely see that it affected them. It changed them from the get-go, perhaps kept them from ever being well-adjusted people, who could easily laugh and smile and be happy. I wouldn't wish it on anyone, not even the worst person in the world. (Though, in all honestly, I could wish for several people to be disemboweled while still alive, without any problem.)

I am saying all this to reveal more about myself, to let people know that their fetishes don't keep them from being nice, caring individuals. All the nice things said about me, I wonder if the people that said them would have still said them if they knew the stuff that went through my head. I care about people, I don't like seeing others in physical or emotional pain, I would gladly sacrifice myself for the sake of another person (depending on the circumstances, of course, but I'd be more willing to give more of myself than most people), and I've imagined fucking a young girl. I've also imagined what it was like when my first love got raped, as well as the time she had (perhaps) consensual sex with two guys. I've imagined ripping open someone's throat with my bare hands and stabbing someone half a hundred times. I've imagined sticking a knife in my chest and slitting my wrists. I'm not proud of any of those things. I don't like my mind, and I never have. But that's because my mind is something I cannot control. What I am proud of is that I've never beaten up anyone (I'm proud that I've never beaten up someone that didn't deserve; I'd be more proud if I'd kicked a lowlife's ass), that I've never acted on the irrational and absurd thoughts in my head, that I've never plotted something devious and then acted upon it. I'm proud that I've been there for the important people in my life, that people can count on me because I've shown that I am a respectable person, that people like me and love me, even knowing the terrible shit about me, because there is enough good to offset the bad. I don't like who I am, but I like the person I'm trying to be.

Your actions matter most. If you think about murdering people, does that make you a murderer? If you think about robbing a bank, does that make you a thief? Is the person that has their partner pretend to be a little girl a pedophile? Is the person that sleeps with the man that wants to be treated like a baby a sex offender? Are these people bad? Do they deserve to be hated? No. They're just people with thoughts. Their thoughts may be bad, but who doesn't have bad thoughts? How you act is what really counts.

Maybe I'm just trying to defend myself. But I still think that I'm a better person than most of the people I've met in my life. I'd make a better parent than a lot of people, a better teacher, a better lover, a better friend. I may think that I'm a worthless stain, but on the outside, I'm a great person, and I'm always going to strive to be one. I couldn't live any other way.

A Dark Room

I just had this really weird experience.

Looking at the free movies On-Demand on cable, I found Ghost Story, a movie from the 80s that is based on an exceptional novel by Peter Straub. I read the novel last year and loved it; I consider it perhaps the second-best horror novel I have ever read, after Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill. I started watching the movie version of Ghost Story because I have some time to kill this morning, needing to stay awake to run an errand, and I have wanted to see the movie since finding out that it existed.

I remember a lot of the book, though some things are blurry and I of course don't remember names and have trouble with relationships. But I pretty much know how things go, and I know what the deal is with the characters and the "ghosts" in the story. I think I am going to enjoy the movie very much.

After watching ten minutes of the movie, I decided that I needed something different to drink besides a bottle of water. I got up to go to the kitchen and get a glass of tea, hoping it would also help to keep me awake, as well as quench my thirst. The light in my room was off, because it is best to watch horror movies in the dark; also, why waste electricity? It's very early in the morning, the sky still pitch-black, and I may be the only one awake. My brother may be awake, but he lives in the basement. So, all the lights in the house are off.

I opened my door, walked through the hallway towards the dining room, which you must pass to get to the kitchen, and as I near the dining room, I stop. Everything feels different. Everything looks different, though I'm not surprised by any of the objects in the dining room, and the place doesn't look unfamiliar. We've been living in the new house for a couple of weeks, and I'm thoroughly used to it. The feeling I got, the way I want to explain it is, I felt like I was going to wake up.

I don't lucid dream. I never have, and I doubt I ever will. Once, I had a dream where I figured out that I was in a dream, but nothing changed. I shouted, "I don't know what will happen when I wake up!" but it still felt like watching a movie, the way my dreams always feel. My dreams are always strange, in some way, and are not realistic at all. Sometimes, upon waking, the dreams will feel as if they were real, but only in a tiny way. It quickly passes, though a feeling of unease may remain. My memory is very messed up, but I never confuse reality with my dreams, except for the occasional time that I tell someone or am told something by someone in a dream and think it happened in real life.

But I felt like everything was about to melt away, like I was going to blink and suddenly be somewhere else, maybe living a different life as a different person. I have had that feeling before but not in a long time. I'm kind of scared, actually. I would be thrilled if I thought it was because of the movie, but I know it's not.

I can't remember a time when I didn't have issues with my memory. I won't remember things, like everyone, but to a much higher degree. There are large holes in my memory, where I'm not sure what happened, days and weeks and months that passed with nothing to show. I can't remember more than a few of the classes I took in high school or college. I can't even remember most of the time I spent with my high school love and my first real love, who is my current girlfriend. Some of the stuff I do remember is crystal clear, like I have photographs or movies of them in my mind, but such moments are short, and I may not remember anything that happened before or after them.

Part of this is natural; I have always been this way. During my sophomore or junior year of high school, I cannot recall which, I was told by a good friend that I needed to get my memory checked out, because there was so much that I didn't recall. This girl would say, "Do you remember [insert random guy's name]?" And I'd say no. "I dated him a few months ago, he had this feature and did this..." I still wouldn't remember, at all. Which wouldn't be a big deal, except that it would be just a few months in the past, and I had spent hours talking to her on the phone about this guy. When you spend a dozen hours talking about a person, you should get at least a glimmer of recognition when the person's name is mentioned.

Part of this is by design; to escape from pain, I've told myself many times in the past, "That didn't happen, I made it up." Not a smart thing to do, but I figured that if I didn't think any of my experiences were real, or if I was unsure if they were real or not, things would be easier for me. Now, telling yourself that your experiences with a person or people didn't actually happen doesn't actually do anything. At first. But after a year or so, when you've told yourself a handful of times that your memories aren't real, well, things start to get hazy. Your brain remembers stuff that is important, whether it's good or bad. Your brain tends to forget stuff that isn't important. So, when you hear a song you really like, your brain may remember how it sounds, and when you're told some uninteresting fact, your brain may toss it in the garbage five minutes later. When you confuse your brain like I did, you get a situation similar to mine, where you have trouble recalling events and aren't always sure what's what.

I don't know what the point of this is, except that I needed to write about that odd experience. I need to go back to watching the movie. Sometimes I wonder if this is all real. That doesn't come out of any deep thinking. It's not a thought experiment. I sometimes simply feel like this isn't real. And all that is indicative of is some sort of brain damage. Which makes me wonder if I'm awake at all.

Times like this really make me wish I had a transporter out of Star Trek.

What I Remember of Philosophy

In college, I took a couple of philosophy courses. They really broadened my worldview and helped me a lot. I don't remember a great deal about who said what, so you will have to forgive me if I don't give credit where credit is due or get something wrong, but what I'm going to discuss here is important stuff that people need to know.

One of the best explanations of life, that is very easy to imagine and understand, is as a grand dinner, with lots of people eating at a long table. Food is passed around, with one person taking their share and then letting the next person take their share. The different foods are the different things we deal with in life. Using stereotypes, the steak represents the best parts of life, being happy and excited and not having any problems, while the asparagus represents the worst parts of life, being sad and troubled and overcome with problems. When the steak is passed to you, you can only take one portion. Take any more, and the other people will get upset because they won't get their share. Besides, too much steak is bad for you, and you have to eat other stuff, too. So, you have to accept that you can only get a small amount. When the asparagus comes around, you have to take your share of it, even though you don't want to. Everybody has to have some, and you not taking your share will force other people to take more. Besides, it's something that is good for your health, even if it tastes terrible.

This is life. We have to accept that the good times aren't everlasting and that the bad times are eventual. Trying to get around either of those will only result in trouble, either for yourself or others or everybody.

Onto religion - the most important that I've learned about religion from philosophy is that arguing about how one religion is better or worse than another is pointless. Christianity, for example, exists in many different forms, and a lot of smart people have said a lot of smart things about the different forms. Each statement makes sense, but they don't all gel. They can't all be right, but they're all valid, so how do we decide which is right and which is wrong? Is the existence of God obvious because there had to have been a creator-less creator, something that created everything without having to have been created, or does God have to exist because of the beauty of the universe and the rules that guide it? Even if you can proof the existence of God, can you prove that God is intelligent or involved in our lives?

The point is, people have been talking about God and morality and spirituality for centuries, and the philosophers that wrote books on the subjects worked much hard. They didn't just read the Bible, they read things written by other philosophers, they read the stuff that had already been written, centuries before they came along. To succinctly say it, if a person wants to talk about how the Bible says something, he or she had better have read Thomas Aquinas, at the very least. If the person hasn't, then they haven't really studied.

And that's the same with just about every religion. There is a ton of information aside from the holy texts that needs to be read, just like how you need to read about basic algebra before you start messing around with calculus. Or how you need to read essays written about William Faulkner before you write a thesis about him. You have to see what other people have said, the thoughts already communicated into the world. Until you do that, you cannot have a good grasp of the true tenets of the religion, and once you read the philosophy of the religion, you'll see that there are a lot of good points to it. If a Muslim reads Jewish philosophy, and really goes in with an open mind and trying to understand, he'll see that there are good points about it, and same with a Christian reading Islamic philosophy and any combination of any religion. The philosophers are the ones to heed, not the crazy bastards that make signs and scream. Pitching a bitch is easy. Spending countless hours reading and writing, that's hard, and it's the people that do that that deserve attention.

Friendship - the best thing I ever learned is that liking someone's character is what really matters. I tried to be friends with people simply for the sake of being friends, of being able to spend time with another person. But that only causes strife and turmoil. You have to like them as a person, not just for what they offer you. There are a lot of people that piss me off. I can be friendly to them, I can even genuinely enjoy their company, but sometimes, I want to strangle them, and not in a joking kind of way. It's because they do things I don't like or agree with. Now, some things I don't mind; I don't smoke pot, but I don't have a big problem with other people smoking it. But if a person smokes pot around a child, I do have a problem with that, and if I know someone who does that, I won't be happy with them. Hell, I'll be downright angry with them. I may still enjoy their company at times, but I won't consider them a true friend, and I won't do for them the things I would for my true friends. And that is because I learned that true friends are the people you are willing to do anything for; they are people you respect and admire, in some way. They don't have to be perfect, and no one else may respect or admire them, but if you do, that's what matters. If you try to make an unworthy person your true friend, then you're going to end up unhappy, because they will let you down and disappoint you.

For instance, I couldn't ever be friends with someone that does heroin because I couldn't ever respect anyone that does heroin. And it's not solely about the drug; using it shows a disregard for a law that could land them in prison for a long time, a lack of intelligence because you'd have to be stupid to want to keep pumping that shit into your body, and a lack of self-respect because they think they need it, think they are unable to live without it. If I liked everything about a person, but then found out that they were a junkie, I'd be so devastated that I wouldn't ever want to see them again. Just like how I don't want to associate with bigots or assholes, I don't want to associate with people that are throwing themselves under a bus. A friend is a person that makes you feel good about the world. not by doing things for you but by showing you that there are good people in the world. If you don't like your friend's character, who they are inside, then you shouldn't be friends with them.

Cartoons

I haven't posted in a while, mostly because I don't have much to say. Also, I'm busy with work and tired after work. And lazy. But I've been wanting to discuss animated series (or "cartoons," for those that don't give a damn about "sophisticated" titles) for a while, so I figured I'd make a post about them. And by "discuss," I of course mean "bitch about and praise."

This show belongs in the shitter.

First up is Allen Gregory, which premiered on Fox in October of last year and has (thankfully) been canceled. It will hopefully never shame the world of television with its presence ever again.

I watched the premiere of this show, because I've always been a fan of prime-time cartoons, and I like to give them a shot. I avoided The Cleveland Show when it premiered only to find out during its second season that it was a pretty good show, as long as you didn't expect anything from it. I didn't want to make the same mistake. Besides, Fox wouldn't shut up about the damn show, airing promos for it months before it premiered. I had to see what it was all about.

It was offensive. On several levels. First of all, it wasn't funny. At all. It simply did not elicit laughter. But if that was all, then the show would just be another boring failure. No, Allen Gregory had other problems. It was a lame premise with an even lamer execution (and what an odd execution it was); a smart little boy has to go to a public school filled with, shudder, regular kids. Typical fish out of water story, right? Except Allen Gregory, the titular character, isn't actually a smart little boy. He's incredibly dumb, as a matter of fact. The show wasn't "Fraiser goes to elementary school," which it was marketed as. It was "insufferable asshole pisses off everyone around him." Allen acted like an adult but only in that he pretended to be an adult, by mimicking the things his father did. His father did fancy stuff like eat sushi for lunch, so that's what Allen did. That's as far as his maturity went. Otherwise, Allen was an annoying little kid that didn't fit in, something a lot of people can relate to. But instead of relating with the bastard, you hate him, because he doesn't try to fit in or be nice, at all. In the end, you feel bad for Allen because you can understand what it's to be picked on and have embarrassing things happen to you, but you also want him to get beat the fuck up, because he's the kind of kid that makes your life a living hell on purpose and has no regard for you whatsoever. It's impossible to love the character or even love to hate him, the way you might Mr. Burns or Peter Griffin. That's bad enough, but then the creators decided to toss in the gross factor and have Allen, a seven-year-old boy, fall in love with the principle of his school, a very old, very overweight, and very uninterested woman. She is not a bad person, but there is no reason why a little boy would fall in love with her, and the show doesn't even try to make sense of it. Allen simply sees her and somehow loses his mind. It's disturbing, the fantasies Allen has about her are exceedingly gross (so as to not even be funny), and the whole thing is disgraceful.

But the biggest problem, and what really made the show offensive, was the living situation of Allen's parents. Allen has two dads; that's right, a gay couple raising a child in a cartoon. Finally! Except they're not really a gay couple. I'll explain that in a moment.

Richard is Allen's biological father. Jeremy is Richard's husband. As his name suggests, Richard is a real dick. He's a selfish pain in the ass that ignores others and only cares about getting his own way. Jeremy puts up with Richard, for seemingly no reason, and is an all-around nice and cool guy. Allen takes after his father in nearly every way and, of course, also treats Jeremy like shit.

More than halfway through the first episode, we get a bombshell. Jeremy explains that he "used" to be a straight man, with a wife and kids. Then he came across Richard, who fell in love with him. Richard stalked him and badgered him so much that Jeremy left his family and became Richard's husband. That's right, Jeremy isn't actually gay. He never says anything about having gay thoughts or hiding his sexuality. The way it's explained, Jeremy is a straight man who just gave in to Richard's pestering. Do I need to explain why that is offensive, not just to gay people but to everybody? One of the few gay couples on TV, one of the only gay couples to ever be seen in a cartoon, and only one of them is actually gay. Not to mention how insulting that is to the audience's intelligence. Are we really supposed to believe that a man is going to give up his wife, his children, just to get an asshole off his back? And up his asshole? That's insane. I think that's what really offends me, that the man leaves his children to live an unsatisfying life with an insane bastard. His children are asking, "Where's daddy?" and all their mother can say is, "He's with a man he doesn't love, living a lie, for no fucking reason at all."

So, thanks for nothing, Allen Gregory! You were inexcusable.

Pretty mind-numbing, in a good way

Next is Napoleon Dynamite, the movie-turned-cartoon that arrived eight years after the movie. Long before this show started, I hated it. I didn't care much for the movie, which is boring and odd in ways that did not please or interest me, and I didn't see how it could translate to the world of television, let alone a cartoon, at all. I watched the first two episodes, which premiered the same night, to give it a shot and wasn't impressed. I watched the next episode out of boredom, and . . .

It was great. I can't explain it, except that the premiere episodes, especially the very first episode, weren't very good, but another factor may have been that I watched the third episode without any expectations, good or bad. The other four episodes of the season are all top-notch and made me laugh a ton.

Part of what's good about the series is that it isn't like the movie at all. The characters are all there, but they're not doing boring things with blank faces. They're doing crazy shit, like racing beds and pointing guns at each other and fighting ghosts. Yes, there is a ghost in one episode, and the characters try to fight him. I'm sure part of the reason for this, and the show's quality, is that Mike Scully is involved. Scully has worked on The Simpsons, and the years he was involved in the show were the years that Bart's t-shirt incited a riot, Homer wanted to have as a villain a shifty-eyed dog, and a busload of kids got stranded on a desert island, where they would be "damn hell ass kings!"Scully makes things crazy, and it's good for a cartoon. It keeps the viewer interested, and it takes advantage of the fact that with animation, you can do things that cannot be done with live-action.

I really like this Napoleon Dynamite. Instead of taking pity on the characters, I like them and wouldn't mind hanging out with them. They're not annoying or pathetic. Napoleon himself gets quite a change; he actually seems badass in the series, instead of being just an awkward boy that puts on airs. I hope the show gets renewed and does well. It's time Fox has something in their animation domination that isn't The Simpsons or made by Seth MacFarlane. And yes, Bob's Burgers is great, but Fox seems intent to not show new episodes of it when airing new episodes of everything else.

Damn, I can write a lot, can't I? Maybe next time I'll actually write about something of import. Like The Simpsons.

Love

I'm in love. That's an unusual thing for me. I'm not very experienced with love. I've had plenty of crushes, but those are so simple, it's ludicrous. And this is honestly the first time I've been in love as a mature adult. Even at nineteen, I was immature with how I saw the world and pretty stupid, to be blunt.

So, I'm kind of freaking out.

But I'm freaking out for a weird reason. See, to me, love has always been a thing from movies. That's where I learned about love, and what I learned was that being in love meant doing outrageous things together, having beautiful talks while walking through snowy streets, and making bold declarations of love to a girl in a upper-story window from a sidewalk or lawn. But that's not life, not at all, and while I realize that, this deep-seated idea of love as a movie cliche lingers in my head, like a hypnotist's command.

Right now, I'm happy. Yet I'm not full of energy or bursting with affection. I was, definitely, but now, I feel content. More than content, but I'm not very good at describing my feelings, of course, so that word will have to do. So I'm kind of freaking out, because my learning is telling me that I'm supposed to still be hyper and overcome with chemicals, but I simply am not. But I am happy, and I am in love.

I think about her constantly, and it's like what I think is different every hour. Sometimes I think about the passion between us and want nothing more than to tear off her clothes and have at her. Other times I think about how she gets me and understands me, how she seems to know what I'm thinking at times, and that makes me feel so wonderful, I can't come close to being able to express it in words. Other times, I think about how great it would be to just lay beside her in bed, to sleep beside her or close our eyes and relax with our arms around one another. I think about the ways she can help me, and the ways I can help her. I think about protecting her from any harm, physical or mental or emotional. I think about her protecting me, rubbing my head when I'm angry and telling me to calm down or letting me rest my head on her chest when I'm depressed. I think about watching movies with her, watching TV with her. I think about planning for the future with her, mundane things like saving up money and what sort of necessities need to be bought and when. I think about holding her hand just as often as I think about having sex with her. And because there are few places my mind does not wander, I sometimes (rarely, thankfully) think about her dying, and how I'd want to give up on life but wouldn't because she has two daughters I could help, if they ever needed me. And I think about myself dying, and that's even scarier, because I don't know what that would do to her, and I never want to put her through that.

It's scary, just how much I care about her, and how I can't poke any holes in it. I always poke holes, that's been my job for most of my life, to point out the problems and mistakes, whether so they can be fixed or to convince myself that the whole thing isn't worth the effort or to prepare myself for a possible failure, but I can't do that here. I know we'll have rough times, and we'll still need to work on some things as time goes on, but I can't imagine living without her. Not just because she's the only one that would ever have me, and not just because she understands me and wants to make me happy. She makes me smile, just being the person she is. I can tell her anything, not just because she will listen and accept what I have to say, but because I want to tell her, want to share my life with her.

This is being an adult, huh? It's really scary, because it's so different from being a kid. But I prefer it, definitely.