or My Opinions On A Bunch Of Stuff
This is the "getting it off my chest" area where you'll find my opinions on a number of issues. Feel free to argue your case with me if you don't agree with what I'm saying here - I'm not dogmatic about a great deal, and I'm willing to listen.
No problem with it at all. Being in the arts industry kinda cancels out homophobia.
I'm very much heterosexual (my girlfriend of five years and I are still going strong), and have spurned the attentions of the handful of gay propositions that have come my way (although they were all very nice boys). I pretty much missed the boat on gay experimentation because of the negative social stigma associated with homosexuality that was drilled into me in high school - to be gay was to be wrong in some way. (Of course, we all know what homophobia really means, don't we? Yes, I'm talking to YOU, high-school-bully-types.) So, for a long time, I thought that being gay was something to be ashamed about.
That changed in 1992 when my best friend turned out to be gay after many, many years of being homophobic. (See?!?) It'd didn't change him as a person (more's the pity really, but that's a long story), and I got immersed in gay culture before long, finding it to be generally more accepting of difference than any other subculture.
And to all those religious fundies who think that homosexuality is unnatural and a crime as declared by the Bible, you people really need to do some hard research into naturally-occurring homosexuality, and you need to read your Bible just a little closer.
Canadian comedian Martin Short said it best in an interview with The Onion: "[R]eality TV is based on one word, which is 'humiliation.'" I can't abide a television genre that gears its popularity toward a contestant's defeat more than another's victory. Plus, "reality" is a misnomer in this case, since the people in them aren't really acting in accordance with reality (what's "real" about twelve people trapped in a house together while a disembodied voice challenges them individually to undermine the others?).
Here's another wonderful quote from comedian John Doyle on the ABC: "Big Brother is a waste of an opportunity. The housemates live in a state of perpetual boredom, unless they’re pissed. Why not engage them. A house of really smart gifted young people from various fields: scientists, engineers, mathematicians, builders, a Latin scholar, a poet etc and they have a problem to solve. With a shared incentive of a few million dollars they have to find a solution to Australia’s water problems in ten weeks – there’s a show."