Moments in My Head #10

Whitney Houston died.  Across Facebook and probably Twitter, some fans were mourning by posting digital tributes.  There are a lot of things in this world that I don't understand.  I don't understand how the Mayans could predict the end of the world, when they couldn't predict their own demise?   I don't understand how anyone can judge anyone's else life and choices until they he/she has done a stroll in their shoes DURING THE SAME TIME PERIOD.  Let's face it we are victims, in part, of the time period and its circumstances under which we live.  It isn't just who you are, but where you are and when you are.  Think of Ira Levin's "Boys From Brazil."  Each one of those little Hitler wannabes needed to have as many of the events and their timing as happened in Hitler's life as possible to be have any likelihood of recreating him.  Assuming that could even be possible, given the varieties of uniqueness that go into creating a human being.  

But I digress, the point was I don't understand a lot of things and you can tell that I think about them almost obsessively.  I've frequently compared my brain to a big rock tumbler, that simply tumbles and tumbles on the sharp projectiles my mind can't get past.  One of those things I've been tumbling has been why, within only hours of people posting digital tributes to Whitney Houston, there were people bad mouthing the people posting tributes to Whitney Houston.   Mostly it was reminders of other people's death who the complainer thought were somehow more important or noteworthy than a celebrity's or especially a celebrity who died because of drug abuse.  Sometimes it was one person, like one soldier, sometimes it was the whole Army or Navy.  

Really, explain the logic of that to me.  

Does the fact the person idolized Whitney Houston, who I must explain right now, of whom I WAS NOT a particular fan.  Yes, that's right, NOT, but just because the person loved Whitney Houston, how does their extra respect for someone they love in any way assume they have no respect for your mentioned dead?  What are you saying?  Each human only contains just enough empathy to grieve for or respect the death of a finite number of people?  Too much tribute to a celebrity wipes out respect for a thousand regular people?  Ten thousand?  

I say, "You want respect for your dead, give me respect for my dead."

Don't.  Don't say "they can't claim Whitney Houston for their dead."  

Yes, yes they can.  What you love is yours.  That little portion belongs to you and you grieve when it is lost.  

What is this society as parent mentality we have going on here?  Who are you to tell them who or what to love?   Isn't that what your parents would do?  Weren't you going to be different when you grew up?

I was thinking about vampires today.  I suppose given all the Twilight hoopla, it is sometimes unavoidable.  I see a "RUFKM?  He sparkles?" and my mind automatically clinks and clanks until I notice a good looking chunk of thought about the differences from the vampires of my childhood and my mother's childhood.  Maybe I had a lot of psychology classes in college (I did) or maybe it isn't that heavy of a lift on the psychological weight scale (probably not.)  It seems to me originally vampires were psychologically attractive to women because it was about "penetration" and since vampires could glamour their victims, it was sex without responsibility on the woman's part.  I didn't "want" to do it, he "made" me do it.  In a slower world with an uncertain boundary as to where a girl should turn off "good girl" or take responsibility for her own sexual desire or desperately bump and grind to keep her man, it was a fanciful way to have the lover of your dreams who did "whatever" you could dream up, but yet still claim "I would never have done that if he hadn't "made" me.  **insert finger in dimple** 

So your mother's vampire was a sort of "porn."  Team Jacob and Team Edward must mean the modern one is too.  But maybe that's the reason Edward sparkles, he isn't your mother's vampire.   Today's woman doesn't need to pretend to be a "good girl," we are much more sophisticated at realizing that woman also appreciate and are tempted by sex.  The interesting thing is, well, Edward and Dracula, lemme see, both have pointy fangs with which to bite you.  They both can glamour you, hmm maybe the lack of responsibility draw still applies.  I think they're both cold, Dracula does not appear in a mirror, I'm pretty sure Edward does.  He needs to, how else could he appreciate his sparkle?  Edward is hard, is he not?  Hard like he's made of granite?  I don't remember ever hearing that about Dracula.  

But there's one more difference, isn't there?  

Think a minute.  How about attitude?  Do Dracula and Edward have the same attitude?  Hell no.  Dracula wouldn't hesitate.  He's GOING to bite you.  Edward not only WOULDN'T bite you.  He'd drive you home and make you dinner.  

It is it me or does it suddenly seem like the emasculation of men by modern vampire?  

Hmm.  Are the females who love the Twilight series really fantasizing about something more on the road to being a dominatrix?  A little about the control and power of leashing a beast?  Makes me feel so so comfortable with my peers.  We were much more about stripping it off and joining the beast.  Don't tame him, jump on, hold on, and, apparently, plead ignorance later.  Honestly, other than whine that she wanted him to make her a vampire and that she eventually has his baby, I have no idea what Bella did with Edward.  Enough to get her pregnant, I guess.

Pregnant?  Your mother's vampire had something BETTER than a vasectomy.  Why would anybody want to have a baby with a vampire?

I just don't understand.  

Besides, if I had been on a team, it would have been Team Jacob.  You've got a boyfriend AND a pet.  There's no bad there.  Not to mention a provider of warmth and protection.  Edward Shmedward, I say.

Twilight has the same phenomenon going on as Whitney Houston.  We (and I'm part of this group) can't just let you have your different vampire, we have to mock your tastes and joke with memes about "still a better romance than Twilight."  

This internet just isn't big enough for your vampire AND my vampire.  

Truthfully, I can see an argument where men might instinctively hate Twilight since the goal seems to be, in the most PC of descriptions, to define what a man's manhood should be.  What's with the rest of us?  Why can't we just think they are idiots in private?  Why do we bond with other people who agree in a seemingly more active basis than the actual Twilight fans did in the first place?  Could it be seeing ourselves represented in what we assume is the majority, it feeds to our denial that the disagreement has anything to do with age.  

Maybe it was simply we were tired of hearing about Twilight.  Or maybe, like me, we read a book or two of Twilight and felt we had paid for a very different experience than the one we got.  When was the last time you got your money back from buying a book simply because you didn't like it.  

Yes yes, I'm being ridiculous.  Who would do that?  

Except books are essentially ideas.  

That book had bad ideas.  That book made me uncomfortable with its ideas.  

Little bit more than the $10 to $20 you thought I was complaining about, huh?  

An idea can change your perception of your world, of yourself, of your parents, your partner, your pets.  An idea can penetrate your subconsciousness and make you think.  So an idea can become a thought which can change you.  

Nobody embraces change.  It's scary and messy and unfamiliar.  Change is so uncomfortable to us that we often choose to stay with an already uncomfortable status quo rather than risk more discomfort for improvement.  

I don't understand that either.  

You could fill a bus station with all the things I don't understand.  

It's all the ideas.

My brain is riddled with them.   

I must not have been selective enough about what I chose to read.