"Watch your thoughts; they become words. Watch your words; they become actions. Watch your actions; they become habits. Watch your habits; they become character. Watch your character; it becomes your destiny." -- unknown

Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results - Albert Einstein

two stories and another thing
October 23, 2007 - 7:55 pm

1) Dumbledore is gay. Now, I've never read the books and I don't plan too.. but I have enjoyed the movies. That pointless bit taken care of, wtf?

I really don't get the admission that he's gay. I really don't see why people seem to care. I do get that he's the first 'major sci-fi' homosexual.. but why would people cheer this?

I don't mean people should be upset he's gay -- this after all a fictional character so if he liked to fucked unicorns no one should really give a damn. Of course, homosexuality is something of a hot button issue, isn't it?

Which is why I'm puzzled people seem to think it's good he's been outed. I disagree. In fact, if I try to look at this from a homosexual's point of view.. I tend to get very annoyed, if not outright angry.

Why?

Simple.. Here you have a major character in what the author calls (something like this) a prolonged argument for tolerance... and it fits the headmaster who's pivotal in so many ways is gay. It goes right with the diverse cast of characters... only if you stop and think for a second, it doesn't.

If the tolerance bit is true.. and his sexual preference more than a mere after thought since he's now dead... why keep him in the closet?

In other words, the value of his being gay.. was (is?) wasted. It's a step backwards. I don't mean he needed to act like Jack from Will & Grace, but it would have been easy enough to wiggle in some way -- a moments musing about this one ill fated love or something like that.

The fact that he instead lived his life in the closet.. and was only outed after he died is well... stupid. It reeks of pointless PR to drum up a unneeded spurt of press for the stories and author.

Mores the pity.

2) The head coach of the us women's national soccer team was sacked. This is, in and of itself, a totally pointless and fully expected thing considering staggering bonehead call. I care.. because I like to watch both our national soccer teams play. The article.. was staggering. It made quite the deal that the coaching staff was all male.. and that it's high time a female coached the team. The insinuation is that a man can't coach a woman's team. Never mind the guy is probably the winnest coach in history to ever be fired. I believe he won something like 90% of the games he coached. I'm too lazy to ask (fuck google) the exact record.

To see why this story is noteworthy, spin it for a second. The female coach of the men's team was fired.. and it's pretty much said a woman can't coach men. There would be hell to pay. You couldn't even start to publish such a story without upgrading your servers to withstand the onslaught of emails you'll get in reply.

It's staggeringly sexist.

And yet.. folks will nod their heads and say, "Yeah, there should be a female coach."

The point is.. the best soccer mind should be the coach. Gender shouldn't be an issue.

In other news.. I was more or less (very much to the more side) offered a new position at work today. Do I think I'd like it? I'm not sure. It has some appeal as it's a wholly new position.. so a bit of groundbreaking, which is always nice. But.. it's in a department that gets something of a bum wrap for reasons which don't altogether make sense. A perception sort of thing, which is interesting.. since this new role is more or less about changing that.

It's going to be an offical posting of the job in about a week.. so I guess I've got that long to think about it.

Of course, one thing's that peeked my interest is the guy, the potential new boss, made a comment that he felt it would be a step up both in terms of 'status' and pay. I don't much care about the status.. but the pay has my attention. Though I think he underestimates what I make now. We'll broach that tender subject.. once the job is officially posted...