Misheru

I just want everyone to know that I am just as sexy as this. Really. Under all my, um, clothing. Riiight.

You know, I’ve struggled with my weight for most of my life. And I often fall into the trap of thinking that, were I thinner and in better shape, my life would somehow be better.

Well, this woman proves me wrong.

In a fit of depression, Jeanette Sliwinski, the lingerie model pictured here, ran multiple red lights trying to crash and kill herself. She finally managed to crash into a Honda Civic that was sitting at a red light. At 70 mph, she did not brake, and the three musicians in the other car were killed. Jeanette Sliwinski, however, sustained only minor injuries, and now faces 10 years in prison for manslaughter reckless homicide (see comment).

I’m going to ponder being me for a moment, just while I finish off this mini KitKat…

“When you mix politics and religion, you get politics.”

–Rev. Gene Carlson, prominent conservative pastor .

Yet another article on the gayness of Dumbledore from the New York Times.

In her outing of Dumbledore, Ms. Rowling seemed to be confirming the smarmy kiss-and-tell insinuations of her gossip-mongering character Rita Skeeter, whose lurid biography of the apparently saintly headmaster — titled “The Life and Lies of Albus Dumbledore” — is described in “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.”

“Coming next week,” a newspaper article on Skeeter promises, “the shocking story of the flawed genius considered by many to be the greatest wizard of his generation.” Skeeter drops teasing hints about Dumbledore’s “murky past,” about his not being “exactly broad-minded” and suggests that in his mentoring of Harry there is an “unnatural interest,” something “unhealthy, even sinister.” As for the idea that Ms. Rowling suggested — that as a teenage prodigy, Dumbledore had a homoerotic infatuation with another prodigious young wizard, Grindelwald (who later went over to what in “Star Wars” is called the Dark Side) — Skeeter hints at this in coded allusions.

She proposes that when the two friends had a falling out in a dramatic duel, Grindelwald did not fight but “conjured a white handkerchief from the end of his wand and” — the passage then gives way to an obvious (in retrospect) sexual double entendre.

Recently J.K. Rowling publicly outed Albus Dumbledore, headmaster of Hogwarts. According to the author, the character was a homosexual and his great love in life was the evil wizard Grindelwald, whom Dumbledore defeated as a young man.

While I think all this politicization and hype of what is clearly a character in a book (not, incidentally, a living breathing human being) is a bit ridiculous, I think that it does change the character, at least for those of us who actually follow this sort of thing. It changes Dumbledore; before, we thought he was seduced by evil — and the message that even the very great and very good can be seduced by evil is an important one. That seemed to be what happened to Dumbledore and Grindelwald; instead we find that Dumbledore was simply seduced. While infatuations can be destructive, and it is a useful message, it is not quite as deep as the first. (You can see another Rowling fan vehemently disagreeing the comment section).

Having spent some moments pondering the announcement, Marti brought up another character who lived alone, seemingly without any life partner — that of Albus’ brother, Aberforth. The one who loved goats. Did Aberforth, Albus’ brother, love his goats? Or did he love his goats? Perhaps this mystery, too, can someday be solved by the author.

See full-size image here at Best Week Ever.

Many congratulations to Chris Grothkopp who became a dad on October 4th! I recently joined Facebook and have been surprised to find a lot of my former college classmates there. Chris and I were on the rowing team in college and was someone I always respected and liked. It is kind of amazing to me to see all my former friends and acquaintances grow up, get married and have kids — just like I have. I mean, of course they do, but in my mind they’re all still 19 or 23 or whatever age they were when I saw them last.

I’m particularly happy to have discovered old friends because I really lost contact with everyone I knew when I lived overseas. When I came back to get married, there were very few college friends to invite to the wedding. Because my two years without internet meant I lost everyone’s e-mail address, and since we’d all just left college, everyone had new physical addresses and all the addresses I had were incorrect. I got my invitations back by the handful because all the addresses were bad. Of course, I had some close friends I had stayed current with (to the tune of 70 cents a minute) but they were (and still are) all over the planet, too. It seems a little surreal to find all these familiar faces via Facebook ten years later.

Anyway, I’m happy for Chris and wish him the best! For those who might recall that Chris is 6′6″, I have to mention that the baby seemed perfectly normal-sized at 8 lbs., 9 oz. I’m sure his wife is happy about that (*cough*…sends mean look at Marti…).