Two Sad Things

a) Michael Crichton died yesterday. As flawed as his views on global warming were revealed to be (at least as he put them in "State of Fear"), he was inexplicably one of my absolute favorite writers. Michael Crichton is what Dan Brown and Robin Cook can only achieve in their wildest fantasies. I read "Jurassic Park" for the first time in sixth grade and fell in love with this man's writing. Not all his books were amazing, especially the later works ("Prey"), but that is more than made up for by "Jurassic Park," its sequel, "Timeline," "Airframe," the list goes on... Although the movies weren't always great ("Timeline"), sometimes they were classics ("Jurassic Park"), and I think it's sad that his life ended at the same time his television show ("E.R.," which he helped create and continued to produce for its run) is coming to its own end. Michael Crichton's daughter was one year ahead of me at Harvard-Westlake and we were friendly aquaintences until she switched schools. I ran into her with her father at the "Timeline" premiere and he seemed like a very nice and intelligent (well, obviously) man.

b) I'm still sickened by the blatant denial of civil rights to gay people this country has decided is the right course of action. The adoption ban in Arkansas is the most disgusting piece of legislation, but the marriage bans are still incredibly offensive. My sister is friends with these two girls, twins, and over the summer my family went to the wedding of their mothers, which I believe I went into in my last post on this subject. Well, apparently at least one of those girls showed up to school yesterday and was in tears for most of the day. I can't imagine that anyone could see this and not be moved (I didn't see it, but I know the girl and I can imagine it and it makes me really sad and angry that people who profess to be in favor of "family values" would destroy her family like this. I mean, it's not like her parents are splitting up or anything, but their destroying the legal bond her parents made and as a consequence rendering their emotional bond as secondary to "normal" people). I'm also still angry at the girl I know who voted for the marriage ban in Florida (which needed 60% of the vote to change their state constitution and received 62%). Arizona is less personal but still really offensive. At least California was the closest of all these, but it's still horrible that it passed.

Yesterday this guy I did a summer program with in 2007 sent me a facebook IM asking what Prop 8 was (it was in my facebook status). I told him, and he said that he thought gay marriage was morally wrong but did not believe that the government should force one group's beliefs on the entire state (or, god forbid, the country). He also said that integration of people with different backgrounds and beliefs is really important to this country. I have to admit, I was little surprised by this. He is from Kansas, and is very religious and conservative. Although it makes me sad that he views homosexuality as being wrong, I'm heartened that I know someone who, even though he disagrees with the moral issue, can still understand that legislation like this is a complete violation of civil rights.

But seriously, I'm so mad I could puke.

I'm trying to get my anger out about this issue in this post, so that in the next I can put up some pictures and (attempt to) tell the narrative of my incredible election night exerience. This didn't end up being the rant I expected it to be, probably since thinking about Michael Crichton being dead was very sad and thus put me in a more somber state of mind, but at least I got to air some more of my grievances. I hear there are going to be a lot of protests, but I'm not going home for over a week so they'll probably have quieted down by the time I get back to L.A. If not, you know where you'll find me!