As many of you know, I don't get out much, and I like it that way. But I've been sort of missing my writing motivation (hell, I've been missing plain old motivation) and thought that seeing others of my tribe might be good for me. I saw idunno3, mortaine, layer, gallifreyan, recursive, earthdog, composerjk and a bunch of other people that I see about as much as I see most of my cousins. And the nice thing was that I realized that I felt the same love for them. No, I don't agree with them a lot of the time. Sometimes I barely understand them. But I love them and feel connected to them and happy when I've seen them and caught up with them. I know that I can't make it to too many events without having a meltdown, but I'm happy to connect with the other Nanos once in a while. It's good. I missed feralboy2 and wordweaverlynn though. It seems like less of a Nano party without them.

When I got home, pirateguillermo wanted to hit the hot tub. And, being the sucker that I am, I couldn't say no. As we sat there in the very warm water, pirateguillermo was telling me about how MailOrderVideoCo sorts movies that they recommend to people, and the fact that there are two categories that will never show up in a general search. If you are doing a nonspecific search, you will never get results for Indian movies, or gay/lesbian movies.

The Indian distinction is easy. It's so non-specific as to be of no use as a search criteria. It would be like trying to narrow a search by "American film." India makes movies of every conceivable genre, so you have to be more specific.

The gay/lesbian distinction is a little different. The logic is this: if you want a gay/lesbian film, you will likely just hit the gay/lesbian link and search specifically within that genre. If you do NOT want gay/lesbian film, there is the chance that if you are shown a gay/lesbian film in your search results, you will be enraged. There are those people who do not want to be reminded of reality, and will retaliate against those who do so.

So pirateguillermo and I started talking about what constitutes gay/lesbian film. He used the phrase "gay/lesbian themes," and I realized that I feel that to be as artificial a distinction as talking about race. The movie that started the conversation in the first place is called Big Eden. It's about a guy who goes home to Big Eden, Montana to care for his dying father and ends up falling in love with one of the local townsfolk. It's a classic country mouse/city mouse story, where the visiting son is a disaffected artist who is unhappy with his life and searching for meaning. The whole Montana town sees it and spends most of the movie trying to set him up. It's rated PG-13, although I can't even remember a single scene of kissing. It's a gay/lesbian film only because the people involved are two men, but how does it fall into the category of "gay/lesbian themed"? I just don't see the difficulty of finding someone to love being the property of one persuasion or another.

pirateguillermo asked me if I thought that Hedwig and the Angry Inch was "gay/lesbian" and again, I'd have to say no. It's just a little more extreme version of the same story above. "How can I find someone to love me?" We all feel that on the inside we're some sort of grotesque monster, and if anyone saw our monster inside they would run screaming away from us. Finding that other person to love you is something that's hardwired into us, but most of us never seem to get it right anyway. Again, universal.

I'm sad that the only things that I could think of that are really GLBT are horrible. Boys Don't Cry, for instance.

Joy is universal, while misery is unique. I don't know if that's even good.