Is Seth McFarlane funny?

Many people absolutely adore the television show known as Family Guy. Personally, I don't understand it: the jokes seem to be utterly random and possess no real punchlines. South Park had a great example:

• "Peter, did you do the laundry?"
• "No, but let's not forget my date to Mexico with Gary Coleman!

...Um, what? Did I just hear that correctly? Because I thought this show was supposed to be comedic. Of course I am referring to Family Guy, as South Park is quite hilarious, if a tad foul. If someone enjoys McFarlane's work, then I won't hold it against them. I just don't see the appeal.

Yet in a recent trailer review for Seth McFarlane's new movie Ted, which to me looks like a similar strain for comedic attention, which it somehow receives, the YouTube comments absolutely blew a fuse when the reviewer said it didn't look good, and claimed that "no one can match up to Seth's bad-ass jokes" and that "anyone who doesn't like [his works] has no sense of humor." The sad thing is, many people are of this rigid closed-mindedness and similar forms of it, and yet a good deal of them are far less vicious in person, when there's no computer screen behind which they may hide as they type trollish spam to other users. In addition to that, it would be a miracle if more than an eighth of them passed basic English classes. It still makes me cringe when people type things like "im gud, u?" If they're in a rush, that's one thing, but people now use text language all the time just out of laziness and stupidity. One of my biggest pet peeves is when a person writes the possessive pronoun "your" in the place of the contraction of "you are" - in other words, I want to add an apostrophe and an "e" along with "an idiot." "You're an idiot." And I have Mr. Nantz to thank for that example, although I was no stranger to the urge then either. But this seems to have become a grammatical tangent. My main point is still that people have a right to opinions, and while I do not always respect the opinions, I generally try to respect the person.

A Boastful Confession

Lately this thing has been going around known as Amendment One. For those of you who may not know, Amendment One legally prevents same-sex marriages, among other things. Mostly I've seen those in the LGBT community's favor, but today I took a super-long walk - not incredibly far, considering my walks in general, but for several hours. Near the end of said excursion I passed three neighboring churches, two of which had signs that read: "Vote FOR Amendment One! ... One man. One woman..." and something about "proper" families or "true" families or some such bull-crap. I don't remember, because it wasn't worth remembering. Bigoted slime. The reason I care about the signs themselves is that people these days tend not to think before they do or say things. The average person, I am afraid, will read it (provided said human can actually read) and say, "Hey, it says that so it must be true!" and cast a ballot. Scary.

I heard somewhere that about fifty-five percent of people in North Carolina (where I currently reside) are in favor of Amendment One, which makes me want to shoot someone. Are you people so thick as to never learn? Allow me to list my cases:

• The Salem witch trials
• The Red Scare
• The Holocaust
• African-American slavery
• Black/white segregation
• Patriarchy throughout all history
• Medieval witch hunts
• Plebeians and Patricians in Rome
• Modern Communist China
• The British vs. the Colonists

Do I need to say more there? That's why it makes me sick whenever women, blacks, Jews, or anyone else who would have suffered unfairness in the past insist on being homophobic. I'm not saying it's OK for straight, white cis-males to be prejudiced, but when the former are I think it just makes them hypocritical.

So. My boastful confession.

I vandalized the first sign by writing "BIGOTS" with a black Sharpie but then decided to rip the damn thing off its post altogether and throw it in a Dumpster later on. I did the same with both signs, ripping one of them apart with a small Swiss army knife. And I regret nothing. Je ne regrette rien! I do respect others' right to opinion, free speech and such, but this would influence people to vote for something I consider to be unethical. If I posted signs all over District of Columbia with the words "Burn the White House tonight! Kill its occupants!" I would not get away with "freedom of expression" because I would be posing a threat to others. (Don't worry, I'm not a murderer and besides, I like President Obama. It was an example, nothing more.) In my opinion, this was an attack on gays and an obstacle to their right to marry and while my actions were likely trivial, I feel great about them. That's right. Begging your pardon now, for I am about to say something crude: Homophobics have their heads up their asses, simple as that.

This is Lewis Winter, signing out.

I Love You

My good friend Olivia had a post about different kinds of love, infatuation, and so forth, and how the general public can't seem to distinguish them. (I'm blogging this because the website won't let me comment on anyone else's blog - "Sign In" keeps taking me to the dashboard and it signs me back out when I go back to another blog - grr! So, Olivia, feel free to correct me if I misquote or anything.)

I wholeheartedly concur with the idea of the post, as it were. In my own circles, such as Printz and my writing group, I can freely say to a fellow member that I love him or her, because I do. It doesn't mean anything of the romantic sort; they are amazing people who are not only incredibly talented at writing, art, music, acting, and so on, but in addition to that, they are all kindhearted people in my opinion, and that's what earns them my greater wells of friendly love. Now when I go to school, there are also good people (whom I also friend-love intensely) and the other people. The others are average-to-low intelligence conformists who couldn't think for themselves if I paid them to do it. I'm sorry, but it's true. Still, I love every last living thing to some degree, hate none (that's an evil emotion), and if I mention my standard love to any male member, he assumes I am gay. Now, I see gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and so on as people just the same. I love them just as much, but I personally happen to eb straight. I don't need romance to survive; I'm single and happy. But I am attracted only to females. Still, that by no means prevents me from being equally friend-affectionate to boys and men. There are certain fellows at my school who are not afraid to hug me, and I commend them.

But I may be digressing.

My point is, people seem to think that love is primarily romantic, as well as the only stage of feelings between intimate partners. I love my friends, but I am not in love with any of them. And (sorry Olivia, I sort of found a tangent) I recently heard a request call to a radio station by a woman who confessed her [feelings] to a man and he just wanted to be friends. The woman made it clear that her heart was broken., and needed a song to soothe her hurt.

I find that my heart is strong (my loving mind, actually, but for some reason people place feelings metaphorically into one's cardial muscle). At the end of eighth grade I had it broken when I confessed my feelings to a girl (who already said she loved me in one way or another a couple of years prior to this) who freaked out and spread rumors that I was a stalker. She probably wanted attention; she's also said to be a strumpet in the literal sense. That hurt me, but I healed and built new cardiac barriers so I'll be more careful in falling for infatuation, and to not put it on myself if a lady turns out to be a monster like that one. By the way, she's really nice in person, but not so much on Facebook. Says something about the harlot's backbone, does it not? That is to say, mentality of cowardice; backbone is no more thinking than heart.

I don't need romantic love, but I don't deny it if it appears. To be honest, I currently don't have any special feelings for anyone. If a female agrees to remain friends, however, and there is no awkwardness, I'm fine with that. That is how it should be handled. It just doesn't happen often enough.

So to Olivia, Ezra, Hannah, Emily, or whomever else from my circles may be reading this: Congrats, you've been awesome at being my allies. I love you people. That is to say, I have a massive store of respect and admiration for your talents and personalities as well as you yourselves.

Some sort of love for whoever reads this,

- Lewis