Gromm Hellscream

I play of World of Warcraft. I play quite a lot. I've read 4 of the Warcraft novels, and I bought Warcraft III after I started playing WoW so I could see more of the Warcraft lore. You could say that I'm fairly invested in the Warcraft universe. Recently, my son started playing Warcraft III and has been doing fairly well with it.

Today, I was in Orgrimmar with my shaman when my son came into my office. He got excited.

"Show me where Hellscream is buried!"

I said, "He's not buried in Orgrimmar, but there's a memorial here. Let me show you."

So I rode over to Grommash Hold (named, of course, after Hellscream), and showed him Mannoroth's skull and armor. I read the inscription aloud:

"These demon plates were worn by the creature that first cursed our people with Bloodlust. By the heroic act of one brave orc - he was defeated. Mannoroth the Destructor is no more. Let these plates always remind us of how far we've come and how hard we fought to regain our honor."

- Thrall, Warchief of the Horde

Of course I started choking up at the "by the heroic act," part.

He looked at me closely, "Are you crying?"

"Yeah." I said.

"This makes you sad?"

I explained, "Well, Grom Hellscream died to save his people. He's a hero. He gave up everything to save those he loved. When people do that it makes you kind of sad, but also kind of proud."

He chewed on this for a moment. "Show me where he died."

So we left Orgrimmar and rode across the Southfury River into Ashenvale and Demon Fall Canyon. We rode up to the monument and I read it for him.

"Here lies Grommash Hellscream, Chieftan of the Warsong Clan.

In Many ways, the curse of our people began and ended with Grom. His name meant "Giant's Heart" in our ancient tongue. He earned that name a hundred-fold as he stood alone before the demon Mannoroth - and won our freedom with his blood.

Lok'Tar ogar, big brother. May the Warsong never fade."

- Thrall, Warchief of the Horde

Naturally, I teared up, again. My son, however, was dry-eyed.

"That makes me sad, but without tears."

I laughed, wiping my tears. "There's nothing wrong with crying," I said, "but being sad doesn't always have to make you cry."

Except, that doesn't really seem true for me, anymore. Most people can weather emotional turbulence without breaking into tears. Why can't I? There are times when I'm glad that I'm able to have such depth of feeling, but other times it just leaves me feeling slightly foolish.

I mean, come on - a video game?

PvPonline.com (Avery Brooks Post)

http://www.pvponline.com/2008/07/29/stewards-of-the-moment/

This post had me tearing up. What a special moment to meet your heroes. How exiting to meet the people who's work has had such a large impact on your life. 2 hankies

The post also had me a bit angry at the raucous, jackass culture that has sprung up that is completely unable to do anything but mock and scold. It's a frightening lack of empathy, and empathy is a large part of what makes us human. The fact that a celebrity was a couple sheets to the wind isn't significant - we've all done it and it's not even remotely inappropriate given the time and place - what's significant is that they were having a relaxed moment and ended up mocked for it. Which probably is a large reason why it's simpler to stay isolated and keep such wonderful moments rare.

I would hate to be so emotionally damaged that all I had left was mockery and scorn and that I couldn't - even vicariously - be happy for others.

Stephen King's "On Writing." (Audiobook)

I first bought this as a book on tape when we were living in Chicago and I had driven back to Arkansas for a couple days, leaving the wife and kids in Illinois. I bought this for the drive back and ended up sitting in our apartment's parking spot for half an hour before I turned off the car so I could finish it. I've loved Stephen King books since junior high, and this one is amazing. It's an autobiographical look at the craft of writing.

I bought the digital download version of this, again, today from audible.com. The guys on macbreak weekly mentioned it, this week, and rather than try to find an actual cassette player, I just went ahead and bought it, again. It's worth it.

In the book he describes finding out that his first book's paperback rights had sold for $200,000 when he was still teaching for about $6,000 a year. He then goes on to describe how, when he explained the news to his wife, she broke into tears. That, of course, made me break into tears. 2 hankies

Mythbusters #74 (Dog Myths)

During the episode, CC (Adam's dog) was very intimidated by Adam and acting very submissive. She was crawling on her belly and urinating on the floor whenever he got too close. The trainer helping Adam explained that CC had most likely had been mistreated by previous male owners. She was a beautiful malamute and it just broke my heart that she thought of herself as the omega of her pack. 1 hankie

I do value humans more than most other animals and I don't oppose the use of animals in research, but I do oppose unnecessary suffering or cruelty. Besides, dogs are special. They may have very well evolved into domesticity and they can bond with us like no other species. I've had a few good dogs in my life, and wish my home situation were a little different so we could get a dog. It's an experience I'd like my son to have, but with all the work and care involved in taking care of his sister, I'm just not up to raising a puppy.

Thankfully, the trainer and adam were able to work with CC and boost her confidence. She was a much happier dog by the end of the episode.

Freethought Radio

Freethought Radio played an excerpt of Julia Sweeny's fantastic monologue, "Letting Go of God" (Which I already owned a CD copy of). In it, she mentioned the realization that all the people she'd loved who'd passed away - including her brother - weren't waiting for her in some magical fairyland, but were actually, irrevocably gone. That is a painful fact to come to terms with. 2 hankies

The Rachel Maddow Show 7/24/08

I'm catching up on back episodes of TRMS because they didn't post their podcasts for a couple days. Listening to Thursday's show, Rachel is replaying the Obama Berlin speech in it's entirety. The ending is making me weepy all over again. 2 hankies

Conversation with my son before he fell asleep.

My daughter is autistic and has no speech. Because of this, I can't explain to her why she should stay in her bed or even her room after we turn off all the lights in the house and she and her brother are tucked into their respective beds. My son usually falls deeply asleep fairly quickly, but since my girl sees no good reason not to go ahead and get back up and go play, I have to sit in their room with them until she goes to sleep.

So each night I typically listen to podcasts on my iPhone and foil my daughter's escape attempts until she finally winds down enough to go to sleep. Tonight, however, I ended up having a long conversation with my son, instead.

Sadly, my constant occupation with keeping his sister out of dangerous or even merely difficult situations means we don't really leave the house much. She's non-verbal, but she's amazingly bright. She knows when to make a successful break for it, and she's very fast to find trouble so she requires constant vigilance. That means that restaurants or the movies or swimming - instead of being relaxing - are merely long nightmarish marathons of keeping a step ahead of her and hoping that whichever relative had enough clout to talk us into being there would soon be satisfied enough to allow us to head home before I collapse. As a consequence my poor son hasn't had as much social experience as most kids his age. (Also I haven't really had a chance to teach him how to swim.) Mostly this summer he watches loads of star trek and proclaims loudly that someday he's going to invent impulse and warp drives and build starships.

Well, today he went to a pool party for his friend's birthday, and I was nearly having an anxiety attack over it.

There was no way I could take his sister to the pool so I'd have to leave him there for the two whole hours of the party. I suppose it's post-traumatic stress after already been through losing his mother, but the thought of leaving him there without my watchful eye scared the shit out of me. Rationally, I knew he'd be safe and it would be monstrously unfair not to allow him to go, but even up to 15 minutes before the party time I was seriously considering calling his friend's mom and canceling. I was just terrified that I'd once again win the tragedy-lottery and I was actually making myself ill with worry.

I explained to my son what was going on and that I wanted him to go but I was afraid. He's only 9, poor kid, but he acted very mature. He was calm and just kept promising me he'd be very careful, but he really did want to go so could we just go already, please?

He went, and he had fun and was perfectly fine. Tonight, though, before he fell asleep, he started asking me questions:

"Did you really think I was going to die at the pool?"

I explained that I didn't really think he was going to die at the party, but that when Momma died it made me very scared of the idea of losing either him or his sister. I knew it wasn't going to happen, but I was still scared a little.

"Can I hire my cousin as a lifeguard so I can go swimming again?"

I had to tell him that his cousin was already pretty busy this summer, and that the pool already had hired people to be lifeguards. But since his sister would either poop in the pool or drink gallons of heavily chlorinated water (or both) that meant that it wasn't likely we'd be going back.

"Did your heart break when Mom died?"

This caught me off guard and immediately brought tears to my eyes. I wanted to make sure he wasn't being literal, though, so I explained that a broken heart just meant being really, really sad. And, yes, I was very sad for a long time after his mom died. I grieved for almost three years before I started to feel like myself, again.

What he said next, though, really started me crying because I instantly knew what he meant.

"Someday, I'm going to invent a time machine and save Mom."

Of course it's a fantasy that often crosses my mind though I never let it linger for too long. It's seductive yet completely impossible. Go back in time and prevent the accident that claimed his mother and brother. Rescue our family before it's shattered forever. Preempt the scars and prevent the hole left in our lives by their absence. Nothing could be simpler and nothing could be less possible.

It wasn't easy, but I explained that time travel is just fiction and that you can't bring back somebody you've lost. I told him that the best we can do is try to live good lives and be people she would have been proud of. It was a lame answer, but that doesn't change it's truth.

It was enough. Soon he was asleep, and I was drying my eyes and gently nudging my girl back into bed each time she tried to sneak past me.

4 hankies

Maxed Out

This is a heartbreaking documentary about the lack of consumer protection for middle- and low-income people in the US in regards to predatory lending. They had story after story of people pushed to the edge or actually committing suicide because they were just overwhelmed. Even college-age kids. One widow, in particular, had a heartbreaking tale. Her husband passed and she couldn't keep up with her house payments and basically sold every item she owned trying to stay afloat but was still being foreclosed. She tearfully revealed she'd thought about suicide, but her son had killed himself and she couldn't put her family through that, again. 3 hankies

Countdown - July 24th, 2008

Watching the MSNBC interview with Obama after the Berlin speech made me weepy, again. Maybe it's because I've just not seen this type of leadership in my lifetime, but this man simply floors me yet fills me with hope every time I listen to him intelligently discourse with other people and speak knowledgeably and correctly about matters of importance.

We have to elect this man. 2 hankies

Obama Berlin Speech #5

There's too much to document. This speech has left me a weepy - but hopeful! - mess. This man is truly a world leader. 4 hankies

Obama Berlin Speech #4

"These now are the walls we must tear down..." 4 hankies

Obama Berlin Speech #3

As he's speaking the camera is panning over the crowd, and there is a sea of American flags being waved over the crowd. This country has been so mislead and maltreated by it's administrators for the last 8 years... With them gone and trustworthy administrators in power, I think the world is eager to greet us as friends, again. 3 hankies

Obama Berlin Speech #2

He's so thoughtful, and intelligent, and well-versed in History. Listening to this speech just inspires me that we CAN have leaders worthy of the title... 4 hankies

Obama Berlin Speech

I haven't even started watching it, yet. Just read that it drew a crowd of 200,000 people. To give so many people hope... 1 hankie

The 27 Things I Learned at Nerdtacular ‘08

I listen to a World of Warcraft oriented podcast called "The Instance" and this week one of the hosts had his annual "Nerdtacular" event. I also subscribe to his site's RSS feed, and he had a post on the feed titled "The 27 Things I Learned at Nerdtacular ‘08." All of this is a roundabout way of getting to the fact that when I followed the link from the feed, the first thing my eye caught on the page was:

"12. Handing a free Wii to a 11 year old kid is beneficial to the soul."

I don't know the back-story, here, or who the kid was, but the absolute truth of this statement just sort of struck me. I bet it's like giving gifts at Christmas, but even more so. The thought of some kid being so outrageously happy in that way kids do at receiving such a cool gift made me a tad weepy. 1 hankie

This American Life (#359 Life After Death)

This episode was about people haunted by feelings of responsibility for the death of another person. Death is a pretty tough subject for me to discuss for what I think are obvious reasons, but I did pretty well listening to this show. There was one point, though, when the narrator of the first segment was telling about meeting the parents of the girl who'd swerved in front of his car on her bicycle, that was very painful to listen to. My heart just bled for everybody involved. 3 hankies

Senator Ted Kennedy Returns to the Senate

I was listening to the podcast of David Bender's Politically Direct and they were talking about this amazing event in the Senate and I had to immediately go to YouTube to see if I could find the video. Thankfully, it was easy to find. Even after the nightmare of the last 8 years, there are times when I'm so full of pride for this country that it just overwhelms me. 4 hankies

Tonari no Totoro (My Neighbor Tortoro)

This movie is so charming yet so enigmatic. It was set in rural japan, and was a story about two little girls with a sick mother. There were a couple of times where I almost got misty eyed, but held it together. At the end, though, there was nothing I could do. It was so sweet and moving I couldn't help myself. 2 hankies

Netroots Nation - Molly Ivins Quote

I was watching some panel about blogging and the media that included Paul Krugman, and at the end of the panel the moderator read a quote from Molly Ivins exhorting Democrats to "raise hell."

I absolutely loved Molly Ivins. I don't exactly embrace Southern culture, but it is my culture, for the most part, and Molly was such a brilliant and moving example of what a Southern Liberal should be (I know, I know, she was actually Texan, but it's close enough for my purposes). I still shed a few tears almost every time I hear her name mentioned. 2 hankies

(I'm now watching archived panels and since they're in Texas, it seems they're all at least paying a little homage to Molly. Well, it's tough on me, but she very much deserves it. multiple 1 hankies)

Homesick

This Digg post linking to this Flickr photo had a simple comment, just below it:

"Sweet home Chicago."

I grew up where I'm living, now, but I loved living in Chicago. Also, my wife was laid to rest there, so, in a very real sense, Chicago will always have my heart. 2 hankies

Rachel Maddow Show 7/17/08

Listen to this little clip from Thursday's Rachel Maddow Show. The bit about Rep. Sanchez' Jersey having the "IX" on it made me a little misty-eyed. I'm not much for sports, but I am big on social justice, and I think that Title IX putting women's sports on equal financial footing with men's sports was important. 1 hankie




(I highly recommend buying a premium membership to Air America Radio. For one yearly fee you get to download any or all of their shows as podcasts, commercial-free. Rachel Maddow is my most favorite, but I also listen to another half a dozen, or so, though less devoutly.)

anders loves maria

Just read it. I think I'd feel sad for anybody who doesn't get weepy over this one. 3 hankies

(This comic is just fantastic. Absolutely one of the best I've seen. I highly, highly recommend going back and reading the whole series up to this point. Part of the emotional impact is the fact that it's nice to see Anders and Maria seemingly making up. Go on, read it - it'll make sense, then.)

Just woke up - July 17, 2008

This is partly why I started this thing. Sometimes, I really don't understand what gets me worked up. My eyes are still gummy from sleep, though, and maybe that and a general grogginess are contributing factors...

I was just watching a time-shifted Colbert Report from last night, and as I was skipping through the commercials, I caught the last few seconds of a commercial for the new X-Files movie. As the announcer said, "I Want to Believe," I felt a flood of emotion and got teary-eyed. I never watched an episode until after the show had gone off the air, but I eventually ended up getting all 9 seasons on DVD and by now I've actually seen them a couple of times. A lot of positive memories associated with that show.

Then, after the commercial, it cut back to the Colbert Report just as Stephen announced the band Rush. I'm not a huge Rush fan, but like anybody who was alive for at least part of the 70s, I'd heard some of their stuff and generally liked what I heard. It was just that it was a bit before my time. Until my last year of high-school and one of my best friends made me a mix-tape that had "Trees," and "2112," and it entered my emotional lexicon a bit more deeply. I think that along with all the buildup to their appearance on the show, their announcement gave me another bit of a push and I got another surge of emotion and weepy-eyes. 2 hankies

Countdown - July 16th, 2008

Only Keith Olbermann could make me weep for Tony Snow. 2 hankies

Barack Obama at the Annual NCLR Conference

at 3:58:

"Maybe the system is not designed for people like us."

It was a comment about education, but it reflects a broader feeling that so many people share; that the system just isn't working for them. And they're right - it's not.

The system isn't working when a child in a crumbling school graduates without learning to read, or doesn't graduate at all.

The system's not working when a young person at the top of her class, a young person with so much to offer this country can't attend a public college or university

The system isn't working when hispanics are losing their jobs faster than almost anybody else are working jobs that pay less and come with fewer benefits than almost anybody else.

The system isn't working when twelve million people living in hiding and hundreds of thousands are crossing our borders illegally each year.

When companies hire undocumented immigrants instead of legal citizens because they want to avoid paying overtime or avoid unionization or exploiting those workers,

When communities are terrorized by ICE Immigration Raids,
When nursing mothers are torn from their babies,
When children come home from school to find their parents missing,
When people are detained without access to legal council,

When all that is happening, the system just isn't working and we need to change it.

This is a nation of immigrants. It's sad that many of us quickly forget that and make the modern immigrant experience such a harrowing one. 2 hankies

The Sugarmonster

I just read this remarkable post, and it has me floored.

I've been overweight most of my life. My dad has this weird food=love thing and I was a fat kid because of it (we used to come home from the weekly grocery shopping with boxes and boxes of snack cakes and he was always encouraging me to eat, eat, eat). There were kids worse off than me, but I always felt like a fat kid and occasionally was treated like one, too. When I finally moved away from home and went to college, I lost about 80 lbs. and looked and felt better than any other time of my life. That's also, ironically, the point at which I met my wife. She also had always been a little chunky and had just shed her excess pounds, as well. We celebrated our newfound love by immediately getting pregnant. That was ok. I was ready to take a break from school so I started working and we got an apartment together and she stayed in school to finish her degree.

Pregnancy put pounds on the both of us. By the time our first son was born, we were both a little chubby, again, though not serious. Then we moved to Chicago so she could do her post-grad work and internship (Registered Dietician), and I got a job at an ad agency doing web work. She was already pregnant again, but we'd take walks with our son in the stroller, and I'd also go bike riding on my own. One bit of exercise that I got most every weekday was I spent my lunch break at a park near my work walking for about 45 minutes, or so. I was still a bit chunky, but in reasonable shape. She gave birth to our daughter, finished her school and got her license and a job at a big Hospital down in the city. We signed a mortgage on a nice townhouse in a good suburb and got pregnant a third time. Things were going well.

Then my wife died in a car accident. I was laid so low and so out of sorts that I started smoking again and basically sat down for two and a half years. No more exercising - hell, hardly even any walking. I was convinced by my family to leave the suburbs and use the life-insurance money to buy a house down in my hometown in Arkansas where the cost of living was about a quarter of what it is in the Chicago suburbs and I could more easily afford to be a single parent. Except Illinois is flat and the Chicago suburbs are full of sidewalks and parks and paved walking paths. In Arkansas, not so much. There are some walking paths, but they're relatively rare and not usually flat. With the hills it can be very difficult to walk very far unless you're already moderately healthy - and I was no longer even moderately healthy. Bike riding is worse - you have to be pretty damn fit to bike in the Ozarks. Not an entry-level area. So the weight packed on, though to be honest I really wasn't paying much attention to it. I was busy mourning my wife and an unknown son and trying to learn how to be a single parent (and discovering that my little girl was low-functioning autistic).

Just as a side note to all the assholes who cry in horror when they hear about somebody obese and shout, "But how could you let yourself get so fat?! Don't you just want to curl up in shame that you're so lazy?!" The answer is that sometimes there's so much other shit going on that you don't even realize it's happening.

So the weight was building up and somewhere after about 3 years I decided it's time to quit smoking. It's bad for me and it's just damn expensive, anymore. So I quit. It's not too hard once you get up the courage to actually do it. Except the pounds really started piling on once I wasn't smoking. I was already pretty fat by this time, but suddenly I got huge.

Now I started noticing. By the time I finally got my life in enough order that I could focus on figuring out my weight, I was tipping the scales at about 420 pounds. Some of the horrible, humiliating things she describes in her post were starting to happen to me, and, frankly, it scared me. My kids are already shy one parent, I didn't want them to be totally orphaned.

Thankfully, things are a little better, now*. I'm still fat, but I'm mobile and capable.

That's not the point, though. The point is that I empathized with this young woman, not just because I empathize with everybody, but because I've been a ways down the road she went down, and it's a bleak place to be. Also, I feel just a burning rage at jerks who've never had to cope with a serious, debilitating problem like this, yet feel perfectly free to offer the harshest criticism and the cruelest taunts. To them a I give a righteous "Fuck You." 3 hankies




* (I eat a little better, now, that I've learned to cook at home more instead of always just taking the kids out for fast food. Also, one of the best things I've done for my health is to replace my office chair with an exercise ball. I've seen videos and posts making fun of it, but after just 3 weeks of sitting on a bouncy ball instead of puddling in an overstuffed office chair, I lost 30 pounds and felt far, far more energetic. I'm still working towards getting healthier, but thankfully I'm no longer at the point where the smallest tasks completely drain me. I'm feeling mostly pretty normal, now. This fall I'm going to start walking my kids to school instead of driving them. That should help quite a bit, too.)

America's Funniest Home Videos

My son absolutely loves AFV, and since it's not star trek (long story), it's one of the things he watches that I can still stand to watch. Today, we were watching a time-shifted re-run from 1990 and they had a clip of a young man surprising his girlfriend as she came home with a proposal of marriage. He was on one knee in the living room and had the camera on and was just waiting for her when she stepped in the door. Her reaction was funny, but also very, very touching. Evidently, he'd taken the time to talk to her family and obtained (I think) her grandmother's wedding ring and evidently this was just the right thing to do. She was floored, and just cried and cried. It was very moving. 3 hankies

(I searched, but couldn't find it on YouTube.)

Harry Potter & The Order of the Phoenix (Wii Game)

I guess I have to finally publicly disclose my love of the Harry Potter books. When the first movie came out, I'd never heard of the books but my wife and I were completely taken with the movie. So I decided to buy the books available at that time (1, 2, & 3) and see what I thought. I read a few pages of the first book and put it down. I never put books down. I usually will finish even bad books by force of will if for no other reason. This was a kids book, though, and at the time those few pages read like a children's book to me. I just didn't see how a 500 page Dr. Suess book was going to keep me entertained.

Fast forward a few years. The kids and I are back in Arkansas and we're grocery shopping and I see a DVD bundle of the first four Harry Potter movies. I picked them up, and we just loved them. At this point, wheels started turning and I thought to myself, "these are movies based on novels. If the movies are this good, there has to be something more to the novels than I assumed..." So I went back and gave book one another go. Loved it. Moved on to Chamber of Secrets and ended up going onto amazon to order books 4, 5, and 6 (which were all that were available at the time). I was hooked.

Well, now I've read the whole series and I even have the magnificent Jim Dale read Audiobooks for the whole series. I've read each book twice and listened to them twice, as well, over the years, so I'm pretty conversant with the story. And, yes, there are points in the story arc that make me cry (especially in the last two books).

(Finally all this preamble pays off...)

Today, I was playing the Order of the Phoenix Wii game that we bought last year but never got around to playing until I started, yesterday, on a whim. Today, I got to a point in the story where Harry'd just had his vision of Mr. Weasley being attacked and he and Ron warn the Headmaster then are sent on to Grimmauld Place. Well, the first thing you see when all the cut-scenes finish is the living room of Grimmauld Place and standing there are... Lupin and Tonks. Thinking of Fred Weasley and Sirius Black usually makes me teary, but every time I bump into Lupin and Tonks in the stories I just lose it and really start crying. I'm crying as I type this. The fact that they found each other, were so good for each other, had a child together yet were only together for a such a brief time before Harry lost them both... well, it really rips me up. Two lovable characters that absolutely didn't deserve the fate they got. 4 hankies (seriously)

(I made a tactical mistake when looking for an image to use with this post - I followed a link to YouTube with "Lupin Tonks" search criteria. There are some very lovingly made and touching fan videos out there, and they absolutely tore me apart...)

Stone Soup - July 9, 2008

This story line has been going on for a few days, but it's definitely worth going back to read. This strip is the culmination of the story line and just perfect in timing and tone. Plus, it was just the right resolution for the dilemma these two characters were in, and so sweet that it made me misty-eyed. Essentially, outside forces were putting unhealthy pressures on their relationship, and the creator making the boyfriend do this perfectly disarmed the situation and released the tension that had built over the past few days (probably enhancing the emotional reaction). Even the hair-stylist's reactions in the background is a nice little cherry on top of the sundae.

Bah, it's hard to really describe so just go back a week or two and read all the strips up until today (and keep going, if you like - this is a good comic). See if your reaction is any different than mine. 1 hankie

Buzz Aldrin punches conspiracy theorist.

I'm trying to make sense of my reaction, here. First, I don't like the way the clip is edited. Showing the punch over and over is completely unnecessary and too sensationalist. It's almost reveling the the violence of the incident and essentially undermining the truly outrageous parts. (I don't advocate violence, but there are times when you're perfectly in your rights to use physical means to defend yourself or even your honor. Bart Sibrel - the man accosting Col. Aldrin - clearly deserved a punch in the face.) Buzz Aldrin was essentially being libeled by this man who was calling him a liar and a coward. Colonel Aldrin rode millions of miles in a glorified tin-can with death millimeters away and was the second person (of only handful, all told) to step foot on a world that wasn't the one of his birth. And that's why I think I teared up: The shock at this man coming up to try to physically and verbally intimidate Col. Aldrin... I'm just outraged and angered. Col. Aldrin is a true hero not only for the United States, but for the world. His achievements and the achievements of the Apollo program were a milestone for Humanity and a major step in our advancement as a species. To denigrate those accomplishments is not only to denigrate the heroes who actually accomplished this herculean task, but to denigrate all of Humanity, as well. What a shit-head. 3 hankies

(I tried and tried to find a version of this video that didn't have the instant replays, but couldn't find one. Seems like everybody missed the point.)

Barack Obama Addresses A.M.E. Church General Conference

I'm not religious in the sense that I don't believe in the supernatural, but I do respond to a good sermon because I am culturally Christian and my Liberal values do coincide with the Christian values that drove the major social movements in the U.S.: Abolitionists, Suffragettes, Civil Rights activists, etc. This was a good sermon. I know that a lot of my fellow Liberals are uncomfortable with Obama's religious rhetoric, but I'm not worried. He's re-building the wall between Church and State in his overhaul of Bush's corrupt faith-based initiative and he speaks in universal language in the public sphere and religious language when he's in the religious sphere. He does a good job of not mixing the two.

This speech was powerful and comforting. There were quite a few places that I got weepy, especially when he invoked the image of those same faith-based civil rights pioneers I mentioned above - anti slavery, pro-feminist, pro-labor and civil rights activists. And when he talked about the problems we have and the solutions we can find. 3 hankies

Amy Silverman & Sophie

At the risk of being self-referential, Amy Silverman (the mother from the July 30th, TAL#358 post) left a comment on that post that made me misty-eyed (1 hankie). It was touching to see that she'd been moved by my post and that she'd found my blog in the first place. She also left a link to her fantstic blog. It's beautifully written and (not surprisingly) a little heartbreaking. It really captures the joys and tears of parenting with a special needs kid.

My Name Is Earl #39

When Josh's friends eulogize him, I got pretty teary-eyed. Remembering those we've lost is pretty damn important. The whole premise of the episode was the fact that they couldn't find anybody who knew him, and therefore nobody to mourn his passing. When they discovered that all his friends were online, and finally had a proper funeral for him, it was fairly moving. Yes, even comedies make me cry... 2 hankies

Don S. Davis: 1942-2008

Don Davis passed away (the actor who played "General Hammond" on Stargate SG1). I was never a big fan of the Stargate TV show, but my mom was, and it wasn't bad so I ended up seeing quite a few episodes. And I did like his work in X-Files and wherever else I saw him (and he worked a lot). Hearing about his passing made me a bit misty. 1 hankie

Sir Ken Robinson: Creativity

17 minutes in, talking about "epiphany" and the dancer. 2 hankies. The whole talk is wonderful, really.

TED: Arthur Benjamin and "Mathemagic."

I teared up at the very end of this one. I was also laughing at the same time. I think it's because I wanted to stand up and applaud the guy. Sorry about giving away the ending. 1 hankie

(I know these posts seem to come in fits and starts, or maybe repetitive as I watch multiple episodes or clips from the same source, but I'm just documenting each time I get weepy as they happen.)

TED: Jill Bolte Taylor on her stroke.

Just watch it. A remarkable and beautiful talk from Jill Bolte Taylor. It helps reinforce my belief that we are a truly remarkable species and that we don't need to resort to fairy tales or the supernatural to discover the profound and powerful truths within us. 4 hankies

(Somebody on Digg.com posted a list of most popular TED talks that I'll likely be working my way through, so expect more of these, soon. TED talks usually cover profound material.)

Todd and Penguin