Dissonance

In yet another round of "you never know until you try," I managed to fix the heating problem in the truck of malfunction yesterday. It required pliers, a screwdriver, and the fervent hope that I wouldn't electrocute myself while wedging metal objects into the innards of the dashboard. I think the truck and I are very well tuned to each other, spiritually, because in real life there is no way I could possibly fix anything remotely mechanic that isn't a computer. Maybe all the computer science DNA is phasing out of my body since I haven't programmed in 8 months. That would be sad. I'll let you know if I start feeling the need to play sports or something.

Oh, but then just to even things out, the back right speaker blew out completely this morning, so now I have to turn the radio entirely to the left if I want to hear anything, which is insanely irritating and almost not worth it. Britney Spears does not sound as good through just one ear. There is a joke there, but I'm not going to make it, because I have at least some class today. Hardly any, but some.

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So last night, the Disney Channel had Remember the Titans as their Monday night movie. Considering the fact that I haven't turned on the Disney Channel in ages, I thought it was a nice coincidence because I really like that movie and there was nothing else on. (Although I ended up missing Medium because I got engrossed, which is too bad. Patricia Arquette rocks my world for reasons that are nigh impossible to explain. Girl looks rough, yet I still love her.)

Anyway, the movie's a little sappy, and the voice-over girl at the beginning and end could give Mischa Barton a serious run for her money as worst actress in the history of the world, but it's nice enough overall. A cute little overcoming-racism, join-with-your-fellow-man-to-fight-discrimination, don't-forget-high-school-football-is-the-most-important-thing, feel-good movie.

But goddamn the Disney Channel. In a movie basically full of veiled (and direct) racial slurs exactly what do you think the Disney Channel would deem to censor? None of that stuff(which I'm not saying is a bad thing, it's part of the story they're telling.). What they decide to cut out is the 0.5 seconds of the movie devoted to the part where the quarterback turns out to be gay, and the rest of his teammates end up accepting him (the main part cut being the most awkward guy-on-guy kiss ever recorded on film).

So according to the Disney Channel, learning tolerance for your fellow man = good. Just make sure it's according to race, and not sexual orientation. Because we can't have, literally, 0.5 seconds of screentime devoted to throwing the smallest bone to another, readily prevalent, kind of discrimination. This is a "family channel" where it's cool to bring up difficult issues, so long as we're certain that bigots can't complain about it publicly without fear of recrimination.

I mean, come on. The storyline wasn't even a storyline. It was muddled and not that well-handled in the movie anyway, but it still should have been left in. Christ, I'm way more pissed off about this than I should be. It's the goddamn Disney Channel. It was followed by an episode of Lizzie Maguire. Why am I not more outraged at the continuing career of Hilary Duff?

Ugh. HATE.

(Not you, Hilary. You know I secretly love you. Your lyrics are awesome. If the light is off then it isn't on, indeed.)

(P.S. - Fuck you, Disney Channel.)