Dear Dumbass: No, I am not stealing “your man,” Gerard Butler

So, like, you know, I keep up with the search-terms on this blog.

Recently, I noticed that I’ve been getting a lot of hits off of the name “Gerard Butler.” There’s no conspiracy going on here: I’ve featured Gerard, and, coincidentally, people are now searching for Gerard, because “RockNRolla” is out. Nothing out of the ordinary, right?

Except that, this morning, I noticed several bizarre, rambling, accusatory comments in my queue. Now, I was a bit harried this morning, seeing as the power kept going out, and I had about forty e-mails to get through before my coffee got cold, so, irritated, I just pressed “delete.”

Now that the day is almost done, though, I have remembered that oddly similar comments were thrown at One Female Canuck, when she wrote about meeting Gerard briefly somewhere. It’s a strange coincidence, and it has me wondering, is there, like, one truly special individual who stalks the blogs of anyone who dares mention Gerard Butler and then goes off on a weird little rant that accuses the author of having a clandestine relationship with this actor?

I suppose there are worse things to be accused of; I’ll take the accusation of bagging Butler over, say, being accused of serial-killing orphans or wearing shoulder-pads, but still, there’s nothing pleasant about being told something along the lines of “you were SEEN with him recently, you home-wrecker, and soon you’ll be EXPOSED!”

It just really annoys me, because I’m a fan of Gerard, and if there is one thing I take seriously it is my fandom. DO NOT IMPINGE ON MY FANDOM. Don’t tell me who I can and cannot write about, whose pictures I can and cannot post, and whose awesomeness I can and cannot speculate upon. My fandom is like a sweet baby tiger with adorable little whiskers, and I am the enraged, roaring mother tigress standing at the cave entrance, about to flail your miserable ass alive for daring to come anywhere near my sacred domain.

OK, seriously now… If you show up on people’s blogs and endlessly prattle on about how “Gerry is [your] man,” chances are, that’s news to him. And, if I were to give you any advice at all, it would be this:

Take a walk. Get out and meet people who exist in close proximity to you, in more than just the two-dimensional sense (action figures of King Leonidas do not count). Your fantasy life, while certainly rich and elaborate, is turning you into a major creepy jackass. It’s sad, it’s pathetic, and it’s not the kind of stuff I want to be staring at when I have my deliciously bad Nescafe.

Well, well, a reporter is attacked at a McCain-Palin rally in my very own North Carolina

At Elon, no less. For all I know, the asshole in question used to be my neighbour. The same sort who’d yell “go back to Russia!” after I resisted a boozy, grabby attempt at so-called flirting.

Am I surprised that this happened in my state? Not really. But I am dismayed.

North Carolina was and is a great place to live. It is routinely portrayed by outsiders as this terrifying no-go zone, when it is in fact a diverse environment, with all sorts of good, and bad, and plain fascinating.

Having said that, I have doubt that the McCain-Palin hate-fest is empowering and enabling the bad.

This thuggish contempt of media should give us all pause.

(And, for the record, no, I don’t think the attacker’s weight should have anything to do with the discussion, though I understand the impulse to bite back at him in a way that humiliates him. If that was me being kicked, I probably would have thought something very similar.)

Activist Lisa, of Questioning Transphobia fame, needs your donations

Financially, things have been rough on a lot of people this year. One of those people is Lisa Harney, tireless activist, fabulous writer, and friend. The job market has not been kind to Lisa, and her income is simply not meeting even her most basic needs at the moment. Her computer is about to die, and she’s having trouble feeding herself and her kittehs.

Lisa has put up a donation button on her blog, and I encourage anyone reading this to help out in whatever way they can. I’ve known Lisa for a while now, and consider her a stoic. When she’s asking for help, you know things are bad.

If you appreciate Lisa and her work, as many of us do, please pitch in however much you can afford.

Joe the Plumber’s address published – stay classy, internet!

Why do I, or Jill, even need to say that publishing his address is beyond uncool?

The fact that the McCain campaign is using this man as a prop (much as they have done with Trig Palin), doesn’t excuse burrowing into his personal life in this manner. This goes for anyone, Republican or Democrat.

The original blame for snatching up this man and repeatedly brandishing him as some sort of weapon is with McCain (and even McCain himself has appeared to admit as much), but this example doesn’t exactly, you know, inspire in this instance.

“Joe the Plumber” had every right to ask whatever he wanted of Obama, and I say that both as a co-owner of a small business and as someone who cast her absentee ballot for Obama earlier this week.