Yes, long title. No, I'm not changing it.
So, um... I'm not the kind of person who looks at stats. Really, I'm not. But usually, when I'm offline for a few days, it's not really a big deal. So today, when I log in, I'm thinking, "Hmm, what should I tell the small band of followers about today?" And then I see that I've had something like five hundred pageviews in the last week.
Whoa.
Thank you sooo much for reading my blog and caring what I say and stuff. It means A LOT.
Anyway.
WHO SAW THE OLYMPICS OPENING CEREMONY??? Because obviously I did.
Seeing those little kids singing all those songs, and then Keneth Branagh's beautiful recitation of that passage from The Tempest was just... amazing. I literally had goosebumps. I just sat there watching them, and those villagers on all that green grass, like they were in the Shire or something, and I started thinking about what Neil Gaiman says in American Gods. He says that nobody's American, not really. Of course, the obvious exception would be Native Americans, but everybody else came from Europe, or Asia, or Africa. And I couldn't help wondering if I had great-great-great-great-great grandparents somewhere in my history that lived in England, or Ireland, or Scotland, and worked on a little Shire-esque farm.
And I had about five minutes to be sentimental before they started dragging away the Shire and replacing it with Mordor, minus the creepy tower. (They had five creepy towers, actually.) It was kind of cool to see them making those giant rings right there in the arena. At first I was thinking, "Why are there only five? Weren't there nine rings gifted to the race of men and so on?" But then I remembered, "Oh yeah. Olympics. Duh."
Okay, no more Lord of the Rings references. Sorry.
So then James Bond and the Queen in that helicopter... I mean, jeez, the English really no how to laugh at themselves if they're going to pull out all these stereotypes.
And then the adorable hospital kids, which was awesome.
Okay, I should clarify that at the beginning of this whole thing, my darling mother made fish sticks and French fries for fish and chips, you know, so we could pretend we were English and feel posh. Which is odd, since there's nothing particularly posh about fish and chips, but anyway. I had fish fingers and custard. Okay, actually it was one fish finger, and the custard was vanilla Swiss Miss pudding, but still.
And for the record, it was awesome.
Anyway. Hospital kids.
I had a nerd freak-out when J.K. Rowling read that passage from Peter Pan. And the nerd freak-out turned into me floating up to the ceiling and almost dying when a five hundred-foot-tall Voldemort-- with a functioning wand-- grew out of the ground and stared threateningly at that little girl. I mean, yeah, all he could really do was stare threateningly at her. And make a few bangs with the wand. But still.
And I suppose Cruella de Ville and Captain Hook and the Queen of Hearts were all right.
But Voldemort. VOLDEMORT, GUYS!
Who would have thought he could be taken down by Mary Poppins?
Okay, so it was a small army of Mary Poppinsesesezzzz. But I mean, come on. And there was no Dick Van Dyke, and no tap dancing penguins! Disappointment.
So then there was Mr. Bean. And then that explosion of pretty much all the best music ever.
You can't help but wonder why England pulled out all these stereotypes.
I think it's a British thing. Because, you know, they're like the Hipster Country of the world. So maybe they knew that we would laugh at them, so they pulled out all these famous British-y things to make us laugh, so that they could laugh at us for laughing at them. So then really, they have the last laugh. Or something.
CONSPIRACY!
I was gonna stick around for the torch, to see if David Tennant popped up somewhere, but I got bored around the M's of the Parade of Nations. I think they should do that part first.
And then, today... BATMAN!!!
I'm not going to spoil it for anyone, but suffice it to say that it was REALLY AWESOME.
When I got home, I thought about all this stuff. I just sat for a while, thinking about superheroes and the Olympics (which inevitably led to some side-thoughts about the Hunger Games), and how amazing it would be to be part of something like that. I mean, how amazing must it feel for all those volunteer dancers and little kids with angel voices and J.K. Rowling and that girl with the crazy hair who was in the sketch dedicating to the guy who invented the Internet to say that they were apart of the 2012 London Olympics? How cool is that they can tell their kids, and grand kids, and maybe even great-grand kids, that they were part of something that one day will only be a couple of sentences in a history book?
And what about Christian Bale (or Bruce Wayne if you prefer)? How must he feel, knowing that he is the role model of literally millions of kids? How cool is it to know that for decades, little boys have zoomed around their living rooms, pretending they were him? He probably won't even be in history books, but he still matters, because everybody knows who he is.
And then I realized something. I mean, maybe I'm naive, only thinking about this now, but here it is anyway: Things matter because we say that they do. Like, for instance, Adele? She's an incredible singer, and because a lot of people in the world have decided that being a good singer matters, she matters. And a long, long time ago, there were little g gods. They weren't exactly upstanding citizens of their communities. They weren't even particularly nice. But the people all decided that they mattered-- they came to a consensus nature being controlled by something mattered, so they decided on Zeus and Poseidon and Hades and Athena and Apollo and Artemis and all those other ones. But when the people moved on, when a different ruler captured them, Zeus and his ilk didn't matter anymore. It was Diana and Mars and Pluto and so on, they mattered when the Romans took over.
Okay, so my point is, things only matter because we say so. And things don't matter because we say so. Which, in a way, makes us powerful, and in another way is very, very scary. I mean, think about it: We decide what matters. We decided that the Olympics matters, because we decided that speaking a language that everyone can understand-- one of teamwork and friendship-- was more important than wars and politics. And we decided that superheroes matter too, because we think that good should always be a little more powerful than evil. At least, I like to think that the general public decided that.
But other things matter to individuals too. I mean, if you just look at sports and Superman, everything is coming up roses. But what about other things?
Like, for instance, the headlines these days! All you hear about is this celebrity breaking up with that one, this politician saying something dumb, and this is today's body count. Why is it that we've decided that tabloids matter? When did we decide that the private relationships and family lives of people in movies was more important than our relationships with our own families? You can argue all you want that this isn't the case, that you don't read those headlines, even that celebrities are famous and should be setting an example-- but that doesn't change the fact that we publish their divorce trials and don't even glance at the stats that say we're going through spouses like Voldemort's going through Horcruxes.
Why do pregnant teenagers and kids on drugs matter more than the kids who don't get into trouble at all? Why does four years of high school drama matter more than the rest of your life? Why does it matter so much to us that the stupid kid at McDonald's got your order wrong again, when there are kids that would be happy with anything if they got to eat that day? Why does it matter so much that that kid over there is gay? Do you know him? Do you know his story? When did all of this crap become so important? When did we decide that any of this matters?
If you think about it, all that stuff seems kind of dumb.
What if enough people decided that it matters that kids go hungry all around the world? What would happen if people chose to say that it matters that some people don't get the chance to choose their political leader? And what about war? What if everyone got tired of politicians telling them what to believe and where to point their guns, and they just... stopped?
You know. Food for thought.
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