I Can't Think Of An Interesting Title For This Entry...

Lots to talk about today. It remains to be seen if I'll remember it all.

The mock exam went... okay. I think I did well. In fact, I've talked to the second examiner since (the first being my signing tutor) and she said that apart from my nervousness I did fine. Well, this is good. But the nervousness wasn't altogether controllable. At the time I was also dealing with a minor blood sugar low, which meant that my body was doubling up the adrenaline in order to cope, which in turn lead to me looking like a quivering wreck. But I did okay.

I had been planning to hang around there all day, hoping that the other people doing the mock would be of a similar mind and would be wanting to practice for most of the day. This turned out not to be the case. So I just came straight home.

We popped out for lunch then came back, at which point Alison sorted out hotels for the stag do (she's such a love, what would I do without her?), I booked the daytime activity, and then we both did our own thing for a bit. Her own thing was practicing music, my own thing was, well, this certain XBox game I seem to have been playing one fuck of a lot lately. Yes, there were bikinis involved. Go figure.

I dozed off (it would seem there is only so much bikinis a 31 year old man can take), and then we headed to Redditch, where I finally gave in and bought FHM complete with 100 Sexiest Women supplement. I'm supposed to have subscribed for the time being, you see, so I'd been waiting for it to turn up in the post. Since it hasn't, I've bought it.

Then I went to Deaf Club, also in Redditch, where I was looking to get the practice I'd missed out on earlier. It was of course here that I got some feedback on my exam performance. There was only one problem. The dozing I mentioned earlier? It kept trying to reassert itself. In the end I went and sat in the car and dozed off while I waited for Alison to finish her shopping trip.

Then we came back. And ate. And I added five more tracks to the XBox for use on the DOAXBV soundtrack:

• Elvis vs. JXL, A Little Less Conversation
• t.A.T.u., All The Things She Said
• S Club 7, Reach
• Chumbawamba, Tubthumping
• The La's, There She Goes

It's only now while I've been sat here that I've finally gotten round to leafing through the FHM Top 100. There really are some right mingers in there this time around. Actually, that's probably not entirely true, it's just the pictures that are minging. I wasn't particularly surprised to find Halle Berry at number 1 - good to see that J-Lo is finally slipping to the bottom end of the Top 10. Eliza Dushku looked hot, even if her boobs were a bit saggy in the pic. Hell, Christina Aguilera even looked hot in her pic, so there really was a wide variation in photo-shoot quality. Alyson Hannigan looked awful. Kristin Kreuk (of Smallville fame) looked really awful. And, well, going by the picture of her in the supplement, Dannii Minogue won't even be in the 100 next year.

What else did I want to talk about?

Oh yeah. Got some CDs in the post. The Sister-in-Sin (Alison's sister - she's hardly my Sister-in-Law, is she?) works for a record company with an extensive back catalogue and as a result can get a host of different CDs for a fraction of the high-street price. I got Pat Benatar 8-15-80, a live CD which I guess was recorded on August 15th, 23 years ago. I also got PWEI Product, a more or less complete singles collection. Reading the inlay to that I found out an alarming fact. I knew they were from the vaguely Birmingham area, but that's as far as it went. Turns out they are actually from Stourbridge, which is more Anne's neck of the woods than Birmingham. Try calling Anne a Brummie and see what kind of reaction you get. I don't know if I'm more alarmed at finding out PWEI are from round that way, or at realising that I didn't know that in the first place.

And I was gonna write a bit about comics. Well, one comic in particular, and one of its storylines. Green Lantern is the comic in question. For those that don't know, Kyle Rayner is the Green Lantern and has been for almost 10 years now. Kyle is also a comic-strip artist. His PA is a young guy named Terry, who is gay. This is where it gets important. Kyle was the first person Terry outed himself to, when Terry admitted to having a crush on Kyle. This prompted a whole host of letters to the comic, both in support of and condemning the storyline. The condemnation wasn't so much from the outright violently homophobic angle, more from the 'Yes we all know about gay issues why do we have to have another comic book doing this' underhand pretending-not-to-be-homophobic angle.

Terry's storyline then faded into the background for a while, as Kyle went through a series of 'hella-big' issues and transformations, the most significant of which was achieving omnipotence and then giving it back. Well, most of it. We knew in the background that Terry had gotten a boyfriend. Then about nine months ago, they did a story where Terry suddenly came back to the forefront. He was on a date with David, his boyfriend. And they picked the wrong place and the wrong time to express their relationship in public. Terry was beaten to within an inch of his life by a group of thugs.

As a result, Kyle lost faith in the ability of humans to be compassionate, and left Earth. Terry was in hospital until the most recent issue, which I read this morning. In said issue, Terry is in the process of moving in with David. He is also trying to dodge the media trying to buy his story. During the scenes that involved him, his father phoned and left an ansaphone message. Dad, being a good ol' wholesome American, was complaining about being hounded by the media, and saying that he hoped Terry wasn't going to talk to the media any because hadn't 'the good family name' been dragged through the muck enough by him already.

And that sort of thing apparently still very much rings true today. Which is the essence of the answer to the question posed by the pretending-not-to-be-homophobes in the letters a year or so before. The issues are still there, and aren't about to go away, because nothing's changed. Reading the new issue today really hit this home. I take these issues to heart a lot, it is true. I doubt it's escaped anyone's attention that a number of my friends, including my best mate, are gay. A couple of weeks ago, I found out that one of the consequences of this is that when I hear about gay people being on the receiving end of violence or abuse, I can't help but picture my friends being on the receiving end. This is something that I find very upsetting. And I know that I'm preaching to the converted here, pretty much, but this needed an outlet. And for all the people who see things like this diary entry, or Green Lantern issues, or Buffy episodes where Willow takes centre stage, and think 'Oh, Gay Issues, how droll, how 90s', take a look around. Has anything changed? Has the world suddenly become a warm and fuzzy bigotry free place? No. Are the issues still issues? Yes.

Sorry, that took rather long to explain/vent than I expected. And now I've run out of time and can't tell you about the little boy in Sainsbury's who pinched a woman's bum, or how much effort I put into progressing Ayane's and Christie's relationship in DOAXBV, or any other of a number of things.

It's late, and boy do I need my beauty sleep. Goodnight.