Privacy

I wrote a fan letter last night. I honestly cannot remember the last time I wrote a letter, let along a fan letter. By hand. With a pen. On paper. *gaspshock*

While I was putting the stationary away I started wavering on whether to actually send the letter or not and it got me pondering the issue of privacy. More specifically privacy for famous people.

Because it seems to be that lives of famous people cease to be their own once they become famous. Every detail of their lives are put under a microscope and commented and critisised. Does that seem right to you? I would be a bit creeped out if complete strangers came up to me on the street, called me by my first name as if we were lifelong friends, and started asking me personal questions. Maybe it is just me?

It just seems backward somehow, that people show their appreciation for their favourite actor/musician/artist/whatever by prying into their personal life. How does that show respect for the person? Would it not be more appropriate to be more mindful of their privacy, since they voluntarily put themselves on display for our entertainment? Again, maybe that is just me.

I did decide to send the letter after all, because I figure a letter gives the recipient the option to either respond or not. Even reading the letter at all is optional, so it takes all pressure out of the situation. If I am lucky, maybe I will get a reply, but if not I will still have conveyed my admiration for their unique skill at entertaining their audience.

Emotional

In my quest to see all the movies Nathan Fillion has done I watched "Trucker" tonight and it hit me pretty hard. I realised that I very much wish we had had a choice, like Diane and Peter had at the end.

I try to cope, take one day, even one hour, at a time, but it requires lots of distractions to keep my mind off the thoughts I must not think. Nights are the hardest, when I try to sleep and those thoughts come rushing in to fill the silence. It is a fine balancing act then, to occupy the mind with frivolous thoughts, daydreams and such, just enough to keep the bad thoughts out but not enough to keep me awake. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't.

I thought I did the right thing, but now I am not so sure. Yet for all my doubts I am stuck in the situation. As Captain Mal would say "it is what it is" and nothing I do will change it now. Luckily the Interwebs has no shortage of distractions to keep me occupied.

Firefly Serenity

I am a huge fan of Firefly and Serenity. I just want to put that out there first thing. Because I think the rest of this post will disagree with most other fans out there.

In many many interviews with the Firefly cast the same question is asked: will there be more episodes/more movies? While I think the series and the movie both were excellent, I personally do not think there should be more. Not now. It has been 10 years and while the crew of Serenity have stayed the same in our hearts, the actors that played them have not.

At this point, my personal opinion is that we should just enjoy what we got and not push for more. If ever there is a continuation of the series, I think it should be in animated form, so that our heroes can continue to be heroes in our minds, unaffected by the time that has passed in the real world. But really I think we should just be happy with what we already got.

Stay Shiny!

A Rediscovered Interest

Rewind a little more than 11 years, to December 2002. I was about six months pregnant with my son and about to begin the most difficult time of my life. I was not aware of that at the time though, as I sat down to watch the first episode of the new TV series "Firefly".

I remember thinking it was an excellent show, I liked everything about it. Unfortunately, it was the only episode I got to see, for reasons I would rather not go into. With too much other stuff going on in my life, that one bright spot just before the darkness fell faded to the back of my mind and was all but forgotten.

Fast forward to about a month ago. I watch TV very rarely. Anything I want to see is available online or on DVD so I just do not see the point. This evening I suddenly felt an inexplicable urge to turn the lightbox on for a while and is it happens I came into the middle of an episode of "Castle".

I liked it a lot. The dynamic relationships of the characters, the interesting cases, the mystery, the twist. The whole time I was watching though I kept thinking "why does that guy look so familiar?". After the episode I did a websearch for the show, found out the actor's name and looked up what else he had appeared in that I might recognise him from. A name on the wikipedia page stood out: "Firefly".

Suddenly the light from that lonely bright spot that had been pushed to the back of my mind for so long burst free. I remembered watching the pilot and how I had really enjoyed it, and after some searching I found a website where I could watch the whole series online. I was up all night watching all 14 episodes back to back and when the last episode ended, I looked up the movie "Serenity" and watched that to.

I spent the next week looking up information online about the series, the movie, the actors and other things they had done. Since it all got started with my watching "Castle" I looked up everything I could find about that show to.

This is how I became a "Fillionite". I discovered that Nathan Fillion is not only an extraordinary actor, but also seems to be a genuinely good person. I dug up everything I could find online, old interviews, videos from convention appearances, anything really. The more I found out about him, the more creeped out I got though, because he seemed to be so much like myself.

Then I stumbled on some videos that featured his charity work, and discovered that he apparently cares about the same things I do: children's right to education and health care.

Despite my son having been born with a cleft palate, thus putting us into contact with medical professionals throughout his early childhood, I had never heard of "Operation Smile" until I saw the videos from Nerd HQ featuring Nathan Fillion. Right away I felt that this was a charity I could get behind and wondered why I had never heard of it before. A quick websearch showed that the charity has a Swedish branch, but I could find no mention of how to contribute other than an account number for sending donations.

I have found that this is typical for charities in Sweden. They rely entirely too much on word of mouth to spread their messages, then give you an account number or a deposit slip, and hope you will use it. I do not think the number of people who actually use that number or slip is as large as it should be.

I may not have an abundant income, but there are billions of people in the world that have less than I do and I always want to help when and where I can. So, today I sent in an application to Operation Smile Sweden to do whatever volunteer work I am qualified for. Because every child deserves a smile.