Only happy endings, that's the recipe

Depending on whether you're an "old-school" reader of Wave Hello Again you may or may not know about my single radio-contest-winning experience, wherein I won free movie tickets for the year of 2005 by predicting 2004 Oscar winners correctly. It's something I like to brag about from time to time, as well as use as the reason that since 2005, my husband and I just have not seen that many movies: we suffered from movie burnout. Still kind of do, really. Who wouldn't after the long-lasting ill effects of Monster-in-Law? All we could talk about during movies like that was the fact that everyone around us had actually paid to be there. Not to mention the amount they had spent on crap movie food. (We knew it was awful because we also got free concessions.)

This year, I must admit I had hardly seen any of the nominees. I did see Juno (nom. Best Picture, Best Director, Best Original Screenplay, Best Actress), The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (nom. Best Director, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Editing), August Rush (nom. Best Original Song), Enchanted (3x! nom. Best Original Song), and The Bourne Ultimatum (nom. Best Editing, Best Sound Editing). Nothing for Waitress, surprisingly enough; seemed to me like perfect Oscar fodder.

Random thought, I wonder if Ellen Page put "Disappointment" by the Cranberries on repeat and cried in her room after the Oscars. It's what I did after I lost the election for student council secretary in seventh grade.

I freely admit that I didn't really like any of these except for Diving Bell (and, okay, I did like "The Happy Working Song" in Enchanted). In fact I was going to make a joke about how I didn't see many Oscar-type movies this year "except maybe August Rush," then lo and behold it got something other than my jeers. Not that you should take my "film" advice that seriously--Joe vs. the Volcano, for example, is one of my favorite movies, and I may have been heard to call Scooby-Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed "one of the best of 2004."

I was thinking that 2007 was an "eh" year for movies (and I didn't even see Stomp the Yard) but upon reflection, it wasn't so bad. Actually there are lots of movies I didn't see (many of them Oscar winners) that got huge raves. My inability to handle much gore, sex, or swearing kind of makes me shy away from lots of them.

So, moving on. 2008! Indiana Jones! The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull! (from the Post: "The project has been talked about for years, but [George] Lucas's insistence on building the script around the titular objects--models of human skulls cut from quartz--kept his teammates at bay. Guess he wore 'em down, because here we are, in 1957, the bad guys are the Cold War Russkies, and the hero is a reality-based 64 years old. Not exactly what you'd call catering to the youth market. But they'll show up anyway on May 22.")

Oh, and Be Kind Rewind, anyone? I was in disbelief when I first heard the premise (and the fact that Mos Def is second-billed) but now I am looking forward to seeing it. Maybe I will even pay to watch it in a theater.

Here are a few lists if you are interested in the 2008 movie season.

55 Must-See Movies of 2008
Why 2008 Will Be an Awesome Year for Movies
10 Most-Anticipated Movies of 2008

I guess I'm not as movie-jaded as I thought. I am already mentally booking babysitters for some of these release dates.

"Do I dare?" and, "Do I dare?"

I have a confession to make: well, maybe less a confession and more a statement, depends who's reading. I considered myself pro-choice until I had a baby.

I don't know what changed, really. My politics (moderate to liberal, depending on the issue) didn't especially. Although I believe in the separation of church and state, I also believe that as citizens, our religious beliefs or lack thereof have a fundamental influence on our personal and societal values, and these values have a lot to do with the Constitution, particularly with amending it. Being religious, I have always believed that "the worth of souls is great in the sight of God" (D&C 18:10) while I have also believed that men and women "are free to choose" and accept the consequences of all of their choices (2 Nephi 2:27). Who am I as a perfect stranger to make the choice for another woman just because I vote and pay taxes? Then again, by not speaking out against abortion, am I indirectly supporting it as a practice?

Even conception, pregnancy, and birth did not give me any kind of epiphany. It took actually a few months of taking care of my baby before I started thinking more seriously about what "pro-choice" and "pro-life" really mean and which flag, if either, I wanted to wave over my head. What kind of choices are we talking about? Lots of choices are involved in pregnancy and birth, the very first (and arguably most important) of which is the choice to have sex. Then again, if I decide to be "pro-choice," it doesn't make me "pro-abortion." It also doesn't make me "anti-life," just as "pro-life" doesn't especially make me "anti-choice." But isn't that splitting hairs? Do I need to take a moral stance, as a religious woman, a mother, and a feminist about the sanctity of life versus the sanctity of human rights? Am I weak if I don't? I believe in both, so how can they be reconciled? How did raising a baby raise all these doubts and questions too?

Let's make this a list of questions.

• What does (or should) experiencing pregnancy or motherhood have to do with whether a woman is pro-choice or pro-life?
• Does someone who has not experienced pregnancy or motherhood have the right to insist on legality or illegality of abortion for others? What if they most likely will either experience motherhood or choose to abstain from it?
• What about prospective adoptive parents?
  
• What about men, who never will have that opportunity?
• Does fatherhood count?
• Does experience with, love for, or belief in the importance of families (to society and fundamentally) count?
• How are "pro-choice" and "pro-life" diametrically opposed? How are they similar?
• Can you be pro-choice and pro-life at the same time?
• As a political stance, is either choosing choice over life or remaining neutral tantamount to supporting abortion as a practice?
  
• When does life begin: when the baby breathes on his own? When you can feel the baby move inside you? When you can hear his heartbeat through a stethoscope? When you can see his heartbeat on an ultrasound? When sperm and egg join together? When you decide you want a baby? When, regardless of desire for a baby, a woman is about to ovulate and, being at her most fertile, is physically helped along in the choice to have sex (still, obviously, very much her very own choice)?
• Might education on fertility, menstrual cycles, abstinence, birth control, adoption help prevent abortion, whether indirectly by preventing unwanted pregnancies or directly by preventing abortions? How, specifically? What about availability of hormonal contraceptives? What about access to prenatal care and education for women and girls facing 9 months of an abusive or otherwise unsupportive environment?
  
• Might tighter restrictions on abortion help prevent abortion? What about illegality of abortion?
• What effect do either of these approaches have on constitutional rights?
• How important is the abortion issue to you as a voter, compared to other issues such as the economy, the war, immigration?

As a final note, I don't think many people will read this but if you do, please, refrain from name-calling or finger-pointing (or at least be subtle about it) and try to think about your own answers to the questions, regardless of your overall stance, if you decide to comment! Thank you! I am very interested in hearing from both sides as well as from fence-sitters.

Strike

My favorite chant heard on writers' strike picket lines:

"What do we want?" "Residuals!" "When do we want them?" "Later!"

I have to admit I am sad to see this strike end. This has been a delightful few months for me, free from the temptation of media gluttony, wherein I have turned on the TV maybe two or three times total. I am not trying to be self-righteous--it's just that we only have 3 channels anyway and even when TV writers are working there is very little to watch that leaves me feeling like a more interesting person. Now I have to work a little harder to avoid melting my brain cells.