Is your TiMER ticking?

I love Netflix‘s “Watch Instantly” feature. At the touch of a few buttons, any number of films and television shows can zoom across the Interwebs, straight to my television. So on a whim, I can take a chance on a completely new film I’d somehow missed.

I just finished watching TiMER, an indie rom-com from earlier this year that examines a question I’ve often entertained, as a 31-year-old single woman. What if you had a countdown telling you exactly when you’d meet your soulmate?

The ever-delightful-but-would-someone-please-feed-her-a-dozen-burgers-so-I-can-no-longer-count-her-ribs Emma Caulfield stars as Oona, an orthodontist approaching 30 whose TiMER is blank, meaning her One hasn’t had his TiMER implanted yet. So she takes boyfriend after boyfriend into an eHarmony-dialed-to-11 shop in the hopes that his brand-new TiMER will chime with hers, indicating that they’re meant to spend the rest of their lives together. Of course, boyfriend after boyfriend’s new TiMERs end up showing countdowns, meaning their One is still out there and leaving Oona with the question whether to keep enjoying what they have until he meets Her, or walk away from him. Invariably, she walks.  (I’m amused that Emma is Buffy the Vampire Slayer alumna Anya, the demon you could call upon to punish the partner who just broke your heart.)

A closing ramble on Prop 8

*checks clock* Well, it’s after midnight here in Minnesota, but not so in California, so I can still say:

Today (Wednesday, 16 June 2010) saw the closing arguments in the federal court challenge of Prop 8, the California proposition that sought to rewrite the state Constitution to enshrine for good and all that the only people worthy of full rights as citizens of the state are heterosexuals. Sorry, was that my outside voice?

So…I have some thoughts.

Off the Chart

Earlier today, @myladydisdain tweeted a link to this great article on the attitudes and discrimination faced by bisexuals, even within the LGBTQ community (and I sincerely hope that Ms Schumacher will pardon my hijacking her phrase for the title of this entry):

Many people, straight or gay, understand gender preference with a Kinsey Scale mentality: a straight man likes women, a gay man likes men, and a bisexual man likes both.  But bisexuality isn’t a gender preference for both genders; it’s a lack of gender preference for either.  For most bisexuals, the gender of the person they find attractive is substantially less important than who that person is.  We’re not in the middle of the Kinsey scale; we’re off the chart altogether.