okay chinese dinner followed by royal tenenbaums. i enjoyed the movie while in the theater but on the ride home my family debated, derided, and eventually declared it dumb. i'm so used to seeing things by myself at this point and forming opinions untouched by theirs -- now i'm not sure what i think. i can't tell if i've been swayed. in any event i can honestly say, i enjoyed it at the time.
got home, talked briefly to lana, lonely all by herself in rockvile, and ended up getting in an extensive conversation first with my mother and then with both parents about college and sexuality. my father surprised me by taking a less accepting viewpoint than i always assumed he would take. surprisingly also my mother took up my side. interesting. frustrating at the time, actually, but interesting. are parents obligated to accept their children's decisions by a certain age? what difference is there between accepting and supporting? what's a parent's role by the time a kid gets to college: to offer guidance and advice because kids aren't able to make intelligent, informed, mature choices until 32? or to generally acclimate themselves to the idea that kids are independent people who are going to make choices now that are, in their minds, not only intelligent, informed, and mature, but the only course of action?
apparently parents view this differently than their college-age children. who knew?

the conversation made me realize a number of things. first off, i'm lucky. i'm in a conventional, superficially-acceptable relationship (i.e.: w/ a jewish male, and one who isn't a rock band drummer at that.) second, many attitudes that swatties are swift to write off as bigoted exist in smart, non-republican parents and probably in the vast majority of the world. it's humbling.

tired. sleep. good luck to those of you who need it and a lot of admiration for those of you who have to face these kinds of things much more extensively and consistently than i do.