by Laurelin

He looked just like he did on TV. Face, smooth and smiling, muscles pressing up against his huge T-shirt and his hat pulled down just enough so that I could still see his eyes. I had started to get up to refill my wine glass, but when I saw him I sunk back down, the air rushing from my lungs as though someone had just squeezed the life out of me. I could feel a flush traveling up my body and suddenly my face was burning, and I turned away so he wouldn’t see me.

I rarely meet celebrities. Like every other girl in the world I have dreamt what it would have been like to meet Leonardo DiCaprio, staying calm and collected so that he would shake my hand and look me in the eye. You imagine that if they could just meet you, you would be best friends, they might even fall in love with you, and everything would be right in the world. But that’s just in dreams. You will never meet Brad Pitt or Ben Affleck, and they will most certainly not fall in love with you. You are just you after all, a regular girl, who dates regular guys. You are common, and they are special.

He took his time walking around the room, signing autographs and taking pictures with everyone from old ladies to screaming teens to little kids. Still, I sat. I wonder what I’ll say when it’s my turn, would he remember me from a brief Twitter message I sent that he replied to? Will he think I’m crazy if I bring it up? He moves closer and as he approached I could finally stand and I shook my head, clearing the clouds. He is just a man after all.

I reached out my hand to find his and from somewhere in me comes a voice, and I said, “Hi, I’m Laurelin.” He smiled and inside I melted, but outside I must have seemed okay because he started asking me questions, then we laughed and he said that he did remember me from a year ago on Twitter. I made a snarky remark about his clothing and he thought I was funny. I sat back down in my seat and I watched him continue to sign autographs. I clutched the stem of my wine glass and I looked at our photo and I smiled. I’m taller than him.

When I looked up he was sitting next to me.

“Do you have a ticket for tonight?” he asked.

“Yes,” I stammered, fumbling around for it. He must want to sign it; he signed everyone else’s. I found it and he took it, smoothly scribbling something on the back and pressing it into my palm. I looked down and I see a phone number. My blood ran cold and hot at the same time, and I thought, “Say something clever…”

“Can I drunk dial you later?” I asked, smirking.

“Absolutely,” he said, and I die. The girls around me had their jaws on the floor, and as he left he smiled at me and waved. We started texting almost immediately, stopping only because the arena was growing dark and it was time for him to come out.

I think of how all summer I have had no one, nothing but an empty bed and a cat, and now, with the coming fall, the promise of something new. All of a sudden, out of the blue, the promise of something totally just… fun. I slid my phone into my pocket and headed to my seat to watch him. The place is packed, everyone screaming his name, and my phone buzzed one last time.

“Nice to meet you,” he said. “I would love to see you again.”

I felt sick. I went home that night alone, and I crawled in bed with someone else.

“How was tonight?” my real life non-celebrity boy asks. I buried my face in his neck and hugged as tight as I could.

“It was fine,” I said, “really fun.”

We fell asleep, and I knew I was right where I belonged.

[..]

by ChrisSick

In which we provide a brief update on the ongoing self-destruction of one Willard Mitt Romney.

Let me take you a bit behind the curtain, dear reader. We have a bit of a turnaround time here at the ol’ SG Blog, so on Sunday night I wrote:

“….as the Obama convention bounce has transitioned, gradually, to the Obama lead, it becomes more and more clear that Mitt Romney, as Joan Walsh said, will never, ever be your President. As this reality sinks in at the headquarters of Team Mittens, we will see ever more bizarre, surprising, and desperate moves from the campaign.”

Writing Sunday for publication Tuesday means that I wrote that, went to bed and woke up Monday to read:

“It is a brave new day for Mitt Romney. His campaign is laying out a bold new strategy, one in which it will make a dramatic new turn toward…something!

The something will not actually be new, but it will feel new to lots of people, Romney campaign adviser Ed Gillespie told reporters Monday morning. But that’s the problem with the current, much-hyped Romney campaign strategy reboot: It’s not a new strategy at all.

‘This is reinforcing,’ Gillespie said on the Monday conference call, adding, ‘We’re not rolling out new policies so much as making people understand when we say things, here’s how we’re going to get them done. Here are the specifics. We think there’s a demand out there for that.’”

— Molly Ball, The Atlantic, “Romney’s ‘New’ Campaign Strategy isn’t Actually New,” September 17, 2012

So the Romney campaign has a great new strategy, they’re finally going to tell us how they plan to slash taxes for the wealthy, increase military spending, and somehow pay down the debt despite reduced revenues and increased spending. I don’t know about you, but I’m excited to hear this. Mostly because whenever Ed Gillespie speaks, my Intrade shares for President Obama’s win become that much more valuable.

It’s an exciting turn for the Romney campaign, and — to the rest of us — a patently obvious attempt to change the conversation from, among other failures, a long Politico article that describes the Romney Campaign as, more or less, a complete fucking shambles:

“As mishaps have piled up, [top Romney advisor Stuart] Stevens has taken the brunt of the blame for an unwieldy campaign structure that, as the joke goes among frustrated Republicans, badly needs a consultant from Bain & Co. to straighten it out.”

These sort of articles — rampant with finger-pointing, blame-gaming, and the like — are, naturally, pretty common affairs. Typically, though, they wait until after the goddamn election is over before they start the mad scramble to blame one another for their collective failure to get their candidate elected.

I knew, when I wrote Sunday that we were seeing the death throes of the Romney campaign, and that things were going to start getting weird. By which, I mean, more weird than “Lemon. Wet. Good.”

But, the icing on top of the shit-cake of sadness for the Romney campaign began to break yesterday, when video surfaced via Mother Jones of Romney speaking at a private fundraiser earlier this year.

“There are 47 percent of the people who will vote for the president no matter what. All right, there are 47 percent who are with him, who are dependent upon government, who believe that they are victims, who believe the government has a responsibility to care for them, who believe that they are entitled to health care, to food, to housing, to you-name-it. That that’s an entitlement. And the government should give it to them. And they will vote for this president no matter what…These are people who pay no income tax.”

This is Mitt Romney telling you how he really feels and you can add this to what is now a long and growing list of The Moment(s) Mitt Romney Lost the Election. November is coming like a bad hangover, there’s 48 days until election day as of this writing, and in 49 days we’ll be severely spoilt for choice about when, exactly, Mitt Romney Lost the Election.

But this week will surely be in the top contenders, and in closing, I’ll let a much more talented writer than myself, but just as much at a loss for words as I am, sum it up:

“I don’t really know what to say about a man who believes that one in two Americans believe that ‘the government has a responsibility to care for them.’ Romney is right. Obama does start off with a big lead, but that is because he would never enter the race conceding that fully half the country was beyond his reach. A politician conceding that sort of field position is an embarrassment to himself, and his political party.”

— Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Atlantic, “The Contemptuous Elitism of Mitt Romney”, September 18, 2012

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by Lee Camp

We’re in the midst of an all-out information battle royale. Propaganda and mistruths are thrown around like hamburger helper at a food fight or lube at an orgy. The only way to fight the steady stream of bullshit and semi-automatic fluff pieces is to know the truth, to have the facts, to grasp the reality. But where do you go to do that?

[..]

A.J. Focht

Marvel’s next new movie project will be the Guardians of the Galaxy. There have been a lot of rumors and worries in the fan community when it comes to Marvel’s space superheroes. It’s now official that James Gunn is rewriting the script as well as directing. If that doesn’t put your mind at ease, know that Joss Whedon has full faith in Gunn being the man for the project. As for the many rumors, there is one that we can put to rest. Nathan Fillion has confirmed he is likely to be too busy with his day job (Castle) to star in the film.

Has Marvel decided to retcon the death of Agent Coulson? In the Marvel Avengers Assemble UK release, the film has been edited to exclude the blade sticking out of Coulson’s chest. This could be a censorship issue, or it could be Marvel making the change in order to keep Coulson in continuity. The Avengers releases on DVD and Blu-ray in the US on September 25 and then we’ll know if the US version was edited as well.

Captain America is now President! Oh wait that was a SPOILER for this week’s issue of Ultimate Captain America. Despite this being a major event change in Marvel’s Ultimate Universe, they felt the need to spoil it for everyone a day early. The news of the story broke a full 24-hours before the issue hit shelves and it came straight from Marvel.

Arrow, the new CW show about Green Arrow starts on October 10. There have been many rumors of what characters would appear in the show, and now eleven have been confirmed. You can expect all of the following lineup: Black Canary, Huntress, China White, Constantine Drakon, Deadshot, Deathstroke, Felicity Smoak, Merlyn, Speedy, and Walter Steele. There are still some rumored characters not confirmed, and no one knows much about John Barrowman’s character, other than he’s being called the ‘well-dressed man.’ There are also reports the Royal Flush Gang will be in the show and Kyle Schmid will play Ace.

The upcoming Star Trek film has an official name: Star Trek: Into Darkness. The J.J. Abrams sequel has finished initial shooting and will include most of the original cast, including Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and Zoe Saldana. Star Trek: Into Darkness is scheduled to release in theaters on May 17, 2013.

Speaking of Star Trek, Michael Dorn, who played Worf on Next Generation, has been cast in the Castlevania movie. Dorn will be playing a werewolf in the Konami game inspired film, for which there is no current release date set.

One last bit of Star Trek related news. NASA is working on a warp drive. That’s right, a real life warp drive. Keeping the science simple, NASA wonders if we can indeed warp space and time to harness the power of warp bubbles. Essentially, the ship compresses the space ahead of it while expanding the space behind it to move forward at speeds of 10c (10x the speed of light). We are probably a long ways off from this technology, but we now know NASA is actually researching it.

This weekend at the comic store I work at, All C’s Collectibles in Aurora, Colorado, J. Scott Campbell will be doing a signing with all proceeds going to Aurora Rise. Campbell is best known for co-creating and writing Danger Girl, but he has done cover art for several comics including The Amazing Spider-Man and Witchblade. SuicideGirls was in attendance a few weeks ago when Aurora Rise had their first benefit event and silent auction, which raised $20,000 that went directly to the victims of the shootings. Campbell was unable to make the first event, but wanted to come out and support the victims of the shootings on his own time. While the second event will be smaller, it will include a silent auction with specialty items from Todd MacFarlane and much more. The signing takes place this Saturday, September 22, between noon and 3 PM MST. For more details visit the Facebook event page.

Rogue Suicide in Wild Things

• INTO: I love pretty much anything nerdy! Video games, movies, dancing, hanging out with friends and my family, reading and such. I know way exciting!
• NOT INTO: Douche bags they are bad for your pussy.
• MAKES ME HAPPY: My friends, family, son, Pokémon, Harry Potter, and such!!! Peter Griffen laughing like this “heh heh heh heh.”
• MAKES ME SAD: Sad movies.
• HOBBIES: Books, video games, shopping, collecting Pokémon, friends!!!
• 5 THINGS I CAN’T LIVE WITHOUT: Family, friends, phone, my son, purse.
• VICES: Closed minded people, being interrupted, liars.
• I SPEND MOST OF MY FREE TIME: With friends or family! Or my 360.

Get to know Rogue better over at SuicideGirls.com!