This is my second post for the day. Scroll down to read about some other stuff.

When I was very young—inspired by the cartoon in which the Brady Kids lived in a treehouse with a magical bird and had formed their own pop band—I organized my Star Wars action figures into their own pop band (sans the magical bird).

There were actually two rival pop bands: the Rebels had one and the Empire had one. The Rebels dedicated all of their songs to Yoda (I wrote these, wickedly stealing ideas from my church’s folk group); the Empire’s songs were relatively generic, as neither Darth Vader nor, later, Emperor Palpatine seemed as if they would appreciate a rousing anthem to their evil. At a time when both my pacifism and my homosexuality were budding, I suppose I felt that musical competitions were as valid an antagonistic medium as blowing each other into smithereens.

If my parents ever wondered what in the world I was doing shut up in my room all that time, I'm sad to say that this is it.