But getting emotional about a movie or a book, never! I usually just laugh it off, that's my "macho" way of dealing with it.

In the past nine or ten years, I've only cried twice. And those were both in the last month-and-a-half. And they were about real, personal events, not movies or anything. However, that kind of stuff does get me pretty close to crying sometimes. Offhand, I can think of...

...Titanic, when the boat's sinking, and that priest is standing there reading something, and all the people are scrambling around at his feet...

...the end of the book Where the Red Fern Grows (I think I was in sixth grade at the time), when the dogs die and all that...

...ST2, Spock's funeral. Not Kirk's speech, though. That "human" bit strikes me as incredibly stupid. But the part when the bagpipes are playing and Spock's torpedo is sliding down the track past everyone...

The part of Titanic that gets it for me is when the old chick dies and goes back to the people that died.

And the bagpipes and torpedo scene in STII did the same thing.

And I bet you if I ever heard the song "Old Rugged Cross" again I'd cry, because they played it at my nan's funeral.

The Inner Light (TNG): That was simply the most emotional episode of the whole series. Especially when Picard start playing his flute at the end. It's like that simple tune caries with it the lives and history of those people who died so long ago.

What You Leave Behind (DS9): The last half-hour, when we see the crew about to part ways and remembering their best memories of the last 7 years, was quite moving. But when Kira and Jake look out the window and the camera pulls back with the original DS9 theme playing, well I cried for half an hour. Really!

I don't think any Star Trek series, heck ANY series or movie ever made me like a cast of fictional characters like these. I really like TNG and the end was good quite, going full circle with Q and Picard finally joing the gang for poker. But I knew they would be back in movies and unfortunately, the last 3 movies completely bastardized those characters I had grown to love.

But for DS9, those were friends I would never see again. The chemestry among the crew is by far the strongest in my opinion. There wasn't a character I liked less than another, compared to TOS were some were expandable (Sulu, Chekov, Uhura and even Scotty feel like secondary characters most of the time to me) and TNG were everyone was polite and friendly with one another but no more.

I, too, find Spock's death scene in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan to be very emotionally potent. Watching the exchange between Spock and Kirk in engineering as well as "Amazing Grace" being played is just too much.

The ending scene of The Ghosts of Mississippi. Following the trial and conviction, Mrs. Evers (Whoopi Goldberg) talks to the audience and tells her husband that she's "gone the last step of the way."

Optimus Prime's death scene in Transformers: The Movie hit me hard. I was, like, 7 or 8 when I saw that movie in the theaters. Depressed the hell out of me. Also, there's the scene where Mary Tyler Moore walks out on her family in Ordinary People.

As for episodes, TNG's "The Inner Light," DS9's "The Visitor," and Voyager's "Drone" make me very teary-eyed. South Park's "Chef Goes Nanners" is another one. The last scene where Wendy dumps Cartman and Cartman leaves deflated, that is me more times than I care to recall. Add to that South Park's "Helen Keller! The Musical" because of the scene where Timmy must let Gobbles go. And, while not quite a series, any time the "In Memorium" comes up on the Academy Awards.

There's really only one song that gets to me: Ricky Martin's "She's All I Ever Had." I fell really for a woman a while ago, and this song reminded me so much of how I felt about her. Now, this song reminds of how torturous love can be. I hate this woman with every fiber of being now; I had to find out the hard way what a bitch she is.

No books really get to me now, but when I first read Where the Red Fern Grows the death of the hounds teared me up pretty well. The closest that comes now is the service desk manual I wrote last year for our residence halls information/security desks. Everytime I see it, I'm reminded that I may never get my job back because the one person in the department who hates me is now solely in charge of my employment. Depending how things go, I may be drunk and writing a rant in the flameboard this weekend.

Books and movies DO get me though. Hell, I even cry at those really old touching phone commercials. And when I see a commercial that reminds me of something... like my mother and I went to disneyworld together, we watched the fireworks together and stuff, and the beauty of all of that (I'm easily moved by beauty), made us cry. Every time we see a disneyworld commerical now, we cry. Of course titanic got me, I cried through the last hour and a half. The scene that really got me was the little children, you know.. where the mom is telling them a bedtime story while the ship is sinking... and the rich old people who just lay in bed and hug eachother - they're old, and they know the boats should go to the younger people.

Sacrifice gets me. I cried watching Mighty Joe Young because the big monkey sacrifices himself for the young child. And of course romance. And Disney movies. I don't know why, I think it has something to do with the combination of music and art (music really moves me too)... within the first 5 minutes of The Lion King, I was balling.

And music. There's this song by a group called Poe, called "Fly Away".... the lyrics, and the way she sings it, like she's at the end of the rope.. the song is a catharsis for her... she's already cried everything she can cry.... and she's just like "It makes sense that it should happen this way - that the sky should break, and the earth should shake".

I'd post all the lyrics but you'd get annoyed.