(no subject)
* Remember how after the big earthquake, the UN AID workers helpfully started a cholera epidemic in Haiti by not taking even the most basic precautions with their waste, and how devastating that was for the people of Haiti? Thanks to the hurricane and flooding, it's back.
* "Facts of Life and Death:" http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/10/facts-of-life-and-death.html
* I want Michelle Obama to be my president. This speech is really important. "Michelle Obama's call to conscience:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/michelle-obamas-call-conscience#break
* "Limbaugh: The left is obsessed with consent:"
* Re: Women coming forward to talk about Donald Trump sexually Assaulting them. I believe the women.
* Republican woman discovers water is wet: http://gwydionmisha.tumblr.com/post/151743509457/satyrday-jennytrout-nerdyblackfangirl
* Trump and his surrogates continue to insist that Trump was lying when he bragged about sexual assaulting women and ogling pageant contestants while they were changing despite a growing body of women, including Miss Teen USA contestants, corroborating his claims that he did committed these crimes.
* I keep thinking of my Mother as this Trump thing continues. Every year, my parents threw a big dinner party for their friends as a joint birthday part. It was a big deal and they saved for months for it and we all spent weeks cleaning and my parents worked in the kitchen for days. There were always ten guests, plus my parents to make twelve which was literally as much space as we had to set up tables for a sit down dinner. There were a variety of other work and friends parties my parents went as well, and where the host had kids our age, sometimes we'd go with, make a polite appearance early in the evening, and then retire to hang out with the kids in another part of the house or apartment.
As I got older, I started to get the sense no one liked this one guy. At some point I overheard some comments during the mingling andcocktails part. Eventually I wandered through the living room as my parents debated the guest list. They really wanted to invite these two people, but they couldn't do it without bumping "K," which they couldn't do and they didn't want to ditch anyone they actually liked from the regulars, so they were trying to figure out who they could tactfully univite or how they might squeeze in two more chairs and how that might effect the seating order at table. So I asked questions, and as I was old enough my Mother took me aside and explained.
See, K was a groper and they couldn't be rude to him or leave him out because he was my dad's boss. The problem was, he'd grab any women that sat too close to him, which meant the had to always sit him between my mother and father to protect the guests from his hands. She had to put up with him grabbing at her the second half of dinner as he couldn't quit. Nobody liked him because everyone but his wife knew what he was and thought he was gross. (People really rallied round her when she divorced K eventually, but that was after I left home). I was furious. I was furious that my mother had to put up with this violation, this humiliation because of the power dynamic. Because my parents were barely making it with three jobs between them. Because we needed health insurance. K was an asshole for a variety of reasons that had nothing to do with his nigh constant sexual assault of the women around him, some of which I'd started to pick up on, and others of which I would "discover" as I got older, but this was the moment I learned to hate and loathe him. That year I was old enough they let me help serve the courses, and I saw him do it. It took everything I had not to smack him hard over the head with a serving tray. I saw him ogle the women at table and grope my mother while she was forced to pretend it was a joke as she removed his slimy hands.
I think, also, particularly with the underage pageant contestants, of a guy I knew ages ago who could not come to terms with his sexuality because of all the men at work always groping him from the age of fifteen, and the way that damaged him in such a deep and lasting way.
Every time I see Donald Trump's smug sphincter of a face now, every time I hear him brag about his sexual assault of women, every time I hear him deny it, I think I've my father's shitty slimeball of a boss and all those angry women at all those work parties and my Mother removing his hands over and over, and I hate and loathe Donald Trump on a level I was not sure was possible for someone I'd never met in person. As a teen and an adult, I've hit people for grabbing me like that. I broke two friendships for it. I've left jobs over it. I've kicked a guy out of my gaming group for creeping on female players. I supported breaking up a whole friend group over a guy harassing his ex boyfriend at work. I've pushed men out of social circles for it. I started physically dodging neighborhood pedophiles at seven and I got groped by a drunken adult man for the first time at fourteen. This sort of thing makes me incandescently angry. This sort of think needs to fucking stop and it's adult men who really need to be out there stopping it. They need to police themselves and each other. It's not just a straight man problem; it is a male privilege problem.
When I see all those people trying to justify it I am often robbed of words. Politicians who are meant to be protecting all of their constituents insist that grabbing people's genitals against their will is somehow not sexual assault. People insisting that publicizing this sort of sexual assault, often in Trump's case in the work place, is somehow trivializing make me... I don't have words really.
And yes, I've been angry all along about the scary fucking racism and the plans to throw out the constitution so he can do terrible things to everyone in this country who isn't white, and yes, I've been angry all along about the disgusting misogyny. I haven't forgotten the muslim ban or the slurs or the antisemmetic retweets of white supremacists or the demand we universalize and dramatically increase stop and frisk or the promises to jail journalists and political opponents or his threat to bomb Europe or the Putin's puppet stuff or the time he called for Russian terrorist attacks on the DNC or a million fucking awful things that poor out of his mouth and continue to pour out of his mouth. I've been saying all along that all of this, everything about him is unacceptable.
It's just that I can't stop thinking of my mother and all of her friends this week, and her being ashes on the mantle, I needed to say something, because this shit needs to stop.
And before you say I'm a hypocrite, I wanted that disgusting filth Packwood out even though it was bad for us politically. I wanted him to pay for all of it and most especially for that baby sitter he groped. Statute of limitations was out on that one, unfortunately, because he deserved jail time for that for sure. I also voted for Tsongas against Bill Clinton in that primary and I've always loathed him and still do. I believe the women. I always believe the women because I've seen so much of it in 46 years of life.
* Now Trump is claiming an international cabal of bankers is controlling our country and if we don't rise up against Hillary Clinton she will come and destroy our national and our families in a very... Nuremburgy sounding speech. The chanting crowds terrify me.
* "What we can still learn from sexual harassment:" http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/10/10/what-can-still-learn-from-sexual-harassment/jCF5rxYbFMgE3bOKR984pI/story.html
* "Are you certain, Time Prophet?:" http://cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com/507275.html
* Fun fact: My parents met in and Anglo Saxon language class. They were language nerds. "20 Brilliant Anglo-Saxon Words:" http://mentalfloss.com/article/66533/20-brilliant-anglo-saxon-words
* "Not Just Clowning Around:"
* "Evangelicals Stick with Donald Trump:"
* "Outrage Court: Trigger Warnings:"
* I would like to thank whichever of you sent Birthday money.
* I did finally get to watch Versailles, though it took a lot longer than I expected. I had heard the critical rumblings. My hope was that as for me the major players are real people for me, ones I read about and studied and have a genuine feel for. On paper I should adore this. It's relevant to a whole collection of my interests, and on top of that, I'm a year and a half in on an early modern kick and even read the horribly homophobic and disgustingly Freudian biography of Philippe a month or so ago that happened to be the only one we could find in English. (It was very well researched, but the analysis was embarrassingly bad, so bad it would make a great drinking game. Take a drink for each homophobic inference or Freudian reference. Take two drinks every time he makes a completely unsupported inference about motive based on Freudian theory alone. Take a shot for every time he insists that homosexuality is the mother's fault/self harm/not innate. Take two shots if he's claiming that the bisexuals are switching orientation every time they change partners. Take three shots if he's claiming that sex with the chevalier de Lorraine is humiliating, degrading, self punishment, etc., something I consider a very bold statement for a man who's never ucked him and who knows full well that he was so good in bed Louis considered recalling him a gift to his brother. *ahem*) Louis XIV is out of my period, sure, but I've been to Versailles, the Louvre, and Frontenbleu, read general histories of the period, and biographies of Louis, Montepason, et al.. I'm not an expert, but I'm certainly a reasonably well educated amateur. So my hope was, knowing the players, knowing the period, I should be fine where a general audience might struggle.
I was wrong. I had to watch the first episode twice, because I had trouble figuring out who was meant to be whom. It was easier with the men as the characters said their names often enough I could pick them up from context, but the women.... I assume the young lady the mother is trying to push at the King is Montespan from context, but I watched all three and I never noticed she and her mother being clearly identified. I did manage to make mental notes on who I guessed everyone was the second time through and it did make the next two episodes slightly more comprehensible. Unfortunately, I discovered a second problem at that point, which was that I would wander off into revery in the middle of dialog scenes and miss important details. I watched one scene early in the second episode five or six times because I kept missing a few key sentences while thinking of more interesting things. My concentration isn't what it was, but it simply isn't this bad unless there is something wrong with what I'm watching (or reading or listening to). I could not pay attention for a literal minute or two in a number of scenes. If it had been one evening, it might be attributed to tiredness or the fever that rises and falls like the Mile, but we are talking about four different days, one nearly a week before the others, I watched all of the Depardieu Cyrano today with no problem. Just saying. So something has to be wrong with the script/acting/and/or pacing. You be the judge. There were interesting bits here and there and some things I did not agree with, but mostly it simply as dull and lacking in something vital. It left me empty and unfullfilled after. I sat mulled it over doing dishes and I think it did not help that it was all loose threads and hardly any arc. People do things in it, but nothing much matters or changes except they murder a little person of African decent, an old guy in the woods, and some assassins. There were some interesting things going on racially in the third episode, but my ennui was too great to go back through a second time so I could write a proper analysis.
I just... It wasn't aweful, just mediocre, which is sad because they have all this access and ridiculous beauty and some really fascinating RL historical figures and somehow couldn't figure out how to make that riveting on my screen.
* Blood for the Blood God: http://dorktowerfeed.livejournal.com/447069.html
* ToS Rewatch:
- Balance of Terror. We can't afford mistakes "by any man aboard." What about the women aboard, Kirk? Enter the Romulans. Does flirting count as a "mistake?" And the paranoia sets in along with the racism, because this is fundamentally a cold war story. this reminds me very much of classic submarine pursuit movies with opposing commanders and stratagems. The acting is actually decent on this one, I do appreciate how well fleshed out the made the Romulan captain. It would be so much easier to make him two dimensional, but they actually did a good job writing him and his interactions allow us to infer things about their culture that really pay off two decades or so later when Spock goes to Romulus in TNG.
*****
* Hurricane Matthew has been catastrophic for the people of Haiti. 800 or more are dead and 60,000 or more displaced. Want to help? https://www.redcross.org/donate/disaster-relief?donationProdId=prod12750029&scode=RSG00000E017&gclid=COnZ5tmJys8CFRBEfgodzWoPXQ
* "How to help Flint, Michigan:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/how-help-flint-michigan
* Help pay for cat food, litter, meds, medical copays: Paypal Lethran@gmail.com
* Donate to help refugees "UN Refugee Agency:" http://donate.unhcr.org/international/general
* Organizations helping with the refugee crisis: http://captainofalltheships.tumblr.com/post/128790538169/an-updated-list-of-organizations-to-donate-to-help
* A list of LGBTQA Charities: http://awkward0w1.tumblr.com/post/126399233673
* Want Game of Thrones without the creepy? We desperately need new players. We are very inclusive. "Game of Bones MUSH:" gobmush.wikidot.com
This entry was originally posted at http://gwydion.dreamwidth.org/644760.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
* "Facts of Life and Death:" http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2016/10/facts-of-life-and-death.html
* I want Michelle Obama to be my president. This speech is really important. "Michelle Obama's call to conscience:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/michelle-obamas-call-conscience#break
* "Limbaugh: The left is obsessed with consent:"
* Re: Women coming forward to talk about Donald Trump sexually Assaulting them. I believe the women.
* Republican woman discovers water is wet: http://gwydionmisha.tumblr.com/post/151743509457/satyrday-jennytrout-nerdyblackfangirl
* Trump and his surrogates continue to insist that Trump was lying when he bragged about sexual assaulting women and ogling pageant contestants while they were changing despite a growing body of women, including Miss Teen USA contestants, corroborating his claims that he did committed these crimes.
* I keep thinking of my Mother as this Trump thing continues. Every year, my parents threw a big dinner party for their friends as a joint birthday part. It was a big deal and they saved for months for it and we all spent weeks cleaning and my parents worked in the kitchen for days. There were always ten guests, plus my parents to make twelve which was literally as much space as we had to set up tables for a sit down dinner. There were a variety of other work and friends parties my parents went as well, and where the host had kids our age, sometimes we'd go with, make a polite appearance early in the evening, and then retire to hang out with the kids in another part of the house or apartment.
As I got older, I started to get the sense no one liked this one guy. At some point I overheard some comments during the mingling andcocktails part. Eventually I wandered through the living room as my parents debated the guest list. They really wanted to invite these two people, but they couldn't do it without bumping "K," which they couldn't do and they didn't want to ditch anyone they actually liked from the regulars, so they were trying to figure out who they could tactfully univite or how they might squeeze in two more chairs and how that might effect the seating order at table. So I asked questions, and as I was old enough my Mother took me aside and explained.
See, K was a groper and they couldn't be rude to him or leave him out because he was my dad's boss. The problem was, he'd grab any women that sat too close to him, which meant the had to always sit him between my mother and father to protect the guests from his hands. She had to put up with him grabbing at her the second half of dinner as he couldn't quit. Nobody liked him because everyone but his wife knew what he was and thought he was gross. (People really rallied round her when she divorced K eventually, but that was after I left home). I was furious. I was furious that my mother had to put up with this violation, this humiliation because of the power dynamic. Because my parents were barely making it with three jobs between them. Because we needed health insurance. K was an asshole for a variety of reasons that had nothing to do with his nigh constant sexual assault of the women around him, some of which I'd started to pick up on, and others of which I would "discover" as I got older, but this was the moment I learned to hate and loathe him. That year I was old enough they let me help serve the courses, and I saw him do it. It took everything I had not to smack him hard over the head with a serving tray. I saw him ogle the women at table and grope my mother while she was forced to pretend it was a joke as she removed his slimy hands.
I think, also, particularly with the underage pageant contestants, of a guy I knew ages ago who could not come to terms with his sexuality because of all the men at work always groping him from the age of fifteen, and the way that damaged him in such a deep and lasting way.
Every time I see Donald Trump's smug sphincter of a face now, every time I hear him brag about his sexual assault of women, every time I hear him deny it, I think I've my father's shitty slimeball of a boss and all those angry women at all those work parties and my Mother removing his hands over and over, and I hate and loathe Donald Trump on a level I was not sure was possible for someone I'd never met in person. As a teen and an adult, I've hit people for grabbing me like that. I broke two friendships for it. I've left jobs over it. I've kicked a guy out of my gaming group for creeping on female players. I supported breaking up a whole friend group over a guy harassing his ex boyfriend at work. I've pushed men out of social circles for it. I started physically dodging neighborhood pedophiles at seven and I got groped by a drunken adult man for the first time at fourteen. This sort of thing makes me incandescently angry. This sort of think needs to fucking stop and it's adult men who really need to be out there stopping it. They need to police themselves and each other. It's not just a straight man problem; it is a male privilege problem.
When I see all those people trying to justify it I am often robbed of words. Politicians who are meant to be protecting all of their constituents insist that grabbing people's genitals against their will is somehow not sexual assault. People insisting that publicizing this sort of sexual assault, often in Trump's case in the work place, is somehow trivializing make me... I don't have words really.
And yes, I've been angry all along about the scary fucking racism and the plans to throw out the constitution so he can do terrible things to everyone in this country who isn't white, and yes, I've been angry all along about the disgusting misogyny. I haven't forgotten the muslim ban or the slurs or the antisemmetic retweets of white supremacists or the demand we universalize and dramatically increase stop and frisk or the promises to jail journalists and political opponents or his threat to bomb Europe or the Putin's puppet stuff or the time he called for Russian terrorist attacks on the DNC or a million fucking awful things that poor out of his mouth and continue to pour out of his mouth. I've been saying all along that all of this, everything about him is unacceptable.
It's just that I can't stop thinking of my mother and all of her friends this week, and her being ashes on the mantle, I needed to say something, because this shit needs to stop.
And before you say I'm a hypocrite, I wanted that disgusting filth Packwood out even though it was bad for us politically. I wanted him to pay for all of it and most especially for that baby sitter he groped. Statute of limitations was out on that one, unfortunately, because he deserved jail time for that for sure. I also voted for Tsongas against Bill Clinton in that primary and I've always loathed him and still do. I believe the women. I always believe the women because I've seen so much of it in 46 years of life.
* Now Trump is claiming an international cabal of bankers is controlling our country and if we don't rise up against Hillary Clinton she will come and destroy our national and our families in a very... Nuremburgy sounding speech. The chanting crowds terrify me.
* "What we can still learn from sexual harassment:" http://www.bostonglobe.com/opinion/2016/10/10/what-can-still-learn-from-sexual-harassment/jCF5rxYbFMgE3bOKR984pI/story.html
* "Are you certain, Time Prophet?:" http://cmdr-zoom.livejournal.com/507275.html
* Fun fact: My parents met in and Anglo Saxon language class. They were language nerds. "20 Brilliant Anglo-Saxon Words:" http://mentalfloss.com/article/66533/20-brilliant-anglo-saxon-words
* "Not Just Clowning Around:"
* "Evangelicals Stick with Donald Trump:"
* "Outrage Court: Trigger Warnings:"
* I would like to thank whichever of you sent Birthday money.
* I did finally get to watch Versailles, though it took a lot longer than I expected. I had heard the critical rumblings. My hope was that as for me the major players are real people for me, ones I read about and studied and have a genuine feel for. On paper I should adore this. It's relevant to a whole collection of my interests, and on top of that, I'm a year and a half in on an early modern kick and even read the horribly homophobic and disgustingly Freudian biography of Philippe a month or so ago that happened to be the only one we could find in English. (It was very well researched, but the analysis was embarrassingly bad, so bad it would make a great drinking game. Take a drink for each homophobic inference or Freudian reference. Take two drinks every time he makes a completely unsupported inference about motive based on Freudian theory alone. Take a shot for every time he insists that homosexuality is the mother's fault/self harm/not innate. Take two shots if he's claiming that the bisexuals are switching orientation every time they change partners. Take three shots if he's claiming that sex with the chevalier de Lorraine is humiliating, degrading, self punishment, etc., something I consider a very bold statement for a man who's never ucked him and who knows full well that he was so good in bed Louis considered recalling him a gift to his brother. *ahem*) Louis XIV is out of my period, sure, but I've been to Versailles, the Louvre, and Frontenbleu, read general histories of the period, and biographies of Louis, Montepason, et al.. I'm not an expert, but I'm certainly a reasonably well educated amateur. So my hope was, knowing the players, knowing the period, I should be fine where a general audience might struggle.
I was wrong. I had to watch the first episode twice, because I had trouble figuring out who was meant to be whom. It was easier with the men as the characters said their names often enough I could pick them up from context, but the women.... I assume the young lady the mother is trying to push at the King is Montespan from context, but I watched all three and I never noticed she and her mother being clearly identified. I did manage to make mental notes on who I guessed everyone was the second time through and it did make the next two episodes slightly more comprehensible. Unfortunately, I discovered a second problem at that point, which was that I would wander off into revery in the middle of dialog scenes and miss important details. I watched one scene early in the second episode five or six times because I kept missing a few key sentences while thinking of more interesting things. My concentration isn't what it was, but it simply isn't this bad unless there is something wrong with what I'm watching (or reading or listening to). I could not pay attention for a literal minute or two in a number of scenes. If it had been one evening, it might be attributed to tiredness or the fever that rises and falls like the Mile, but we are talking about four different days, one nearly a week before the others, I watched all of the Depardieu Cyrano today with no problem. Just saying. So something has to be wrong with the script/acting/and/or pacing. You be the judge. There were interesting bits here and there and some things I did not agree with, but mostly it simply as dull and lacking in something vital. It left me empty and unfullfilled after. I sat mulled it over doing dishes and I think it did not help that it was all loose threads and hardly any arc. People do things in it, but nothing much matters or changes except they murder a little person of African decent, an old guy in the woods, and some assassins. There were some interesting things going on racially in the third episode, but my ennui was too great to go back through a second time so I could write a proper analysis.
I just... It wasn't aweful, just mediocre, which is sad because they have all this access and ridiculous beauty and some really fascinating RL historical figures and somehow couldn't figure out how to make that riveting on my screen.
* Blood for the Blood God: http://dorktowerfeed.livejournal.com/447069.html
* ToS Rewatch:
- Balance of Terror. We can't afford mistakes "by any man aboard." What about the women aboard, Kirk? Enter the Romulans. Does flirting count as a "mistake?" And the paranoia sets in along with the racism, because this is fundamentally a cold war story. this reminds me very much of classic submarine pursuit movies with opposing commanders and stratagems. The acting is actually decent on this one, I do appreciate how well fleshed out the made the Romulan captain. It would be so much easier to make him two dimensional, but they actually did a good job writing him and his interactions allow us to infer things about their culture that really pay off two decades or so later when Spock goes to Romulus in TNG.
*****
* Hurricane Matthew has been catastrophic for the people of Haiti. 800 or more are dead and 60,000 or more displaced. Want to help? https://www.redcross.org/donate/disaster-relief?donationProdId=prod12750029&scode=RSG00000E017&gclid=COnZ5tmJys8CFRBEfgodzWoPXQ
* "How to help Flint, Michigan:" http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/how-help-flint-michigan
* Help pay for cat food, litter, meds, medical copays: Paypal Lethran@gmail.com
* Donate to help refugees "UN Refugee Agency:" http://donate.unhcr.org/international/general
* Organizations helping with the refugee crisis: http://captainofalltheships.tumblr.com/post/128790538169/an-updated-list-of-organizations-to-donate-to-help
* A list of LGBTQA Charities: http://awkward0w1.tumblr.com/post/126399233673
* Want Game of Thrones without the creepy? We desperately need new players. We are very inclusive. "Game of Bones MUSH:" gobmush.wikidot.com
This entry was originally posted at http://gwydion.dreamwidth.org/644760.html. Please comment there using OpenID.