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May. 17th, 2012 04:51 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwydion* They've sworn in an interim caretaker government in Greece to hold things together until the June elections.
* Chen Guangcheng update: He is still in hospital. Earlier in the week he called the Us Congress to beg for help again. Today, the Chinese government started the passport application process for him. We should hear more in fifteen days.
* The Republicans are threatening to hold the full faith and credit of the United States hostage to their radical plan to increase the deficit by increasing military spending while requiring double the cuts to the social safety net than were agreed to in the previous debt ceiling deal. After all what better way to reduce the debt, which they claim they want, than by increasing it by five trillion, but getting nothing of value from it. Social safety net spending actually helps the economy and human type people. Better to throw money away on more unnecessary military spending and tax cuts for the extremely rich.
I'd also like to repeat that the time to spend money is during a financial crisis. Now is not to focus on austerity. Look how that's worked out or Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, the Netherlands, the UK, etc.. May I add, duh. There's plenty of data backing up Keynes, and the Republican plans from Reagan on have all been economically disastrous in an objective way.
* I think people need to see this thing on Religious Right and Republican lawmakers wanting to force immigrant women to stay with violent abusers, and alerting the abusers that women are trying to escape. After all the right to beat your wife and prevent her from leaving is an important Christian value according to the Evangelical lobbyists and Republican politicians. One of the men voting to deport abused women is himself a violent domestic abuser with a pretty horrifying felony. I do not understand how people could vote to keeping him in office knowing what he did. It horrifies me that men like this are the ones who get to decide that we should be stripping protections from abused women. On top of that, there's a whole bunch of other anti-woman stuff going on: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#47454638
* For the Record, I have huge respect for Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton of DC. It's a thankless job to have no power and and little say in what happens in her district, but to still do what she can to publicize and speak for those who have no say, and calling out the Congressional bullies who persist in stripping away the rights of her constituents.
* OMG Jane Lynch and rachel Maddow did a segment discussing LGBT Rights: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#47454909
* Fox "News" says Mario Bitali should be "slapped around" for trying to help the poor. Lawrence O'Donnell defends him: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45755883/vp/47455101#47455324
* More on the help Milo get a service dog fundraiser. Again, I promise these are real people I know in person and they are trustworthy and dealing with a real situation: http://djinni.livejournal.com/409717.html
* I slept a few hours the went out to try to sort things out. The level of fucked having my Medicaid cancelled leaves me with keeps mounting. They are taking two hundred dollars out of my social security next month, and a hundred a month ever after. I was barely scraping by as it is.
* Criminal Minds:
1. OMG! They all came as the Doctor! It's so so right that Reid came as Four and both Penelope and Kevin came as eleven. Extra points for having the new girlfriend dressed as Amy.
2. I had a good idea where this plot was going to go when I saw JJ, with her honorable, supportive, gentle spoken partner and kid being cute. I spent the next forty or so minutes waiting for them to shoot him, and something bad to happen to the kid, likely kidnapping. Talk about telegraphing. I figured Hotchner and his kid and new girlfriend, and the other day off bits were designed as a misdirect, but it was obvious where this was going. I figured Hotch and his son might also be a call back to the hostage taking and murder of Hotch's wife.
3. Similarly, it was super obvious who the partner is.
4. Is it just me, or are Penelope and Kevin wearing matching glasses frames in the "Are you comparing us to POTUS scene?"
5. Thinking it over, I like how it's the men in CM who are avid to marry in general over the course of the show rather than the women. It's much more like my experience and less ike the cultural stereotype. This is in no way a complaint about this episode's ending, or a statement that I liked Kevin and Penelope breaking up, just a statement of fondness for how the characters are written and the tendency to choose character appropriate truth over convention. JJ's original reluctance to commit to a LTR and her initial refusal to marry made character sense, so does her changing her mind a few years of coparenting and a near death experience for him later.
* As queasy making as those Props photoes are for me, I'm glad they keep turning up as I may be partially desensitized enough to watch by the time the Glee S:3 DvDs come out.
* I am finding the Craig Ferguson Scotland shows fascinating. I like them as travelog, but what really gets me is how startled he is at how beautiful it is. You can really tell how badly he must have wanted out growing up there as a kid; his surprise at how much fun he's having and the beauty underlines it. I had to be away from Philly most of a decade to start appreciating the architecture on trips back, and more than two decades after I still feel trapped when I'm there. He's been gone longer and it shows. He can mostly see it from outside now, and seems to be having a good time rediscovering, even with the scars and old traumas. The stuff at his old high School tonight... Wow. He generally jokes about painful stuff like his addiction in a self depreciating way. The school stuff was like that, the bad grades, the violence, and the beatings, contrasted with the much gentler modern system. I'm looking a him in this whole new way as a person, rater than entertainment. Watching him on this journey is surprisingly touching in between the funny bits.
Until this week I've never given much thought to him as a person rather than a snarky stage persona. I'm just generally not must interested in the personalities or personal lives of celebrities (outside of things like Sean Connery being a domestic abuser or all of Mel Gibson's -isms. I mostly want to know who to avoid). There are exceptions. Watching Johnny Depp talk about his friendship with Hunter S. Thompson, for example. Mostly, celebrities are boring on chat shows presenting a bland persona and plugging the project with very little of real interest to say. I don't generally care about their small children or small talk any more than I do about a strangers on a bus. Similarly, I don't generally kid myself that watching a celebrity chat show host is the same as knowing them as a person. Stephen Colbert is more blatant about it al being persona. I tend to assume that other comedians and actors turned hosts are doing something similar, that even though there is some of them in their public persona, what they are really doing is a performance. Craig Ferguson's performance intrigues me, as does his deliberate deconstruction of the chat show format he's simultaneously performing. The "I don't give a fuck" persona is actually frequently good at bringing out interesting performances in his guests, something rather less likely with hosts who are playing it mostly straight. The agenda is different, and that tends to effect results in less predictable ways.
It think that's why I'm simultaneously fascinated and unsettled by glimpses of real under the snarky performance this week. Don't get me wrong, it's still performance and persona, it's just I keep getting the feeling that the mask is slipping in spots. I'm not used to being drawn in this way.
* I rewatched Mongol. I know, I know, not historically accurate, but it's just beautiful. The reason I mention it, is as the closing credits rolled, I began to wonder if there is Mongolian Metal music. If there isn't, there ought to be. The traditional music would go beautifully with metal guitars and drums, as compelling as Irish inflected punk and metal often are. If any of you know of such a thing could you point me to bands? Because that would be awesome to listen to. If it doesn't exist, it ought to.
* Am I the only one who looks at the footage of the experimental tidal power generators in the Orkneys and thinks, "This looks like the start of a Pertwee era Doctor Who plot where the generator pisses off undersea aliens and they invade Great Britain to retaliate?
* O.o http://greenwick.livejournal.com/108849.html
* Chen Guangcheng update: He is still in hospital. Earlier in the week he called the Us Congress to beg for help again. Today, the Chinese government started the passport application process for him. We should hear more in fifteen days.
* The Republicans are threatening to hold the full faith and credit of the United States hostage to their radical plan to increase the deficit by increasing military spending while requiring double the cuts to the social safety net than were agreed to in the previous debt ceiling deal. After all what better way to reduce the debt, which they claim they want, than by increasing it by five trillion, but getting nothing of value from it. Social safety net spending actually helps the economy and human type people. Better to throw money away on more unnecessary military spending and tax cuts for the extremely rich.
I'd also like to repeat that the time to spend money is during a financial crisis. Now is not to focus on austerity. Look how that's worked out or Greece, Portugal, Spain, Italy, France, the Netherlands, the UK, etc.. May I add, duh. There's plenty of data backing up Keynes, and the Republican plans from Reagan on have all been economically disastrous in an objective way.
* I think people need to see this thing on Religious Right and Republican lawmakers wanting to force immigrant women to stay with violent abusers, and alerting the abusers that women are trying to escape. After all the right to beat your wife and prevent her from leaving is an important Christian value according to the Evangelical lobbyists and Republican politicians. One of the men voting to deport abused women is himself a violent domestic abuser with a pretty horrifying felony. I do not understand how people could vote to keeping him in office knowing what he did. It horrifies me that men like this are the ones who get to decide that we should be stripping protections from abused women. On top of that, there's a whole bunch of other anti-woman stuff going on: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#47454638
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
* For the Record, I have huge respect for Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton of DC. It's a thankless job to have no power and and little say in what happens in her district, but to still do what she can to publicize and speak for those who have no say, and calling out the Congressional bullies who persist in stripping away the rights of her constituents.
* OMG Jane Lynch and rachel Maddow did a segment discussing LGBT Rights: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26315908/#47454909
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
* Fox "News" says Mario Bitali should be "slapped around" for trying to help the poor. Lawrence O'Donnell defends him: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45755883/vp/47455101#47455324
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
* More on the help Milo get a service dog fundraiser. Again, I promise these are real people I know in person and they are trustworthy and dealing with a real situation: http://djinni.livejournal.com/409717.html
* I slept a few hours the went out to try to sort things out. The level of fucked having my Medicaid cancelled leaves me with keeps mounting. They are taking two hundred dollars out of my social security next month, and a hundred a month ever after. I was barely scraping by as it is.
* Criminal Minds:
1. OMG! They all came as the Doctor! It's so so right that Reid came as Four and both Penelope and Kevin came as eleven. Extra points for having the new girlfriend dressed as Amy.
2. I had a good idea where this plot was going to go when I saw JJ, with her honorable, supportive, gentle spoken partner and kid being cute. I spent the next forty or so minutes waiting for them to shoot him, and something bad to happen to the kid, likely kidnapping. Talk about telegraphing. I figured Hotchner and his kid and new girlfriend, and the other day off bits were designed as a misdirect, but it was obvious where this was going. I figured Hotch and his son might also be a call back to the hostage taking and murder of Hotch's wife.
3. Similarly, it was super obvious who the partner is.
4. Is it just me, or are Penelope and Kevin wearing matching glasses frames in the "Are you comparing us to POTUS scene?"
5. Thinking it over, I like how it's the men in CM who are avid to marry in general over the course of the show rather than the women. It's much more like my experience and less ike the cultural stereotype. This is in no way a complaint about this episode's ending, or a statement that I liked Kevin and Penelope breaking up, just a statement of fondness for how the characters are written and the tendency to choose character appropriate truth over convention. JJ's original reluctance to commit to a LTR and her initial refusal to marry made character sense, so does her changing her mind a few years of coparenting and a near death experience for him later.
* As queasy making as those Props photoes are for me, I'm glad they keep turning up as I may be partially desensitized enough to watch by the time the Glee S:3 DvDs come out.
* I am finding the Craig Ferguson Scotland shows fascinating. I like them as travelog, but what really gets me is how startled he is at how beautiful it is. You can really tell how badly he must have wanted out growing up there as a kid; his surprise at how much fun he's having and the beauty underlines it. I had to be away from Philly most of a decade to start appreciating the architecture on trips back, and more than two decades after I still feel trapped when I'm there. He's been gone longer and it shows. He can mostly see it from outside now, and seems to be having a good time rediscovering, even with the scars and old traumas. The stuff at his old high School tonight... Wow. He generally jokes about painful stuff like his addiction in a self depreciating way. The school stuff was like that, the bad grades, the violence, and the beatings, contrasted with the much gentler modern system. I'm looking a him in this whole new way as a person, rater than entertainment. Watching him on this journey is surprisingly touching in between the funny bits.
Until this week I've never given much thought to him as a person rather than a snarky stage persona. I'm just generally not must interested in the personalities or personal lives of celebrities (outside of things like Sean Connery being a domestic abuser or all of Mel Gibson's -isms. I mostly want to know who to avoid). There are exceptions. Watching Johnny Depp talk about his friendship with Hunter S. Thompson, for example. Mostly, celebrities are boring on chat shows presenting a bland persona and plugging the project with very little of real interest to say. I don't generally care about their small children or small talk any more than I do about a strangers on a bus. Similarly, I don't generally kid myself that watching a celebrity chat show host is the same as knowing them as a person. Stephen Colbert is more blatant about it al being persona. I tend to assume that other comedians and actors turned hosts are doing something similar, that even though there is some of them in their public persona, what they are really doing is a performance. Craig Ferguson's performance intrigues me, as does his deliberate deconstruction of the chat show format he's simultaneously performing. The "I don't give a fuck" persona is actually frequently good at bringing out interesting performances in his guests, something rather less likely with hosts who are playing it mostly straight. The agenda is different, and that tends to effect results in less predictable ways.
It think that's why I'm simultaneously fascinated and unsettled by glimpses of real under the snarky performance this week. Don't get me wrong, it's still performance and persona, it's just I keep getting the feeling that the mask is slipping in spots. I'm not used to being drawn in this way.
* I rewatched Mongol. I know, I know, not historically accurate, but it's just beautiful. The reason I mention it, is as the closing credits rolled, I began to wonder if there is Mongolian Metal music. If there isn't, there ought to be. The traditional music would go beautifully with metal guitars and drums, as compelling as Irish inflected punk and metal often are. If any of you know of such a thing could you point me to bands? Because that would be awesome to listen to. If it doesn't exist, it ought to.
* Am I the only one who looks at the footage of the experimental tidal power generators in the Orkneys and thinks, "This looks like the start of a Pertwee era Doctor Who plot where the generator pisses off undersea aliens and they invade Great Britain to retaliate?
* O.o http://greenwick.livejournal.com/108849.html