(no subject)

[gwydion]

* The polls for and against Scottish Independence are about even as of last night. The English are promising concessions if they vote to stay in, and are scared enough that the PM and the leader of the Labour Party have turned up in Scotland to campaign.

My best wishes to my friends on the left in Scotland.

* I watched the president's speech, but I'm too tired to process. Apologies.

* Hector had a bad night and stole most of the sleep. Sic hours in, he'd woken me up, so often more sleep was impossible, but was of course too tired to be really productive. I read a lot. I did do some necessary things around the house, and did some of the readings I owed, a 3 and a full. Both turned out very complicated. I know, I know. A three card spread sounds simple, and it can be, but sometimes it just isn't. this was one of those times.

* Wow, I'm going to have to abandon the Welcome Back Kotter rewatch. The forth episode was so terrible, in a whole lot of ways that are particularly hard to sit through as a former teacher and a reasonably intelligent human being, that I'm done, just done.

* Fundraiser to pay insurance and back rent: http://djinni.livejournal.com/507872.html

Comments

[oldhans117.livejournal.com]

Sigh, it's really hard to watch old sitcoms. You know that Gilligan's Island is going to be stupid but it's hard to spot the faults in shows that you remember to be thought provoking.

[gwyd.livejournal.com]

Some of them hold up pretty well despite flaws. Barney Miller's a sausagefest, but they really tried hard with racial diversity, and what for the time was positive gay representation. (Gay men treated like people, oppression by police and general discrimination addressed, both femme and butch representation. Not perfect, but for the '70's? Impressive). They addressed a lot of social issues, a number of them in ways no one would dare to do today, gun violence for example. There were some pretty sexist characters, but there were also attempts to address some of the shitty ways women are treated. It was surprisingly progressive in a whole lot of ways including the treatment of sex workers.

As it turns out, I'm willing to swallow a larger percentage of problematic from shows that are really surfing the societal cutting edge, than I am from shows smuggly dishing up ignorance. Welcome Back Kotter is disappointing in exactly the way my 6th-7th grade English teacher was, so smuggly proud of the canned and obvious lessons about racism being bad while oppressing the fuck out of women and girls. Actually, in retrospect, this is likely why the "Hotsie Totsy" pregnancy episode and the other three I watched pissed me off so much.