sundries

[rm]

Okay that deal with Australia and A-cups? Not quite true (and the female ejaculation ban still stands). Thanks to lilacsigil.

Murder isn't activism. But terminology issues aside, Dr. Tiller's killer has been found guilty.

Out of Auschwitz, a survivor reflects on the liberation.

I was thinking in sort of an off-hand way the other day when I saw someone comment in regard to a couple of Doctor Who episodes (sorry, can't remember which of you it was) about how Britain is never going to get over WWII, that better that then... well, the US. I feel sometimes, that all we can remember is the Cold War that came after and our paranoia. Everyone is out to get us! If we approached the global threat of terrorism through the lends of WWII instead of through the lens of the Cold War, would we be behaving better? Would Gitmo be closed? Would we stop trading civil liberties for a false-sense of security? I don't know, but over here, I think we could use a lot more WWII memories and a lot fewer Cold War ones.

bodlon adds his voice to great slash debate. Since he's a transman who writes fanfic and pro material some containing what we call slash or m/m romance, he has a somewhat unique horse in this race. Also, thinky thoughts in comments.

Today's XKCD made me cry. Like, actually cry. Not a metaphor or exaggeration. I cried.

So John Barrowman is going to play a villain on Desperate Housewives. Shooting starts in march, apparently. I really only have two things to say about that, neither of them rational: 1. DH is my mother's favorite show, and having to deal with her getting obsessed with JB and deciding to watch Torchwood again (which she sorta likes but anything alien upsets her and she has to look away) is more surreal than I want to deal with it. 2. Surprise Naoko Mori!

gement points us to the worst ad campaign in ages. And it's for bus travel. In Cardiff. No, really.

John Lithgow, gossip columnists and scandals in the pre-Internet age. via redstapler.

lord_whimsy reminds me that I had wanted to mention the death of Louis Auchincloss who, as the New York Times obit says "was best known for his dozens and dozens of novels about what he called the 'comfortable' world, which in the 1930s meant 'an apartment or brownstone in town, a house in the country, having five or six maids, two or three cars, several clubs and one’s children in private schools.'" He was a chronicler of the dying world (although he felt strongly it was not) that long-time readers know I grew up peering into.

jonquil ponders to what degree gender has a role in whether people like Salinger's work. Despite leading with the Salinger news yesterday, to quote her poll, my feeling was generally "Eeeeeh."

Patty and I are going to try to go to Dances of Vice tonight, but she has a cold and I'm beat, so we'll see. If we go, you may be seeing the tux,since I have this thing going on where I have to wear it for something before Gallifrey or I'm going to have issues.

Boston people. Tonight, tonight, tonight! I know it's cold, but these ladies will be wearing less clothing than you and are smoking hot. Also, seriously, my love for this troupe has little to do with nudity and everything to do with the ridiculous amounts of charisma they have on stage, which isn't limited to the traditionally feminine archetypes that are a staple of burlesque. They're also my friends.

In planning for my new headshots, I've discovered something interesting, and that is that one of the images I'm selling makes me more of a romantic-lead type than I've ever been. Most of my acting career has been about being the sharp, dark-haired woman, which means VILLAIN. In Australia though, at every class it was "you're a romantic lead, we swear!" and I was like "Not in America! In my country I am evil and villanous. I only get cast as the undead and people who steal husbands!" (which was 100% true at that time). But in Australia, even my Lady in Macbeth was played like a romantic lead, you know, despite the crazy. And now I get it. Short hair, cute tight top, shiny pink lip gloss and a little bit of mascara and a huge smile. I'm suddenly unlikely, sweet, tom-boyish (something that's a particularly weird identity for me in a way that may not seem to make obvious sense) and not, not as hard or awkward as Miranda on Sex in the City. I say this a lot, but only in certain circles: Severus Snape taught me that everything I thought was ugly about myself is actually smoking hot. Jack Harkness taught me to stop pretending I'm the quirky not so cute best-friend next door.

Comments

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

Thing is, I think WW2 is still very much a living part of our history, for my generation and older at least. Most people still have older relatives who can tell them personal stories about things they actually lived through (as opposed to abstracts on the news). My mother was born in 1952, for example, but she used to play on old bomb sites as a kid. When I lived in London, I used to walk my housemate's dog in a bomb crator. There's not a major port or city in the UK that doesn't still have scars, either architectural or actual.

The cold war seems to have a whole different quality here; it's like a scary fairy tale or a bad dream now. People talk about reading Z for Zachariah or When the Wind Blows and how scary they were, but there isn't the same personal level of stories or scars. Or maybe individual terrors are just harder to talk about and quantify.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Well, every time I recall any big terrorist outrage in the UK, whether IRA or otherwise, they always managed to get some pensioner on the news muttering something about, "Do they think they'll scare us? We've been bombed by experts"

My parents can remember watching Manchester burn (the flames were visible twelve miles away) and at less than 50 I'm still old enough to remember bomb sites and having a primary school teacher who still had PTSD from having been torpedoed in the war.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

When I was in secondary school, our history teacher set us the homework of interviewing someone about the war, with the quite reasonable expectation no one would have trouble finding someone who rememebered it. I asked my aunt, who told me stories about being evacuated, and my uncle, who can remember being in hospital as a kid during an air raid and one of the nurses holding a pillow over his face to protect him from flying glass.

[rm.livejournal.com]

For random context, I would be very surprised by US people (we're about the same age, yeah?) having had a similar school assignment experience. We just... it's always the Russians here.

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

I was born in 1980, so this assignment would have been set me in about 92, 93. The cold war... it definitely happened to us, but it didn't seem to get taken quite so personally, if that makes sense. There's definitely a generation now, of which I'm probably just at the oldest cusp of, who don't really know it happened.

[rm.livejournal.com]

Oh yeah, I really, really can't imagine anyone getting that assignment here in the 90s. The number of US folk who know NOTHING about WWII, many of whome are even my age (37) is SCARY.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

I think US folk knew WWII through its soldiers. Those men weren't always willing to talk about their experiences when they came home, and now they're very very old. My dad is turning 83, and he was only old enough to enlist as the war was ending. The war is still in the local consciousness around here because the D-Day memorial is in the region and is occasionally in the news.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Oh, there was a Polish delicatessen in the market in my home town when I was a kid (it was terribly exciting; they sold salami and spaghetti in long blue paper packets and bottles of Krakus brand cherries)and one day my mother and the woman who kept it got reminiscing about Being Munitions Workers In the War (according to my mother, the sexual harassment - make that assault - which happened in air-raid shelters was so bad that there were times when she used to stay on the shop-floor, for safety's sake. In a munitions factory. In the Blitz.).

After it, I said, "Um, you do realise she was making munitions for - um - well -" and Mum said, "Well, obviously. Sounds like they were just as bad to work for as our lot, too."

[moizissimo.livejournal.com]

That's an awesome view of it all.

On a similar note, my grandfathers fought on opposite sides in the same area of Italy. Yep. One day they got to talking and actually figured out where. That was an interesting conversation. :)

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

I can imagine. Grandfathers is definitely awkward; my family have friends in a similar position but not us, fortunately.

[tod-hollykim.livejournal.com]

Exactly. I mean my father and stepfather were in the middle of WW2- my father was with the Flying Tigers and my stepfather was in the Navy. He was stationed at Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7th.

So it's stil alive because people who lived it are still alive and told their children, maybe. (Neither my stepdad nor my father talked about it much. My stepdad never said anything and I only got one story from my dad when he was drunk.)

[ex-adarog.livejournal.com]

Yes, I (as an American) very definitely get that impression. I think it's a crucial difference between the American and British experiences that we were never attacked on our own soil, except for the bombing of Pearl Harbor--and that's not the same as a major continental U.S. city getting bombed, say, every night.

I watch episodes of Doctor Who with William Hartnell and remember that Hartnell and many of the other actors lived through the Blitz. Even in something as silly as Are You Being Served?, you have characters who were old enough to have fought (young Mr. Grace, Mr. Grainger, Captain Peacock) and others who remember the war or its aftermath from childhood (Mrs. Slocomb). It's very present even in such a comedic context.

[delchi.livejournal.com]

Glad to see I'm not the only one who knows "When the Wind blows". I came across it by accident while trying to get a copy of "Threads".

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

I found everything else by Raymond Briggs unreadable because I came across When The Wind Blows at a particularly sensitive time (my parents and elder sister were CND fundies; this was how we were going to go, and no way of stopping it).

[delchi.livejournal.com]

I can only imagine. I've only had brief exposure to CND and groups like them.

Growing up I lived very close to a military base. They would test-blow the air raid siren every day at noon. The Saturday afternoon after watching The Day After on Friday night when it went off I was completely freaked. Shortly after that I started a VHS collection of every nuclear war movie I could find, and related material. I was riding the bus to school reading CD ( Civil Defense ) manuals while others were dancing to Duran Duran.

Still, nothing I have found is more disturbing than "Threads". Anyone who is sensitive/triggery to such things should avoid it.

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Oh god, one of the (emotionally) worst nights of my life was when I was trying to go to sleep after having When the Wind Blows that day.

That was in 1984.

*shudder*

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

British thing, maybe? It was definitely one of those books that scarred an entire generation for us. I actually mostly know it by reputation (and then I read it all the way through in a bookshop once because I was too freaked out to actually buy it and yet couldn't look away). I read all Briggs' childrens books when I was little though, and I'm kind of glad now I read those first.