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

[realtsunamigirl.livejournal.com]

Interestingly, and yet another line that separates Canadians from our southern neighbours, the war that we can't seem to get over is WWI. It is not overly uncommon to even hear some people my age (mid-30s) refer to it as "the Great War". I couldn't tell you off-hand what battles Canada was involved in in WWII, but the names Dieppe, Vimy Ridge and Passchendaele are tattooed on my brain.

When I grew up hearing about war, it was about muddy, rat infested trenches and friend's corpses left in no man's land because they couldn't be retrieved. It was about gruelling boredom interspersed with abject terror, trench foot, lice, inedible food and "going over the top". It was grim pride in the fact that we did things that no other country had managed no matter how many times they tried, but without ever forgetting for a moment what it had cost. There's no Memorial day in Canada, it's Remembrance Day, renamed from Armistice Day; still commemorated at the 11th hour on the 11th day of the 11th month. Needless to say, it's short on picnics but long on tears and ceremony.

Maybe the really scary thing about the cold war and "war on terror" being what occupies your countrypeople's minds is that so few of you have actually been touched by it. 9/11 was a horror, of course, and the country was rocked to its roots, but even with the subsequent war in Iraq, as a culture you are too far away from it. You have not watched every able-bodied young man of a generation walk away for four years. Too few of you are directly involved; too few of you that really understand why "glorious war" is such an oxymoron. You all get fear, you just don't necessarily have the horror embedded in your culture the way some do.

[kargashina.livejournal.com]

No, maybe not embedded. What war we think about is diffferent person by person. I grew up in the cold war, but what think about is Nam. I also realize I learned more about modern history in school than is normal for the US.

[lilacsigil.livejournal.com]

I'm Australian, and the Great War is pretty embedded here, too. We have Remembrance Day *and* ANZAC Day, both about remembrance. A British friend of mine was astounded that a NZ friend and I could both sing WWI marching songs that we had learned at school. WWI is in our culture, WWII is in our history.

[realtsunamigirl.livejournal.com]

Exactly! Couldn't have put it better if I'd tried.

[coneyislandbaby]

Fellow Aussie here and thinking a lot of this as I was reading down the comments. It's a part of our lives - like it was on the news when the last ANZAC digger died (of old age) not so long ago. And my grandfather was in the war, too. Probably both, but I only knew my mother's father. There's also a lot of TV and movie emphasis on it - even on the brain candy shows it's a part of the culture.