sundries

[rm]

Despite Patty's hatred of Costco, I've lured her into going with me today. YAY. This mitigates, slightly, the pouring rain factor.

Last night I said to myself, "don't forget to post about ANZAC Day tomorrow," and then, of course, forgot. wcg reminds us all.

Don't be fooled by this article. While plastic surgery may be out for actors, impossible beauty standards still reign. So if you didn't win the genetic lottery, you can forget about going into the business, at least on screen, in the United States. Also? the ratio of period films for which natural breasts are a must have to everything else? Yeah, not so much.

I told you the UK was a very drinky country. Because, holy crap, Cardiff! I can't believe this is where Patty's going to be for 10 - 12 weeks.

Last night on Buffy we watched "Shadow" and "Listening to Fear".

- OMG, Riley, REALLY? You're patronizing vampire hookers so you can be dark enough for your girlfriend? This is the most fucked up plot ever, and, quite frankly, sort of a stupid one. But I've always thought Riley was such a dumb lug, that I'm not riveted by this complete absurdity Wheedon has visited upon us.

- Aliens! There are canonical aliens! Man, that thing, that whole ep, was TERRIFYING. Except, you know, the part where Riley was being distracted because he wanted to go visit some more whores.

- Willow was AMAZING in "Listening to Fear"

- This whole arc in which Joyce eventually bites it (yes, I have that spoiler and the Tara spoiler) is going to be really hard for me to watch. I have an acute medical phobia that manifests in weird ways -- it's not about the gore, it's about the lack of control, medicine as punishment and my own probably not so awesome genetic odds. And this is punching those buttons hard.

- I really don't like Glory. She's just not a bad guy I find interesting and I think I really dislike the actresses performance, although it's clear she's just following directions. I am, however, really curious about Ben and the whole cosmology around her now.

- And I forgot to mention about "Fool for Love" the other day that hey RTD, you really liked SPike's little "you're connected to people and that keeps you alive" speech, didn't you? Well, good to know that Torchwood isn't _just_ about the Angel/Wesley Jack/Ianto loving. Wow, now if only Torchwood fandom could remember that. *snerk*

Royalty in New York. Really.

Sainsbury's gluten-free cherry bakewell tarts? AWESOME.

We think Cricket's squeakiness may be cat sonar.

Comments

[smirnoffmule.livejournal.com]

How does this intervention thing work, then? I got the basic definition from context in Buffy, but I didn't realise it was like an institutional thing? Or is it?

And yeah, broken Britain - I did use that self-consciously. As you say, it's a big buzzword in the press at the moment, mostly, if you'll forgive me being cynical, designed to convince us we're about to slide into anarchy if we don't all vote Tory, and/or get out of Europe, lock up all teenagers, treat people on benefits with the mistrust they deserve, stop immigration, and hang paedophiles. Perhaps not really that different from how an American might understand it, except we have different focuses for our national paranoia :)

Re IDing, our laws are, to be fair, much stricter now than when I was a teenager - I get checked a lot more at nearly 30 than I ever did when I was underage. But yeah, I think there is more of an attitude here that it's normal and healthy to push those age boundaries a bit, plus a layer of laddish pressure that you ought to want to, or at least that's the case within my typical peer group - I've worked in pubs for years, so I've had a lot of exposure to booze-centred culture (and seen some lovely people dead from liver disease, and my ex's dad drank himself to death, and my mother married an alcoholic, so I can see both sides here).

[rm.livejournal.com]

Dude, we even have reality TV about it: http://www.aetv.com/intervention/index.jsp

But the idea of "staging an intervention" for any type of addiction or related self-destructive behavior (i.e., an eating disorder) is ubiquitous in the culture here. I wouldn't say everyone I know has been to one, but I don't know if you could find anyone in the US who didn't know what one was, or at least have a friend of a friend story about it.

[redstapler.livejournal.com]

Some friends and I have been considering staging an intervention over the depressive and irresponsible behaviors that a friend of ours has been exhibiting with no sign of addressing.

So it's gone beyond even addiction or specific self-destructive behavior and into "There's something broken with you and you don't want to address it, but we're going to."

[rm.livejournal.com]

Yeah, and see, we all have these conversations, whether we engage in these things or not. Like I'm sure I've said "so-and-so totally needs an intervention" about any number of weird things, including people who can't tell that leggings and pants aren't the same thing.

Another UK take on it

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

I'm with smirnoffmule about only knowing vaguely what an "intervention" was from US media and LJ and an article in the Observer from Robbie Williams about how badly he hated Elton John and David Furnish for staging one on him when he was in the process of working fairly carefully with his own psychiatrist around the "coming to terms with having a problem and where that problem lay" and suddenly found himself (effectively) kidnapped by them and told by them what his problem was and denied any validity to his statements of, "No; actually I've considered that in great detail and your assumptions there are just plain wrong; I know I've got problems but they aren't the problems you say they are."

It strikes me that if you staged an intervention in the way it sounds in US media in a UK setting that you'd be cutting across so many and such deep-rooted social taboos that if the interventionee turned round and killed you they'd have a sporting chance of getting away with "manslaughter on the grounds of extreme provocation".