Monday, February 15, 201011:46 PM - blog over!at least for now...Pretty soon, Blogger is going to stop allowing people to publish via FTP. I'm not going to move my hosting over to Google, which means I'm going to have to find a new way to manage and update my blog. Honestly, this whole site needs a serious overhaul anyway. I might take the whole thing down and rebuild. Tuesday, July 28, 200910:34 AM - ...indeed.a good morning note from the kitten2q3q4 too cute, three cute, four! Thursday, July 23, 200911:18 PM - *click* ... *click*omg spoilersHi, long time no see. So I was trolling the internet this evening looking for spoilers for the movie "Orphan" that comes out this week. I'm pretty sensitive to violence and gore, so there's no way I'm going to go in and watch a movie like this. I don't get a lot of media or advertising, but every once in a while a movie's ad campaign will hook me. Then, if the movie is too gory or too stupid for me to sit through, I look for the full plot on the internets, usually on Wikipedia a few weeks after the release. Well, it's early. And while it's easy enough to find the major Orphan spoiler with a quick Google search, as of tonight I could only find one place that would spoil the plot for me: this site here. You'll notice immediately that this is a site by Focus on the Family, which means I wandered directly into uber-Christian territory. Tee hee hi nice to meet you. What's hilarious to me about this is how clearly this article fails at its own objectives. Ostensibly, this article is trying to give parents information so that they can make educated decisions in entertainment choices for their families. In actuality, the article goes through, in detail, a point-by-point analysis of the most gory, gruesome, and scandalous points of the movie in the complete absence of any of the plot or story that might have motivated those events. The attitude of disapproval and false piety seems perfunctory; the overall effect of the article is titillating, as if an older child had caught a glimpse of a forbidden grown-up movie and was retelling the "best parts" to a younger child. There's a big link on the side for Watchmen and so I got curious and read that article too. I had two favorite parts of that one: 1) The article chides the superheroes for "breaking the law" by being superheroes after the government outlaws it, because apparently the law is the absolute law no matter what period forever. 2) The profanity section, with perennial favorites of how many times we take various names in vain, also includes several individual curse word spelled out with dashes and rated according to relative frequency. "Twenty-plus uses of the f-word and at least a half-dozen s-words. God's name is abused 25 or so times. (It's paired with 'd--n' more than a dozen times.)" Etc. Because apparently the phrase "there's a lot of swearing" doesn't get the point across effectively. The reviews are written before the movies hit mainstream theaters, so I think each article tries to calibrate its tone of disapproval in proportion to the anticipated mainstream popularity of the movie. The Watchmen article culminates in a passionate description of our long-suffering author's experiences at the advanced screening, where he "saw a number of people leave the theater. Some never came back." With a strong visual image of the anguished reviewer in sheer torment, willingly making the sacrifice to sit through the film for the sake of his brethren, I started to wonder how he was keeping track of all the cursing. I imagined that he had some sort of specialized hand-held clicker like they use to count people entering a party or special event, but that his had multiple buttons including several for all of the popular deities whose names might be taken in vain. I need to find out where to order those. Actually, one tangible benefit for me of tonight's internet adventure is that I clarified where I stand on profanity in writing. Honestly, writing "f--k" looks ridiculous. If you're not old enough to write the word out, you're not old enough to be using it. And if that's really the word you mean, just type "fuck" and let people read it and experience it and judge you based on what you actually write. Enough with the fake propriety. Oooh, on another note, I totally went to the Labyrinth Masquerade with friends a couple of weeks ago, and I definitely want to go again next year. It was a blast, people's costumes were amazing, and sadly I haven't dug up any pictures of my finished costume from the evening... I'll keep looking, though. Wednesday, June 03, 200911:58 PM - 125 feathers are en routestarting up againA friend recently invited me to go to the Labyrinth Masquerade in July. Note to reader: if you want me to attend an event, simply string some of my favorite words together to make the name of your thing... and I'm there. Tonight I draped the pattern for the cloak, and I'm glad I did, because I never would have guessed the shape that the cloak needed to be. I know, I know, circle with a hole in it, right? Sadly, no. I drew a sketch, but I'm too lazy to pull out the scanner right now (it's late!) and besides, this one is so weird that even the sketch needs explaining. Be patient... you'll have photos soon enough. Note to self: I really need to re-design this site. I haven't put up the steampunk gallery yet, and hopefully soon there will be another costume, if I can find photographers. Hee. On another note, Monty no longer uses the computer for inappropriate Google searches. Now he likes to pull the keys off of the laptop and hide them, which has done a number on my H key in particular. This computer is 6 years old anyway. Maybe I'll get a visit from the credit fairy. Thursday, April 30, 20091:02 AM - yay, it's politics againan open letter to North Carolina Representative Virginia FoxxRepresentative Foxx, Recently, you stated that the 1998 torture and murder of Matthew Shepard has been inaccurately labeled as a hate crime in order to support hate crimes legislation. Your statement has left me a bit confused, and I have some follow-up questions for my own clarity. In 2002, when Gwen Araujo was beaten to death with a frying pan, was that also a "robbery" in your view? When Angie Zapata was bludgeoned with a fire extinguisher, was that simply a "hoax?" When 14-year-old Brandon McInerney brought a .22-caliber revolver to his junior high school and killed his classmate, was that simply a misunderstanding over lunch money? Representative Foxx, you are a well-educated person. You have a doctorate degree in education and were a professor for several years before entering the North Carolina legislature. I refuse to believe that you are simply unaware of the basic facts of the Matthew Shepard case. Your statement serves to spread ignorance and confusion, but it also protects those who would commit hate crimes against LGBT people. North Carolina has no hate crimes legislation, which certainly works to the advantage of homophobic arsonists in Catawba County. Your work protects gang members and violent bullies. You stand arm in arm with the Tampa, Florida father who beat his three-year-old son to death because he might grow up to be gay. In fact, Representative Foxx, you might explore an opportunity to confer with your counterparts in Iran, where the government takes a more active role in the persecution and murder of LGBT people. You sicken me. |
