Today’s open thread is hosted by Mr Burns, the otter. (Shared by Alistair Hobbs on flickr.)
And a second eeeexcellent otter, courtesy of Richard Mansfield.
Please feel free to use this thread to natter about anything your heart desires. Is there anything great happening in your life? Anything you want to get off your chest? Reading a good book (or a bad one)? Anything in the news that you’d like to discuss? What have you created lately? Commiserations, felicitations, temptations, contemplations, speculations?
A quote I saw earlier this week which I keep thinking about:
[Source: comment by Forbidden Snowflake at Pharyngula | If it’s a joke, it can’t be racist
Have just read Animal People by Charlotte Wood. Excellent, excellent book. It can’t be easy to pass the Bechdel test in a book with a male protagonist 3rd person pov but she made it look easy.
Then I read Tana French an Irish crime writer. Very dark but very very good. Onto her sequel now, which takes up with a character from the first book and lucky for me a character that I wanted more of.
Ugh, tigtog, the ‘sense of humour’ trope.. I saw someone actually link the “Humour” page from wikipedia in a discussion the other day after one of my friends called him out for his constant use of sexist language in what was meant to be a safer space.
I’ve been busy avoiding doing a couple of different assignments for uni, not to mention the housework, by assembling a “songs to drive to” playlist. Which comes in at about 38 hours. So, I now have enough music assembled to do the trip from Perth to Esperance almost five times without repeating anything. Now all I need to do is transfer it from the music player on the computer to the MP3 player I carry around with me (which basically means re-replicating the whole thing from scratch on a different music queueing system… why do I keep doing these things to myself?) so I can stop repeating the same two playlists on the way to uni.
(For the curious: the music player on the computer is Windows Media Player. The MP3 player is a Creative Zen I’ve owned for about six years now. Officially, they’re supposed to be able to interface. Unofficially, they haven’t read the blinkin’ memos which explain this, and refuse to play nice with each other.)
I’m supposed to be doing laundry and tidying up the house as the aftermath of our dark ages camping weekend is still strewn all over the place. Instead I am frittering my Saturday away on twitter and blog reading while my husband does some laundry and my kids fend for themselves.
Also, if I may be excused a small parental brag, my 13 year old daughter did some busking (singing and playing her guitar) this week and earned $198.85 over two 2hr sessions.
I just found out that there will be another Doctor Who Symphonic Spectacular in Sydney in December, co-presented by Alex Kingston. I am literally almost in tears right now, because I flew all the way from Brisbane to the Melbourne one, and don’t know if I’ll be able to go to the Sydney one too.
In other news, I’ve just been gardening today – I have a few quieter weeks at uni and finally some time to do some garden things, and some pottery, and some other relaxing things instead of being in a mad rush all the time. It’s very nice.
!!!!
Jo, I hope you do find a way to go. And also… any other Hoydens planning on going?
We have tickets to the Sunday afternoon performance :-)
Does anyone else feel a little ragey everytime channel ten advertises “Underground: The Julian Assange Story”?
Also, Margie Abbott has ruined Downton Abbey for a whole bunch of people. “Downton Abbott”.
(And in related news, Abbott isn’t sexist, his wife says so. So, that settles it…)
It is probably weird that my first thought on reading that “legalising gay marriage is the first step in group marriages” was “and as long as they’re all consenting adults with no coercion involved, what’s the problem?”, isn’t it?
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/political-news/legalising-gay-unions-is-prelude-to-group-marriage-20121003-26zr6.html
Mr Rabbit, do you think Margie Abbott gets together with Bob Ellis’s and Louis Nowra’s wives for scones and heartwarming anecdotes about how their husbands are Totally Not Sexist?
I’m supposed to be away on hols for the Whovian Symphonic Spectacular! I wonder whether I can persuade the fambly to postpone until the New Year? Doubt it. I may have to settle for a creative traveling-music list instead.
Mimbles, I saw the photos of her busking – yay! Your Iron Age weekend looked amazing, as usual.
MrRabbit, we’ve been poking a few sticks at the #sensitivetony idea on the Media Circus thread.
As to the Assange biopic, I’ve got mixed feelings which will largely depend on how it’s done – he has lived quite an extraordinary life (I’m really wondering whether growing up in the cult of The Family is going to feature at all), Wikileaks (and subsequent platforms enabling anonymous whistleblowers generally) is fundamentally a really important technical advance for transparency in government and citizen oversight (even though the popular understanding of it as all his work rather than a massive hacktivist collaboration with him as the figurehead gives him too much credit), and the contrast between the philosophy he espouses in public and the way he is reported to treat some people in private (whether colleagues, friends or sex partners) could be quite illuminating.
Aphie, my thoughts exactly.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-05/racing-star-could-prove-einsteins-theory/4296980
Andrea Ghez has a PhD and is a professor at UCLA.
Anyone want to hazard a guess how often men with those qualifications would be referred to as “Mr [Surname]” in a news report about their research?
Congratulations to Prof. Ghez and her team.
“Does anyone else feel a little ragey everytime channel ten advertises “Underground: The Julian Assange Story”?”
YES. And when that happens, it brings to my mind just how extra-awful it can be in the aftermath of being sexually assaulted by someone who is in the public eye: you’re randomly confronted with the name, face, and/or voice of your assailant as you go about your everyday life.
Urgh, Aqua, that sort of thing really annoys me. Like people who can’t refer to the Prime Minister by her title, or any female politician for that matter.
TW for discussion of sexual assault scenes on TV
Has anyone every gone back to something they haven’t seen in years and get really freaked out by scenes of sexual violence/rape-yness? A while ago I was really thrown by the Hellfire scene in The Hunchback of Notre Dame (which I last saw as a child and now udnerstand in a whole new light). And just then I watched the El Tango De Roxanne scene from Moulin Rouge and was really freaked out by the (disrupted) rape scene at the end of it. How did I not see all that last time I watched the movie?
Trigger for more sexual violence in TV/movies
Jo, yes, only I’m older than you are, so the movies in my case are Blade Runner (although I always found the piano scene somewhat unsettling, it’s nauseating now); and Room with a View – there’s a kiss that’s Magic of Intent, Telepathic Connection Between Possible Lovers Category, that I thought was romantic first time I saw it.
If I remember correctly, I did notice the problem in Moulin Rouge when I saw it the first time – the benefit of age?
Not even slightly weird. For me though, my reaction’s a combination of “So what?” and “not, it’s not, not at all”. Legalising gay marriage is a matter of the slightest tweak to law, and zero changes to family court arrangements and so forth. Legalising poly marriages would involve substantial changes to law across the board, as adding a third person to the various financial arrangements and next-of-kin arrangements (let alone more people) would be dramatically more complicated than a slash of the pen from “a man and a woman” to “two adults”. What happens if one partner is unconscious and the other two disagree on treatment, but there is no living will or power of attorney in place? Who gets the superannuation? What if two partners want to break up, but not the third? I’m not saying it couldn’t or shouldn’t be done, but to see gay marriage as a big step along that path is just wrong.
http://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/health-fitness/battling-bare-facebook-page-shows-naked-military-women-raising-alarm-over-their-husbands-post-traumatic-stress-disorder/story-fneuzlbd-1226492029296
While I think that of course returned military service personnel should have all the health care they need, mental health care included, why oh why, must women campaigning for a cause so often be naked???
Spent a good amount of time flagging innappropriate comments. Yuck!
http://news.ninemsn.com.au/national/8545900/sydney-restaurant-scraps-lips-urinals
I am frustrated and stressed out over the amount my son’s third grade teacher gives him. I would just say “don’t do it” but he misses recess if he doesn’t hand it in. I asked to meet with the teacher and she said yes but hasn’t responded to my email about scheduling it. :(
Also, our state (Washington, USA) is going to be voting on charter schools (school privatization) and I’m stressed out about that.
Thanks for giving this space for random nattering and complaints. :)