Quote of the Day: Bleeeeeeeep edition
Apparently BBC America bleeped The Thick Of It. Must have sounded like a lorry reversing into a heart monitor.
Parliamentary circus continues
Does anybody seriously think that the Labor caucus won’t wait until the results of next week’s Budget sessions before anyone decides to make a move? What next for the national soap opera?
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Sunday Singalong: Alabama Shakes
How much do I love this sensational new band from Athens, Alabama (soon to join Athens, Georgia in indie-rock iconography)? How much do I love their singer, Brittany Howard? Let me count the ways.
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Otterday! And Open Thread.
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?
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Friday Hoyden: Joanna Russ
Guest post from Tansy Rayner Roberts: Joanna Russ is one of the mighty legends of the science fiction field that everyone needs to know about. As well as writing many important novels and short stories, she was a brutal literary critic, a brilliant academic, an unflinching feminist, and a devastatingly articulate commentator on gender, not only in science fiction but in the history of culture.
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Today in Essentialist Claptrap
The footage showed the Duchess making happy faces at a baby and stroking ou’s head while ou was being held by the father, while the Duke was shown holding a baby and chatting with onlookers, yet the commentary was about how “Kate” was showing her natural motherly side. Which one of them was actually shown as being relaxed and comfortable holding a baby again?
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My rant on The Hunger Games
Here be SPOILERS!!!
I’m interested in addressing it as an instance of popular culture that again has kids tearing through books, hungry for more, at the controversy and ‘moral panic’ that it seems to be creating, and in looking at the elements of what, for me, made it something out of the league of the ‘Twilights’ of the world.
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Who’st the jackanapes who failed to sweetly convey the imminent dawning of Talk Like Shakespeare Day, that I might more timely partake of such delights that roll most trippingly off the tongue?
It’s splitting from the nave to the chops time!
Actually, I’d rather watch this collection of fine videos from the Talk Like Shakespeare Day website.
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Numbers in the House
Speculation abounds as to whether the Gillard minority government will have the numbers on the House floor to pass the Budget on May 8 without Peter Slipper’s vote, especially since Andrew Wilkie remains rather miffed.
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How turning voters off politics helps US pollies get elected – will it work in Australia too?
Intriguing analysis in this post from Steven Pearlstein in the Washington Post, although Jay Rosen notes that he doesn’t cover the complementary role played in this game by the news media playing up the confected outrage.
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Femmostroppo Reader, April 23 2012
Items of interest I’ve recently tweeted. What did I miss? Leave your own interesting links in comments. Shameless self-promotion entirely welcome!
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