The sky is high. The Czar is far.
The Jesus Christ acapella reprisal is filling in for me:
I have no idea what’s going on here. I just know I’m in love with it. In a way that’s possibly disturbing.
Also, Boyfriend recently discovered this video that reminded him of his childhood:
I really need to have more space-traveling dinosaurs in my stories, and possibly in my life as well.
… Or at least that’s what we did. Because we’re cool like that.
Mansaf – Jordanian national dish. Comes with a sauce you can drink out of a glass, if you want. Which I did. Even in the heat.
I wish I was home, though. Watching the fireworks. Few things better than fireworks on a hot summer night, while you’re parked outside in your lawn-chair, holding a glass of something cold and vaguely alcoholic.
I shit you not, my fair friends, someone has actually posted the line above.
I had a sarcastic response lined up, and then I thought, why bother? Why bother with someone who’s invested in the idea that Star Trek belongs to a noble subculture of dudely doodz whose responses to it are so much more profound than anything the silly ladies might think or feel? Why bother with someone who is outraged by the fact that the new film featured male babes as well as female ones, struck down by the possibility that “holy shit, they didn’t just have heterosexual males in mind when they made this”?
Although I encounter this thinking with some regularity, I can never be bothered to address it properly. This type of territoriality is amusing in bullfrogs and gorillas. In the human species, it just seems so… sad. Sad in a way that a kid crying over an overturned ice cream cone is sad.
You just want to go – “awww. Here’s a dollar. Buy yourself more ice cream, sweetie.” And tousle their hair a lil bit.
‘Only ideas are perfect. People never are,’ Joel would tell her. ‘When you’ve lived a bit longer, you’ll be more forgiving.’ But Rosa had scorned these attempts to modify her wrath. For a person as deeply offended by injustice and inequity as she was – as committed to changing the world – a degree of ruthlessness was imperative, she felt. Her usual response to her father had been to quote Lenin’s defence of Bolshevik tactics: ‘Is regard for humanity possible in such an unheard-of ferocious struggle? By what measure do you measure the quantity of necessary and unnecessary blows in a fight?’
Oh dear. Now, I must first explain that I have a knee-jerk reaction to Americans like Rosa’ character – for a while, I’ve even pretended as if they don’t exist at all, which is, of course, completely untrue. It’s as if some well-intentioned American decided to quote a passage from the Q’uran to Apostate at a party – there’s a sense of “hey moron, this is MY lived experience, not YOUR lived experience. Piss off, why don’t you.” (Without putting words in Apostate’s mouth, I somehow imagine her reaction to the aforementioned scenario would be similar to my reaction upon encountering people like Rosa)
In my family, the harshest words of criticism were always reserved for Lenin, not Stalin. There are several reasons for this. First of all, the symbolism of the gruesome murder of the royal family. Then there is the belief that without a Lenin, we would never have had a Stalin in the first place, that Lenin was the foundation for everything. Finally, and this is the part that I think few people know about (I could be wrong), those Bolshevik tactics that Lenin defended? He enjoyed them. Something that Western radicals rarely quote is Lenin’s famous attempt at humour – “We’re not shooting enough of those little professors!” Haw haw. The diminutive Lenin uses for professors, meaning, of course, the academic establishment, is insulting in a uniquely Russian way, and hard to translate, but I’m sure you can imagine what it sounds like. Lenin was gleeful, absolutely gleeful, at the violence he presided over.
Having now finished the excellent Believers, I also believe in something.
Continue reading “Something that stopped me dead while reading Zoë Heller’s “The Believers””
Here’s Michael Jackson in Mexico, past his prime and yet still able to bring the house down while wearing what appears to be a ladies’ one-piece bathing suit over a pair of short black pants, no less.
It has been a crappy few days in pop culture, don’t you think?
Now, because Drew tagged me in the Eclectic Music Selection meme on Facebook, I will be playing by its rules today. It means including 15 more songs. A closer look at the scary annals of my music library, which is still getting re-built, no less. Ready?:
Continue reading “Monday Music: the Boy with the Thorn in His Side edition”
Natalia A. 