Hurricane Harvey, cont.

HEARTBREAKING: This was Saturday. An abandoned dog left alone during the flood in TX. The photographer rescued it

(📷 - @DailyMail ) #Harvey pic.twitter.com/UepRjSlfXK

— Matt Rodewald FOX 10 (@Matt_Fox10) August 28, 2017

Thinking of the people and animals of Texas and Louisiana.

Alien: Covenant

- Android David 8

This week's movie rental was Alien: Covenant ...

a 2017 science fiction horror film directed by Ridley Scott ....The film is a sequel to Prometheus (2012), the second installment in the Alien prequel series and the sixth installment overall in the Alien film series, as well as the third directed by Scott. The film stars Michael Fassbender, Katherine Waterston, Billy Crudup, Danny McBride and Demián Bichir, and follows a crew of a colony ship that lands on an uncharted planet and makes a terrifying discovery.

I've seen all the movies in this series, including the earlier prequel, Prometheus (I wrote about that one here). I was very disappointed in Prometheus and was starting to get that same sinking feeling as I began to watch Alien: Covenant. Then I stopped and looked back .... Scott had directed one of the earlier Alien movies in the series, but which one? Aha - the first.

The first in the series of movies, Alien, came out in 1979 and though it was science fiction, at its core it was horror. it was well received ...Alien was nominated for two Academy Awards, winning for Best Visual Effects. Aliens received seven nominations, including a Best Actress nomination for Sigourney Weaver, and won for Best Visual Effects and Best Sound Effects .... Alien was also inducted into the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress for historical preservation as a film which is "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant." The American Film Institute ranked Alien as the sixth most thrilling American movie and seventh-best film in the science fiction genre, and in the AFI's 100 Years.

Here's a clip - the crew knows an alien is on the ship, somewhere in the duct work, and they're hunting it with flame throwers because using other weapons causes it to bleed acid. The Captain (Tom Skerrit) gets killed and Ripley must get the diminishing crew members to follow her lead ...



But my favorite of all the Alein movies was the second, Aliens, directed by James Cameron and much more science-fiction-y (I wrote about it here) ....



But anyway, what I realized was that what I didn't especially like about the Scott versions of the Alien series was the emphasis on horror over science fiction .... horror seems to be about gore .... science fiction is about thinking new things. Horror has its place, sure, but I think it's on the second tier.

So, I did watch the film and thought it was well made, with good cinematography and decent acting. The script was sort of interesting if you've been trying to figure out how the alien species came to exist in the first place. If you like gore, there was also a whole lot of squishy killin' & dyin' ;) I liked best the part where David, the android from the Prometheus film, meets and interacts with Walter, an updated model of the same android from the crew of the Covenant (Michael Fassbender plays both).

Here's part of a review from New York Magazine ...

Alien: Covenant Is an Origin Story We Might Not Have Wanted

[...] A ship — the Covenant — carrying colonists to a distant, habitable planet is threatened by an explosion in space that forces crew members out of suspended-animation pods and incinerates the commander (a cameo by an overexposed star whom most of us could do, in this instance, without). While they’re awake, they pick up a faint human signal from a closer, more habitable planet. It’s eerie, that signal: You can hear a John Denver song. Is it a siren luring them to their deaths? If it weren’t, this wouldn’t be a horror picture, so you start looking at the characters as meat and wondering in what order they’re going to be eviscerated. You certainly can count on the new commander, played by Billy Crudup, to make the wrong decision. Singled out by others in the crew because he’s a “man of faith,” he can’t conceive of a universe as fundamentally nihilistic as this one.

The focus of Alien: Covenant turns out to be less on the title character than on an android called David, who appeared in Prometheus and whose “birth” is depicted in a prologue. Played once more by Michael Fassbender, he’s rather fey in his form-fitting white bodysuit attempting to mimic the gait of a human. You know you should worry when his first question to his creator (Guy Pearce) is, “If you created me, who created you?” It’s a bit early for existentialism.

Co-screenwriter John Logan also wrote the final and much-reviled Star Trek: The Next Generation movie, Nemesis (I liked it), and he knows his way around android f2fs. When David ultimately meets his “brother,” Walter (Fassbender), a member of the Covenant crew, the two discuss the ins and outs and what-have-yous of being human. In Star Trek, that man-machine nexus was — as in all things Star Trek — hopeful. Here, there’s some doubt about David’s ultimate motives, which puts Alien: Covenant squarely in the tradition of the Terminator and Matrix movies. And, of course, the novel Frankenstein, which carried the subtitle The Modern Prometheus. No less than Stephen Hawking — who survives with the aid of machines — has predicted that we have 100 years to live before evolved machines take human imperfection as justification for wiping us all out .....

Here's a trailer ...

Hurricane Harvey: how to help animals

UPDATE: some more links ... Want to help pets displaced by Harvey? Here's what to do -- and what not to do ... Harvey is also displacing wildlife ... Houston Humane Society ... SPCA of Texas ... San Antonio Humane Society

*

How To Help Stray Animals Survive Hurricane Harvey

If you would like to help the animal victims of Hurricane Harvey, there are a number of organizations to which you can donate, the Humane Society being one of them ...

#BREAKING: HSUS' Animal Rescue Team has mobilized and is ready to evacuate & rescue as #HurricaneHarvey continues to menace the Gulf Coast. pic.twitter.com/KGHe4B4ryv

— Humane Society (@HumaneSociety) August 26, 2017

Other organizations helping are the ASPCA and the National Anti-Vivisection Society.

Austin Pets Alive! is another.

Hurricane Harvey victims: How to help

[...] Austin Pets Alive! is an animal shelter and no-kill pet advocacy group seeking assistance to help with pets, following the onset of the storm, and has created a page on its website specific to Hurricane Harvey-related needs.

"Austin Pets Alive! has been helping shelters in the direct line of Hurricane Harvey. We’ve been working with these shelters to transport as many pets as possible to APA! and as of Saturday morning, we’ve transported over 235 animals to our shelter," a statement on the website says. "Because of the incredible, humbling support we’ve received from the community thus far, we have been able to remove some items from our needs list completely."

More: Texans Save Furry Friends in Harvey's Flooding

Bigot Trump makes Friday dump

Is there any doubt in anyone's mind now that Trump is an unrepentant racist? Republicans in Congress, find your damn spines and get rid of this jerk ... you are becoming the party of racism.

Wonder Woman v Sarah Connor

- Sarah Connor

In the news, a clash between the directors of Wonder Woman and the Terminator series over what makes a feminist icon: Is ‘Wonder Woman’ Feminist? James Cameron’s Comments Draw a Rebuke.

Comments from James Cameron criticizing “Wonder Woman” received a swift backlash online — including from the film’s own director. In an interview with The Guardian, Mr. Cameron called the movie a “step backward.” “All of the self-congratulatory back-patting Hollywood’s been doing over Wonder Woman has been so misguided,” he told The Guardian. “She’s an objectified icon, and it’s just male Hollywood doing the same old thing.”

Patty Jenkins, the director of “Wonder Woman,” responded with a note on Twitter. “James Cameron’s inability to understand what Wonder Woman is, or stands for, to women all over the world is unsurprising as, though he is a great filmmaker, he is not a woman,” she wrote, adding, “There is no right and wrong powerful kind of woman.” .. Also in The Guardian, Mr. Cameron unfavorably compared Wonder Woman, played by Gal Gadot, to Sarah Connor, a character in Mr. Cameron’s “Terminator” franchise. “Sarah Connor was not a beauty icon,” he said. “She was strong, she was troubled, she was a terrible mother, and she earned the respect of the audience through pure grit.” ....

I feel I must weigh in on this - I think Patty Jenkins is wrong and James Cameron is right. Now I'll explain why :)

1) Wonder Woman ...

I must admit I haven't yet seen the film, but I've seen the part she played in Batman v Superman and I've seen trailers for the WW movie, and I've read the book, Wonder Woman: The Official Movie Novelization, so I have a pretty good idea of what Wonder Woman is about.

I think Gal Gadot is a very good actress and that it's mainly due to her that the film did as well as it did ... it certainly can't have been the script/story. As I wrote in an earlier post, the creator of the Wonder Woman character in the comics (William Moulton Marston) was anything *but* a feminist (a bondage loving polygamist), and the grasp he and later writers of WW comics had of Greek mythology is laughable.

The movie script which I assume is the same as the official novelization, presents us with a semi-divine princess raised on a magic island devoid of men, who has little knowledge of the outside world. Is she a good person? I think so. Is she strong? Sure, - trained from childhood in martial arts, and pretty much indestructible with her magic bracelets. Is she brave? I'm not sure - can you be brave when you've never really been vulnerable?

2) Sarah Connor ...

I've seen all the Terminator movies many times, including the first two, the ones in which Cameron's Sarah appears. Is director James Cameron a feminist? From the way he goes through wives and considering the female characters in some of his films, I'd say no, but he did a good job of creating a feminist in his character of Sarah and I think Linda Hamilton did a good job of portraying that.

When people think of Sarah, they mainly reference the Sarah of Terminator 2 (1991), a tough, driven, emotionally troubled woman with a young son. She's savy about weapons and has worked out to the point of being in very good shape. But that's not who she always was and the story of how she got there is told in the first Terminator movie (1984).

When The Terminator begins, we're introduced to a 19 year old Sarah ... she's a waitress, she lives with a friend, goes out on dates, has a pet iguana named Pugsley :). She's bright, she's sweet. In the course of a couple of days, her life radically changes ... she learns of time travel and an apocalyptic future only she can avert, she's hunted by a Terminator, meets her protector from the future with whom she falls in love, and everyone she knows gets killed.

In the epilogue some months later, she's shown as pregnant and preparing to take up the responsibility of trying to save the world. Is she a good person? Yep. Is she strong? Yes, she had to be just to survive and she will be even more so after years of struggle and hardship. Is she brave? You bet she is because she's scared to death and she still sucks it up and goes on.

3) What does it mean to be a feminist icon and who gets to decide that? ...

The director of the Wonder Woman movie, Patty Jenkins, said in the above quoted article that Cameron couldn't decide who was a feminist icon because he's a man. That's dopey. The whole point of feminism is to have men and women be equals, not to empower one gender at the expense of the other.

And Patty Jenkins also said in that article that there is no such thing as a "right and wrong powerful kind of woman". Really? By this description, Louise Linton would be a feminist icon because of her wealth and position. No wonder Jenkins thinks Wonder Woman is a feminist icon ... being a semi-divine princess with magical accoutrements would certainly give one a step up on power. Mortal Sarah Connor had to rely on courage and love instead. Feminism isn't about having power over others or being the absolute best, it's about trying to always be the best version of yourself, among equals.

Hey, it's not just me: I Wish Wonder Woman Were as Feminist as It Thinks It Is

These trailers for T1 and T2. will give you an idea of Sarah's transformation. Be kind, 1984 was a long time ago :) ...

In the yard

A welcome change in the yard ... my sister kindly paid for us to hire a tree guy to finally cut down the dead acacia tree that's been leaning on the house for years. Here's how it was ...



And now the tree lies in pieces ....



The next chore money must be found for is hiring someone to take the old tarps off the roof and put on new ones before the rainy season starts next month ...



Here's Hansel, who I woke up when I was walking around taking pictures :) ...

Three songs

Paul McCartney, 2005, US tour, The Space Within Us. A few of the songs ...

= Please Please Me ...



= I Will ...



= I'll Follow the Sun ...



Hee :)

Joss Whedon not a feminist

In the news: ‘Hypocrite preaching feminist ideals’: Director Joss Whedon’s ex-wife accuses him of cheating and Five times Joss Whedon, self-proclaimed 'woke bae', blew his feminist credentials

This will come as no surprise to those who have followed his work. I've watched a lot of it because he does science fiction and that's what I love - Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. is one of my favorite shows of all. But still ...

- Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I watched this whole series. It's a show in which the main character is a beautiful blond high school cheerleader. She's not especially bright or especially a good person, but she can kick vampire ass while looking very hot.

- Firefly. I tried to watch it but just couldn't like it. What I especially didn't like was the inclusion of a main character as an upper crust geisha/prostitute/madam. Writing prostitution as legal and "high class" doesn't fix what's wrong with it ... no little girl dreams of some day growing up to have a career in which she services the lusts of strangers while pretending to want it, want it bad.

- The Avengers movies. I love the Avengers. I read the comics when I was a kid and I love the movies even more. But some of the dialogue baffles me. Like, why does the script in the first movie have Loki call Black Widow a "mewling quim" - British for c*nt. He's supposed to be a Norse god from another planet not a misogynist from London. And why write Iron Man as making a rape joke in the second movie (Let's talk about Age of Ultron's rape joke). And then there's the way Black Widow, the only female Avenger for years, is treated ... The Avengers’ Black Widow Problem: How Marvel Slut-Shamed Their Most Badass Superheroine and Black Widow's Smurfette Problem and An Open Letter to Joss Whedon from a Disappointed Feminist Fan After Watching ‘Age of Ultron’

Not feminist.

Trump in Phoenix

So Trump visits Arizona, a state whose two Republican Senators, McCain and Flake, despise him, and whose mayor of Phoenix asked him not to come, but he needed to be stroked by his fans ....

Donald Trump's 57 most outrageous quotes from his Arizona speech

President Donald Trump went to Arizona on Tuesday night and delivered what has now become a trademark speech: Full of invective, victimhood and fact-free retellings of recent historical events. I went through the transcript of Trump's speech -- all 77 minutes -- and picked out his 57 most outrageous lines, in chronological order. They're below.

1. "And just so you know from the Secret Service, there aren't too many people outside protesting, OK. That I can tell you."

This is, literally, the first line of his speech. Trump is obsessed with the idea that the opposition to him is overstated while the support for him is understated. (They won't turn the cameras around and show the size of my crowds!) CNN's Saba Hamedy, who was on the scene of the protests, said that thousands of people were on the streets of Phoenix ...



How can there be any supporters left to go to these pathetic Trump infomercials?

Gifted

This week's movie rental was Gifted ...

a 2017 American drama film directed by Marc Webb and written by Tom Flynn. It stars Chris Evans, Mckenna Grace, Lindsay Duncan, Jenny Slate and Octavia Spencer. The plot follows an intellectually gifted 7-year-old who gets caught up in a custody battle between her uncle and grandmother.

This isn't the kind of movie I usually rent but I like Chris Evans very much ... hey, he's Captain America ... so I gave it a try. It was actually very good, I thought. The acting was convincing and the story had some interesting details, such as stuff about the Millennium Prize Problems, a soundtrack that featured Cat Stevens ...



And there was a one eyed cat named Fred :) ...



Here's the start of the review of the film in The New York Times ...

What’s in a child’s best interest? It depends on who’s answering the question. That’s the crux of “Gifted,” the director Marc Webb’s return to small-scale features after tangling with Spidey. The gifted child here is a 7-year-old math prodigy, Mary (Mckenna Grace, charmingly precocious), who is being raised by her uncle Frank (an impressive Chris Evans). He wants a normal life for Mary; her mother, also a math genius, was under pressure and committed suicide when Mary was a baby. So they live a simple life with their one-eyed cat in Florida, where Frank fixes boat engines; the grime under his nails (and the beer he swigs) suggest that he’s firmly rooted in the working class.

Yet Frank and Mary’s strong bond — one of the film’s most convincing parts — is tested when he sends her off to the first grade. She’s been home-schooled, but Frank thinks it’s time she tried “being a kid.” While Mary can solve differential equations, she has less-than-advanced social skills and manners. Her teacher (Jenny Slate) recognizes her abilities immediately, and floats the idea that Mary would be better served at a prep school. Frank objects, but it’s too late: Soon Frank’s rich mother (a haughty Lindsay Duncan) arrives from Boston to usher Mary off to a life of higher learning. Next stop: the local court, where a fight for her “best interest” ensues, bogging down the story .....

And here's a trailer ...



I recommend it!

Polanski the victim (not)

In the news - Roman Polanksi 1977 Rape Case 'Cannot Be Dismissed:' U.S. Court

A Los Angeles judge has rejected a request by the woman who was raped by director Roman Polanski 40 years ago to have the criminal case against him dismissed. Superior Court Judge Scott Gordon said in a ruling that Polanski remained a fugitive from justice and that the court could not dismiss a case "merely because it would be in the victim's best interest." The ruling follows the first appearance in June in the case by Samantha Geimer, who was 13 years old when Polanski sexually assaulted her in Los Angeles in 1977. The director, who admitted raping Geimer, spent 42 days in pre-trial custody. He then fled the United States, fearing a plea bargain with prosecutors would be overruled and that he would get a lengthy prison term. The "Chinatown" director, who turned 84 on Friday, has never returned and numerous attempts to strike a deal without him spending more time in prison have failed ....

I've been following this case for years. I'm glad the judge did not accept the victim's wish to have the crime "forgiven". I can understand why she might want to do that, but crimes like this are against society as well and society has a stake in seeing them prosecuted.

Sure, it happened a long time ago, and if this was a sex abuse case like the one involving Cardinal Pell, they would call it "historical" to distance it emotionally. But it did happen and the details of it are really awful, so please let's not try to turn the rapist into a victim, especially not because you're a director or actor who hopes Polanski will collaborate with you or put you in his next movie .... would you be doing this if that 13 year old had been your daughter? (Woody Allen is at the top of the list of those who want Polanski forgiven, no surprise, and I guess in his case, my rhetorical question would prompt a different than expected answer - yuck).

Charlottesville

Watching Anderson Cooper discussing Charlottesville on CNN. In this segment he destroys the fiction created by Trump that there were "very fine people" taking part in the alt right demonstrations. A reporter who was present shows a video of the torch lit march in which those "fine people" chanted "Jews will not replace us" ...



And here is Rachel Maddow of MSNBC from a few days ago detailing the recent history of the white supremacy movement in the US and the worsening affect Trump has had on this disease ....

More on pro-life Democrats

This is a follow up to my earlier post, The DNC and pro-life candidates , in which I opined that it is a bad idea for the DNC to support pro-life candidates for office in their frenzied bid to woo Trump voters and thus get more congressional seats.

Hey, DNC bigwigs, this is what the Democratic party is supposed to look like ...

Megadonor Steyer vows to only back candidates that support abortion rights ...

Democratic mega-donor Tom Steyer said on Saturday that he and his NextGen America group do not intend to work on behalf of anti-abortion politicians, jumping into the Democratic Party’s ongoing debate on the topic. “We’re pro-choice,” the hedge fund manager-turned-activist told POLITICO on the sidelines of the progressive Netroots Nation conference here. Asked if his group would help candidates or sitting lawmakers who don’t support abortion rights, he said, “We do not work for a single candidate who is not pro-choice. I think people like to have litmus tests. We are explicitly pro-choice. We work a lot with Planned Parenthood, we work a lot with NARAL. We are absolutely committed to it.” ....

Oregon Passes Law Protecting Abortion and Reproductive Rights

Oregon Gov. Kate Brown Tuesday signed what activists describe as the most far-reaching law in the land to solidify access to abortion and subsidized birth control, bucking efforts in Washington to limit reproductive health coverage. The Reproductive Health Equity Act requires insurers to cover abortions at no cost to the patient, enshrining the right to abortion in Oregon even if Roe v Wade is overturned in the U.S. Supreme Court. The statute also includes the whole gamut of reproductive care, from contraception and vasectomies to STD screenings and post-natal care. The law covers all patients, regardless of gender, gender identity or immigration status -- that includes undocumented immigrants ...

Lucy

I took this photo in the backyard today. It didn't turn out very well and isn't in focus, but it still cracks me up to look at it ... Lucy the cat, surprised while cleaning her tummy :). She has such golden eyes ....

The DNC and pro-life candidates

UPDATE: more on this here: More on pro-life Democrats (8/17/17)


- Women's march on Washington

Today I unsubscribed from the Democratic National Committee's email list, the one they use to constantly nag me for money, because I won't support a political party that plans to officially fund pro-life candidates for office.

I understand the desperation to win Democratic seats in Congress, but the decision to throw women's rights under the bus in order to lure in pro-life Republican votes is just repugnant. What's next - funding racist candidates so we can scoop up all those bigot votes we missed in the last election?

I would rather not vote at all than vote for a pro-life candidate, because I believe one effing Republican party is more than enough. And I'm not alone ....

- 13 Organizations Pledge Not to Support Anti-Abortion Democrats

- Democrats' disastrous mistake on abortion

- If Democrats turn back on abortion rights, they’ll get punished at polls

- There Is an Abortion Litmus Test And It's Called Women's F*cking Rights

The Master :)

From a concert in 1985 in Hartford, Connecticut, Eric Clapton's Layla ...

I miss President Obama!

"No one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion..." pic.twitter.com/InZ58zkoAm

— Barack Obama (@BarackObama) August 13, 2017

:)

sometimes all you need is a good hug to make you happy 🦁🐱🐶🐮🐔🐟🐐❤️@HamillHimself @ItsMarkHamill @Hamill_Italy @IDreamOfHamill @Hamill_Harem pic.twitter.com/X4TsRnVZ8j

— MarkHamill&Friends🐹 (@HamillFriends) August 14, 2017

More unplugged music

Here's Paul McCartney singing We Can Work It Out, from MTV Unplugged ...

Democrats must move left, not right

There's been much in the news about the Democratic party making compromises with conservatives in order to win elections ... one example is the effort by pro-lifers to gain a foothold in the DNC. I think that is a terrible idea and I'm not the only one - Elizabeth Warren agrees with me ... Amid 2020 buzz, Warren urges Democrats to reject centrist policies and move leftward ...



Here's a bit from another article a couple of weeks ago in The New York Times ...

Of Course Abortion Should Be a Litmus Test for Democrats

Democrats will fund anti-choice candidates in conservative districts, Representative Ben Ray Luján, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said in an interview this week, citing the party’s need to build “a broad coalition” to win control of Congress in 2018 ....

I relate to the flailing panic that is no doubt undergirding such a morally putrescent idea. Nineteen hyenas and a broken vacuum cleaner control the White House, and ice is becoming extinct. I get it. I am desperate and afraid as well. I am prepared to make leviathan compromises to pull us back from that brink. But there is no recognizable version of the Democratic Party that does not fight unequivocally against half its constituents’ being stripped of ownership of their own bodies and lives. This issue represents everything Democrats purport to stand for .... to be anti-choice on a policy level is absolutely indefensible from an economic justice, racial justice, gender justice and human rights standpoint. And if the Democratic Party does not stand for any of those things, then what on earth is it?

It’s true that the left will have to choose (and soon) between absolute ideological purity and the huge numbers required to seize the rudder of the nation and avert global catastrophe. But abortion is not valid fodder for such compromise, nor is racism, nor is L.G.B.T.Q. equality, nor is any issue that puts people’s fundamental humanity up for debate. Abortion is not a fringe issue. Abortion is liberty ....

What the Democrats need to do, I often hear, is to move away from issues of “identity” and toward purer, broader issues of economic equality. But there is no model of economic equality that does not reckon with “identity politics.” There is no economic equality without the ability to terminate a pregnancy. There is no economic equality without the overthrow of white supremacy. What good is an economic opportunity if large swaths of the population can’t access it? Telling minority groups that it’s their responsibility to sit back and wait, to subordinate their needs for the good of the party — that implies that “the party” is not theirs as much as everyone else’s. And it sounds a lot like the people we’re trying to defeat .....

Some say we should be willing to support candidates that disagree with us on just one issue, but why is it only women who are expected to take one for the team? Will the DNC support candidates who want to roll back marriage equality in order to get more religious conservatives' votes? Will the DNC support racist candidates so they can pick up the bigot vote that they missed in the last election? At what point does the Democratic party become just another version of the Republican party?

Unplugged music

I've been looking through old music from MTV's unplugged shows. Here's one for tonight - R.E.M., Losing My Religion ....

Trump: willing champion of white supremacists

Taylor Swift and bodily integrity

I've been reading/watching in the news about the trial in which Taylor Swift has accused a man of grabbing her behind ...



I'm glad she has chosen to make a public issue of this. I think it's probable that most women have experienced some level of sexual harassment at the workplace - I have - but many of us are not able to really redress it. What's disturbing is that using another person as your involuntary squeeze toy is often not seen as a serious violation. I know this because many Americans, including Catholics and Evangelical Christians, just knowingly voted for a professed pussy grabber for president.

This issue touches on the idea of bodily integrity, a concept which has informed issues not just of assault but also of torture, suicide, abortion, circumcision,. Some people think our bodies are the property of God or of society or of other people, but bodily integrity emphasizes the importance of personal autonomy and the self-determination of human beings over their own bodies. In the field of human rights, violation of the bodily integrity of another is regarded as an unethical infringement, intrusive, and possibly criminal.

Here's a bit from an article on the Taylor Swift trial ...

Taylor Swift’s Sexual Assault Testimony Was Sharp, Gutsy, and Satisfying

[...] For young fans of Swift’s, hearing a beloved artist speak candidly about the emotional damage of sexual assault and stand up to a courtroom of men trying to prove her wrong could be a formative moment for their developing ideas of gender, sex, and accountability. Swift certainly has advantages most women who endure similar violations will never have: the money and time to mount a strong case against her alleged assailant, the jury-endearing privileges of white skin and a beautiful face, and millions of supporters rallying publicly behind her. And since he’s suing her for money and she’s already one of the biggest superstars in the world, detractors can’t argue, as they so often do in sexual-assault cases, that she’s making up a story for money or fame.

But Swift also faces some of the same obstacles other assault survivors endure if they bring their perpetrators to court. She must relive a distressing moment over and over again to dozens of observers, recounting in detail how her body was allegedly touched without her consent, while lawyers on the other side try their hardest to make her look unreliable, petty, and fake. When McFarland asked her how she felt when Mueller got the boot from his job at the Denver radio station, Swift said she had no response. “I am not going to allow your client to make me feel like it is any way my fault, because it isn’t,” she said. Later, she continued: “I am being blamed for the unfortunate events of his life that are a product of his decisions and not mine.” Women who allege sexual assault are scolded all the time for ruining men’s lives, even if those men are proven guilty. Swift’s sharp testimony is a very visible condemnation of that common turn in cases like these. That’s an important message for women who may find themselves in Swift’s position someday, and maybe even more so for the men who’ll be called on to support or rebuff them.

Good on you, Taylor.

Another song from the distant past

Magic Man by Heart ...



OK, chortle if you must ;) but she does have a nice voice.

Trump/Star Trek

Fans of Star Trek will recall that there is a regulation that allows a ship's doctor to relieve the captain of command if he is for some reason no longer competent to fulfill his duties (here Kirk provokes then acting Captain Spock to the breaking point to prove that he should be relieved of duty) ...



Today as I watched Trump double down on his threats to the leader of North Korea, seemingly daring him to nuke Guam, I couldn't help wondering if there isn't some kind of similar safety measure in place in our government that allows for the removal of a president who's as crazy as a bedbug. ...

Life with cats

Watching this video made me laugh :) ...

cats😂😂😂 pic.twitter.com/yGekth4SvS

— Life on Earth (@planetepics) August 10, 2017

We Used to Know

I remember seeing these guys, Jethro Tull, in concert when I was a teen :) .....

On a path to thermonuclear war

Yes, another post on the possibility of us being nuked by North Korea. Effing idiot Trump has just upped the chances of N. Korea bombing us ... Trump, North Korea Trade Escalating Threats of Fire. How can the Republicans stand by and let this obviously unstable person lead us to the brink of thermonuclear war? Wake up, fools!

What if we get nuked

There are a lot of things to worry about, from drug resistant bacteria to global warming, but the thing that's so scary I can't allow myself to consider it more than moments at a time is the threat from North Korea .... yep, us getting nuked. The subject was in the news again today - North Korea Ready To Teach U.S.‘Severe Lesson’ - and I can't help wondering how long we have before our crazy president pisses off N. Korea's crazy dictator enough to make him flip the switch.

Here's some info on what it might be like if that happened .... WAR GAMES This is what would happen if North Korea launched a nuclear attack on the US… and Trump would have just 10 MINUTES to decide how to react.

When I imagine what it would be like, I can't get that horrific scene from Terminator 2 out of my head. But, but, but, that can't be a realistic depiction, right? Uh oh, it pretty much is ...



:(

Music from the ex

When I was first going out with the ex, he loaned me some of his albums and one of them was by this guy :) ....

Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War

My latest kindle book from the public library is Black Hawk Down: A Story of Modern War by journalist Mark Bowden. The Wikipedia page for the book begins ...

It documents efforts by the Unified Task Force to capture Somali faction leader Mohamed Farrah Aidid in 1993, and the resulting battle in Mogadishu between United States forces and Aidid's militia. One of the key events is the downing of two United States UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters, from which the book derives its title, and the attempt to rescue their crews. United States forces included Army Rangers, 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment, 10th Mountain Division, Delta Force and Navy SEALs, with United Nations peacekeeping forces also involved.

The raid became the most intense close combat in U.S. military history since the Vietnam War. Although the particular mission to apprehend Aidid was officially codenamed Gothic Serpent, the media colloquially termed it the Battle of Mogadishu as well as the Battle of the Black Sea ...

I had seen the movie of the same name a few years ago and wrote a blog post about it: Somalia at the movies . That post goes into the historical details of the actual incident, if anyone is curious.

It's fairly interesting if only as a look at how modern warfare operates. I haven't yet read to the part where everything goes teribly wrong - the movie depiction of that part was pretty harrowing. This is kind of an atypical book choice for me because I have mixed feelings about the military itself and military engagements ... I suppose in some senses they are necessary but I cringe at what they must do to the heads and hearts of the people involved.

For those interested, here's a trailer of the movie version, to which Ebert gave 4 stars ...

Fig

Another day of hotness here (102°) and Fig the kitten is pooped out by the water dish :) ....

Kong: Skull Island

This week's movie rental was Kong: Skull Island ...

a 2017 American monster film that is a reboot of the King Kong franchise and serves as the second film in Legendary's franchise MonsterVerse. The film stars an ensemble cast consisting of Tom Hiddleston, Samuel L. Jackson, John Goodman, Brie Larson .... Kong follows a team of scientists and Vietnam War soldiers who travel to an uncharted island in the Pacific and encounter terrifying creatures and the mighty Kong.

Mostly I watched it because I wanted to see Tom Hiddleston in a role where he was a good guy instead of Thor's evil brother ;) .....



It was a pretty good monster movie. Set in the 70s just after the war in Vietnam, some scientists, some army helicopter guys, and a photographer and a British tracker (Hiddleston) investigate an uncharted island and find there a pilot whose plane had crashed in WWII, some indigenous people, and a lot of monsters. Many people get squished or impaled or eaten, and a few of the team survive and escape, because: the sequel. What's not to like?

Here's a positive review: Kong: Skull Island' review: Big budget buys dazzling effects and a really good movie too. And here's one not so positive: Kong: Skull Island review – only de-evolution can explain this zestless mashup.

And here's the trailer ...