June 2011
112 posts
The Glee Paradox →
digatisdi.tumblr.com
I have several problems with the show. I will list them here and describe them in detail. It’s Tuesday, so while everybody is posting about how great tonight’s episode was, I’ll talk about the reality of the show.
I am glad someone stood up against the “gleeks” and diagnosed the show for what it really is.
The problem with Glee isn’t that it misrepresents the teenage experience, or trivialises blah blah or blah blah gay blah marginalised blah. The problem with Glee is it’s fucking awful. It’s lazy, cheap and badly-written. The fact that people were unquestioningly championing it as representative of homosexuality is incidental.
However, I wouldn’t care if it was sexist, gayist, and racist in every episode as long as it was a good show, as long it was telling stories that were worth telling. And Glee never was.
Related: Real Men (gay or straight) Hate Glee
May 2011
120 posts
On Dreams
- solo1y: I have a dream.
- solo1y: A dream that would subjugate sexuality and attraction to the colour of the wall behind it.
- solo1y: And I have executed this dream on tumblr.
- isa: aha show me
- solo1y: http://bluewallbitches.tumblr.com/
- solo1y: http://redwallbitches.tumblr.com/
- solo1y: http://greenwallbitches.tumblr.com/
- solo1y: http://yellowwallbitches.tumblr.com/
- solo1y: Normally I'd say that this sort of lunacy "made sense at the time", but even at the time this seemed completely stupid.
- isa: I think you are onto something here
- solo1y: I doubt it.
“
A fire broke out backstage in a theatre. The clown came out to warn the public; they thought it was a joke and applauded. He repeated it; the acclaim was even greater.
I think that’s just how the world will come to an end…
” —- Søren Kierkegaard
An apocryphal story about Kierkegaard claims that a city custodian once found him sitting in the middle of a flowerbed in a Copenhagen public park past midnight. He asked, “What are you doing here?” To which Kierkegaard replied:
“What are any of us doing here?”
On Being a Superhero
- monfo: Barry my hero.
- solo1: I'm not anyone's hero. How are you?
- monfo: I'm good :) how about superhero!
- solo1: I'm not anyone's superhero either. Why would you think that? All I do is sit here all day typing gibberish.
- monfo: You're very stereotypical of superheroes!
- solo1: I don't have a secret identity or a cool car or a sidekick.
- solo1: Actually I could do with a sidekick.
- solo1: How about I'm Captain Hilarious. I'd need a sidekick called Ms. Giggles.
- monfo: Lying in wait all these years ya see :D
- solo1: I need a costume.
- monfo: How about leaves just to cover vital parts :D
- solo1: We need something that's part of the "hilarious / giggles" theme.
- monfo: What then.
- solo1: I don't know. I was hoping you might come up with something.
- monfo: Barry :D
- solo1: Maybe it could be like a circus clown?
- monfo: Clowns freak me out
- solo1: I don't know. I'm just throwing ideas around. We can't go around solving crimes dressed LIKE THIS.
- monfo: Hmmm. We could go around like "regular" people.
- solo1: Then we're not superheroes! We're just regular people. I don't want to be regular people. Do you?
- monfo: I know I'm not regular.
- monfo: But clown?
- solo1: Fine. Forget the clown. Think of something else laugh-themed that we can adopt as a costume idea.
- monfo: Joker
- solo1: Like in Batman?
- monfo: Then we're just robbing ideas
- monfo: This shit is hard
- solo1: How about a suit with L O L written on it
- solo1: And your outfit can say J / K
- monfo: LAME
- solo1: You want the suits made out of lamé? That was a bit gayer than I was going for, but OK...
- monfo: u think it could work
- solo1: yes
- solo1: People identify with LOL. It makes them feel happy. Safe.
- monfo: Hmmm your actually right.
- solo1: It happens occasionally.
- monfo: LOVE IT OMG I'm a sidekick.
- solo1: YES! Which means you come up with all the good ideas and I get the credit.
- monfo: that always happens to me.
- solo1: Sorry.
- monfo: Its ok. Used to it.
- solo1: I don't think anyone's ever taken credit for any of my good ideas. But that would be hard, because whenever I have a good idea, I run around for days screaming about it to passers-by.
On Alaska
- me: Well, you could just drive there.
- girl: To Alaska?
- me: Yeah. You don't HAVE to take a flight.
- girl: How would you drive to Alaska?
- me: Through Canada.
- girl: Yes, but once you get to the coast...
- me: What coast? Alaska is right there.
- girl: Across the sea.
- me: No.
- girl: Alaska's not an island?
- me: No! Where the hell did you get that idea?
- [SHE GETS A MAP - I SWEAR TO FUCK THIS IS TRUE]
- me: No, see they've just taken Canada out there, because it's a map of just the United States.
- girl: So Canada goes-
- me: In the middle between the big lump of states there and Alaska.
- girl: Oh.
- me: They didn't cover this in high school?
- girl: No.
- me: But-
- girl: I know all the state capitals!
- me: Yeah. And everything you know about the geography of the states you got from maps like this?
- girl: Yeah...
- me: In that case, I should probably tell you that Hawaii isn't in the Gulf of Mexico.
“Posttraining measures showed that accent comprehension was most improved for participants who imitated the speaker’s accent. These results show that imitation may aid in streamlining interaction by improving spoken-language comprehension under adverse listening conditions.”
—
- Imitation Improves Language Comprehension, Psychological Science
At last, scientific evidence for what I’ve always maintained - that imitating someone’s accent is not offensive or demeaning, but actually helps communication and understanding.
Remember, people who have different accents are probably no worse at English than you are (although they can be) - they’re just different. If you’ve had the experience of speaking to an Indian support person on the telephone, you may understandably reach the conclusion that they don’t know English. You are wrong. Indians who are educated enough to qualify for that job know more English than you do. You’re just having trouble with their accents.
If you adopt the position that imitating their accents is offensive, you are effectively deprecating all regional accents, and claiming that the “standardised” accent is somehow above reproach, and what we should all be aiming for. I reject utterly the suggestion that people who speak English should aim to speak in clipped British tones because that’s more “proper”. Fuck that. Speak the language any way you like, and I will mock you, and you will mock me (I have a rather flat, monotone, educated Irish accent), and we will all get along just fine.
Or at least, we’ll get along demonstrably better than those who tell you it’s offensive.
Bird's Lament
Moondog
Every so often, I try to post something that maybe no one on tumblr will have heard of before.
This is Moondog, who was a musical genius but a total weirdo. From 1948 to 1974, he chose to live on the streets of New York (usually around 6th Street), making his music, and entertaining bemused passers-by who had no idea how famous he was.
He dressed like Thor and invented his own instruments. His music is very percussion-based, but it has a certain quality (shared with most minimalist composers like Philip Glass) that puts his music almost outside time - this could as easily appear on the soundtrack to the next movie you see. He was certainly a little bit crazy, and this was back when it wasn’t cool to be crazy.
This particular track is called “Bird’s Lament”, which may or may not refer to his friendship with Charlie Parker.
On 'Nice' Guys
- Jenny: i'm not driving my ass down there to hang out
- solo1temp: I bet he'd hit on you in a really fucked-up way.
- Jenny: ha
- solo1temp: Guilt-tripping you into romantic activity.
- solo1temp: Instead of just throwing you on the bed like a man.
- Jenny: im almost 100% sure he would
- Jenny: he already tries to guilt me into talking to him
- solo1temp: You know when a guy is nice to you, you owe him a blow job. That's how it works.
- Jenny: is this what you expect
- solo1temp: IN FUCKING CRAZYLAND
- Jenny: srsly though i could never hang out with that guy hed probably try to rape me
- solo1temp: It would be worse than rape.
- solo1temp: You'd have sex with him just to stop him from crying.
- Jenny: hahah
