Archive for January, 2006
The “Religious Right”- Damned If They Do, Damned If They Don’t
Jan 31st
Interesting…so a gay filmmaker is upset that the religious right ISN’T making a big fuss over the gay “cowboy” movie, Brokeback Mountain. From what I hear, it’s an average film in all respects…it seems like Hollywood and those with that mindset are merely trying to ‘push the envelope,’ or trying to be more “progressive” (only liberals think that two men that break up their marriages and families for gay love is in any way “progressive”)…there’s not a major outcry over it. Mainly because most of us just don’t care. Push your agenda…we’re not going to suddenly embrace it over a film.
I do love how this woman says that this is a “a coordinated, political strategy from the religious right” that there’s no outcry. So, religious conservatives didn’t rally against the film nor do much else, and that’s a “coordinated political strategy”?! How paranoid and absurd can a person get? You didn’t protest- that in itself is clearly a stealth strategy, well coordinated in its attack! Give me a break.
Sadly, this woman is the only one making a fuss- making a fuss because no one else made a fuss…she’s guilty of what she claims the religious right ISN’T guilty of. I wonder about her sanity.
from Hollywood Confidential (NewsMax.com- Jason Apuzzo & Govindini Murty)
3. Hollywood Disappointed: No ‘Brokeback’ Outrage
A really amusing article appeared recently in the LA Times about the lack of a “Brokeback Mountain” controversy. Essentially the article asks: Where are the conservatives? Why aren’t “Brokeback’s” filmmakers being persecuted? Where’s the right-wing outrage?
This kind of thing happened just last year when Oliver Stone’s heavily gay-themed “Alexander” was released and nobody cared. Why? Because in “Alexander’s” case, the film was terrible – and audience tolerance never even entered into the equation.
Of course, Stone himself went on to blame the film’s failure on the intolerance of American audiences – which didn’t really account for why the film was trashed by left-leaning film critics.
So what’s happening with “Brokeback”? A few things:
1) Americans are a more tolerant lot than liberals in Hollywood give them credit for being.
Apparently it’s difficult for some of “Brokeback’s” boosters to admit this, so we’re treated in the LA Times article to quotes like the following – on the subject of why conservatives have been largely silent about the film:
“‘I have to say, it seems like it’s a coordinated, political strategy from the religious right,’ said Ellen Huang, a former movie studio executive who now runs Queer Lounge, a program based at the Sundance Film Festival that supports gay-themed films.
“‘They know that if they make a stink about it now, then it will cause more controversy and more curiosity from the public to see this film, and they don’t want to hand this card to the other side. The religious right is anticipating the movie’s going to fail, but if it doesn’t and generates momentum on its own, then you’re guaranteed to start hearing from them.’”
A coordinated, political strategy from the religious right? A tad paranoid there, Ms. Huang, and a little over-heated. The problem “Brokeback’s” advocates face isn’t a “coordinated political strategy,” but public boredom – which leads us to our next point.
2) What’s happening here is that the public is tired of being baited rather than entertained. Right now the hyperbole surrounding “Brokeback” – which is basically a conventional melodrama, with one unusual twist – is off the charts.
You’d think the film was “Red River” from reading some of the coverage. The entertainment press breathlessly reports “Brokeback’s” “per-screen average” (a statistic nobody cared about until recently), and flashes bright headlines every time the film inches toward #1 at the box office. [Actually, the film is stuck at #5 - even after the Golden Globes.]
The implication in all this coverage – the subtext – is that “Brokeback’s” success is something new, bold, progressive, consciousness-raising, enlightened, etc. But the public doesn’t buy this line. Why? Because people know that it’s marketing spin. Because it’s a cliché. Because we’ve all already seen “Philadelphia,” “Monster,” “Boys Don’t Cry,” “Midnight Cowboy,” etc. – even “Lawrence of Arabia” (anybody remember the scene with Jose Ferrer?) or “Spartacus.”
Nobody believes the line that “Brokeback” is covering new ground, because it really isn’t – and that’s why the film isn’t generating the controversy some people want it to.
As a side note, a pr firm associated with Queer Lounge has been e-mailing us to keep us informed about what they’re up to. We’re guessing we’re supposed to be outraged, offended, etc. – but actually they seem like pleasant people. Sorry, folks!
Windows XP SP2
Jan 31st
I downloaded service pack 2 for Windows XP. I downloaded it when it first came out, but many net connected programs stopped working, so I reverted to SP1 and stuck with it with no problems. I wanted to see the new IE 7 beta, and you have to have SP2 to download it, so I had to download it.
Microsoft makes it somewhat difficult to figure out how to do so. Once you cancel an item via windows update, it won’t let you go back and pick it again- it says you can reset it all, but the button was greyed out and you can’t click it- that’s what I ran into at least. I finally figured out how to manually add it to my download ‘basket’ and get it installed. Only after ordering a CD copy that was $2 shipping. Ugh. They need to make it easier to navigate and find the actually MANUAL download.
I’ve noticed that all the fonts look different now. It’s hard to explain- they seem like the same fonts, but they look slightly different on webpages…even the text I’m typing now looks different than before I updated. I have no idea why this is.
IE 7 isn’t any big deal from what I can tell. I really don’t care much for the layout- tho it’s now a tabbed browser, which is a plus in my book. I will stick with the trusty old slimbrowser from Flashpeak. I’m using it now- it’s got all you could ever need, a nice layout, easy navigation and simple searching via the google window stuck in the top right corner. It’s easier to add a new page (tab) than IE, and when you type in a URL, it automatically does so in a brand new window, unlike IE from what I could tell.
The only problem I see is that there’s no RSS subscribe feature on slimbrowser. Unless there IS one and I just haven’t found it. I don’t see it in tools or anything. Ya never know where they might have hidden it. I like AOL Explorer in the sense that it’s so easy to add RSS feeds and so easy to open your saved feeds and view them in a flash.
Weird fonts. Might take time to get used to. I’m off for now…
Jeff Jacoby: Hamas Win Shows “Palestinian Society Deeply Steeped in Hatred and Violence”
Jan 31st
I agree with Jacoby 100%. I made the very same case last week- palestinian society, and the people within it, are full of hatred…they support violence and bloodshed, and this election gave us the best possible look at their mindset overall.
He also exposes the well known fact that fatah is no different than hamas…both are founded on the principle idea that Israel has no right to exist and a goal to destroy the Jewish state. They’re both terrorists organizations in end, which is why I was disgusted with US aid money going to the area for so many years. I work and have my tax money taken and sent to terrorist regimes- it’s maddening.
I think this election and hamas win IS good news…as Jacoby points out- with this, we can no longer pretend. Israel never truly had a partner in peace, and if you ask me statehood is out of the question anytime in the near future. The palestinian people committed political suicide with this one- they’ve screwed themselves to a degree they might not have any chance to recover. I say good riddance.
THE HAMAS VICTORY IS GOOD NEWS
By Jeff Jacoby
The Boston Globe
Sunday, January 29, 2006
Western reactions to the outcome of the Palestinian election last week mostly came in two varieties: highly negative and decidedly undecided.
In the first category was Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who moaned that the Hamas defeat of Fatah was a “very, very, very bad result.” In New York, the Anti-Defamation League pronounced the results “a tremendous setback for the region and for American interests.”
But many others insisted that the significance of the election couldn’t be known until Hamas decides whether or not to abandon its foremost objective: the liquidation of Israel and its replacement with an Islamist dictatorship. In the words of FBI Director Robert Mueller, “Hamas has a choice to make.” It was a line echoed everywhere, from the British Foreign Office (“It is up to Hamas to choose. We will have to wait and see”) to the New York Times editorial page (“Hamas has a choice between governing and terror”).
Well, put me in a third camp: I think the sweeping Hamas victory is by far the best result that could have been hoped for.
I say that not because Hamas is anything other than a blood-drenched terrorist group responsible for killing or maiming thousands of innocent victims, but because its lopsided win is an unambiguous reality check into the nature of Palestinian society. And if there is one thing that the West badly needs, it is more realism and less delusion about the Palestinians.
Some of that delusion was on display at the White House on Thursday, when President Bush painted the Palestinian election as a “healthy” and “interesting” exercise in civic reform:
“Obviously, people were not happy with the status quo,” Bush explained. “The people are demanding honest government. The people want services. They want to be able to raise their children in an environment in which they can get a decent education and they can find healthcare. And so the elections should open the eyes of the old guard there in the Palestinian territories. . . . There’s something healthy about a system that does that. And so the elections yesterday were very interesting.”
Please, Mr. President. If a slate of neo-Nazi skinheads swept to power in a European election, would you say that the voters were seeking “honest government” and “services”? Palestinians are not stupid, and it insults their intelligence to pretend that when they vote to empower a genocidal organization with a platform straight out of “Mein Kampf,” what they’re *really* after is better healthcare. Islamist extremism isn’t needed to fix Palestinian hospitals any more than Fascism was needed to make Italian trains run on time in the 1920s. If Palestinians turned out en masse to elect a party that unapologetically stands for hatred and mass murder, it’s a safe bet that the hatred and mass murder had something to do with the turnout.
By the same token, Hamas’s new duties are not going to turn it into a moderate group of diligent civil servants. When violent Islamists win political power, their brutality and zealotry do not diminish. (See Khomeini, Ayatollah and Taliban, Afghan). The notion that Hamas now has “a choice to make” is just another example of the delusional thinking that is so pervasive when it comes to the Palestinian Authority.
In his remarks on Thursday, Bush went on to say that he didn’t “see how you can be a partner in peace if you advocate the destruction of a country as part of your platform” or “if your party has got an armed wing.” Therefore, he said, Hamas is “a party with which we will not deal.” If that means that the Bush administration will shun the new Hamas government as it once shunned Yasser Arafat, well and good. But why was Mahmoud Abbas treated any differently? Like Hamas, Fatah — the PLO faction Abbas and Arafat co-founded 45 years ago — advocates Israel’s destruction in its basic charter. Like Hamas, Fatah has an “armed wing” — the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades — that is guilty of horrific terror attacks. Fatah’s emblem shows crossed rifles against a map of “Palestine” that depicts all of Israel; on the Hamas emblem, the map is the same, but the crossed weapons are swords. The only important difference between the ousted Fatah party and the incoming Hamas leadership is that for PR purposes the former sometimes pretend to accept Israel’s right to exist, while the latter is openly and nakedly committed to Israel’s elimination.
Yet that is exactly why the Hamas landslide is good news. It increases clarity and dispels illusion. It makes it harder to wish away the unpleasant fact that after a dozen years of PLO misrule, Palestinian society is deeply dysfunctional, steeped in hatred and violence. All but the willfully blind can now see that the Palestinian Authority is no “partner in peace.” Until it is decisively defeated and thoroughly detoxified, the Palestinian people will never enjoy the blessings of liberty and decent governance. Ironically, the ascendancy of Hamas may have brought that eventual outcome a little closer.
(Jeff Jacoby is a columnist for The Boston Globe.)
Gameboy Micro Tip
Jan 30th
A quick note for those of us who have a gameboy micro but didn’t read the manual. I hardly ever read manuals. They’re usually dozens of pages of common sense with a helpful tip added every so often…then again, sometimes there’s never any tips of value.
Anyhow- the gameboy micro- a complaint I had was that there’s no battery life display, so you have no idea when you’re battery is getting low. The PSP actually has it in the top right corner on the main display menu…and it also shows the exact time the battery has left (tho, it’s not very accurate, because it changes so much from min to min.) I noticed last night that the gameboy micro, indeed, shows when your battery is low. The start and select buttons in the front bottom area of the device lights up red, as opposed to the regular blue. This means your battery is getting low, and the warning comes far in advance, so you won’t have any excuse to have it run out in the middle of a game (tho it did just that for me- which is how I realized that the red lights meant a low battery.)
So, when your start and select buttons light up red and stay lit up- you have a low battery that needs to be charged.
Just for those of us who never (or hardly ever) read manuals.
More Nonsensical TV Decisions
Jan 30th
Jake In Progress was a midseason show last year…it was renewed for a second season. They aired the first episode of season 2 then delayed the second episode until 1/29 (I think this was the planned date)…now, they’ve cancelled it altogether. Question is- why did the fools at ABC renew the show to begin with if they’re going to turn around and cancel it after ONE airing?!
I have a feeling internet based fee models are going to keep gaining in popularity to the point where they might actually produce new shows and cut out the middlemen (the networks), and put stuff right onto the net for download for 2 bucks an episode as they do with ITunes, tho these shows are downloads of shows that have already aired on TV.
These absurd decisions to give a show 1 airing after renewing it then cancelling it just make no sense. No matter what they get to fill it- the networks need to realize- ad rates aren’t going to fluctuate that much, unless you happen to get a mega-hit, and the chance of that happening are slim in the current landscape, in that Sunday has Housewives- and you won’t beat that…Thursday has CSI and ER- you won’t beat either…Wed has Lost, etc.
Like I’ve said before- there will ALWAYS, in every timeslot, be a last place and there can only be one first place show for each slot. Cancelling one show to replace it with a show that will do no better placing-wise, and maybe even attract fewer viewers won’t solve a thing. Stop spending the cash on producing shows just to shelve them into oblivion. It’s time and money wasted, only to waste money on a replacement that will surely meet the same fate soon enough…
I’m starting to think that there are no TV executives out there that are actually TV VIEWERS. They don’t seem to grasp the mindset at all…
Lego Star Wars (Followup)
Jan 28th
I just beat Lego Star Wars for the Gameboy Advance. The last battle- I’m not even sure who I was fighting, because I’ve never seen the films (well, I saw the first prequel, and hated it). Anyhow- I admit that I cheated to beat the last guy. I used a cheat to change into a droideka and a cheat for full blasters- which meant it was easy to take him out. I tried every character that you can use with cheats I found, but they all got beat. The guy with the blaster that could shoot him from a distance destroyed him the first time I used him. Don’t ask me why I didn’t think of using him earlier.
I don’t mind cheating my way to beat him. My fingers were killing me from trying to jump out of the way of his light saber flying at me and trying to hit him with my own and beat him…
It was a great game. It took me a bit over a week and a half to beat it, I guess it was. That with me playing mainly on the weekends and some at night during the week. No idea how many total hours it took for all 3 parts/episodes. The graphics and sound, as I think I mentioned before in my other post are good. For the GBA, it seems like an advanced game in this sense. No idea if that’s truly the case or not- I’ve only played around 6 games. I bought it used for less than $10, I think…I’d have to check the Game Crazy receipt. I will hand it off to Lisa now so she can play it. Maybe this means I should try to finish Pirates of the Caribbean so I can beat it and give it back to Lisa.
Highly recommended for star wars fans and non-fans alike. I’m in the latter category completely- not even a fan of the original 3 films really. I mean, they’re okay, but nothing special really. I liked the game tho…and the fact that they’re little lego figures is always a bonus. The novelty of the idea is what attracted me to the game, not the star wars aspect. Anyhow- good game. Pick it up if you can.
Newspaper Attacks O’Reilly
Jan 27th
Bill was right…this is just amazing.
The editorial director for the Bennington Banner (VT) attacks O’Reilly for going after the judge who gave a child rapist a mere 60 days in jail!
Wakeup Call for Helen Thomas
Jan 26th
Helen Thomas, the senile fool who sits in the front row of the white press room…asking the most insane and idiotic questions one could possibly imagine calls Bush a coward for not calling on her to ask a question during his press conference today.
President Bush today again avoided taking a question from White House doyenne Helen Thomas during his 45-minute press conference, even though he took questions from every reporter around her front-row, center seat.
“He’s a coward,” Thomas said afterward. “He’s supposed to be this macho guy. He’ll take on Osama bin Laden, but he won’t take me on.” (full article)
Helen- it’s simple…you’re a bomb throwing loon. Anyone with a lick of common sense and at least 2 brain cells firing can see that fact the moment you open your mouth. You’re an extremist who asks the same question over and over and over…making us wonder if you are in fact so old that you can no longer hear the answers, or if you’re just the same stubborn inane woman who refuses to act like an adult during press conferences. The president calls on questions from ADULT reporters, not childish op ed writers who badger, annoy, and attack. You’re lucky they still even allow you to sit in the press room.
She had a few questions in mind, though. “I wanted to ask about Iraq: ‘You said you didn’t go in for oil or for Israel or for WMDs. so why did you go in?’ ”
A prime example of why you’re not called on to ask a question. Because you’re a child who asks questions that the president has answered for you time and time again. Why did CONGRESS decide it was a good idea to go in and remove Hussein, you mean? Since you pose the question as if Bush went into Iraq without support, and this was a new policy he came up with, tho the official policy has been regime change since 1998.
The fact is- you KNOW why we went in. Bush has never said we didn’t go in because of WMD’s, as you also falsely claim (another reason why you’re not called on- you refuse to be honest!)…he has said over and over again that we DID go in for WMD’s…as EVERY UN SEC COUNCIL member stated the same conclusion- Iraq had WMD, had not complied with 17 resolutions spanning 11 years, and was still hiding a lot of bad stuff.
Dishonesty and childish behavior, Helen. That’s why you’re not called on. Straighten your act up, act like you have some sense, and then maybe someone will let you ask a question.
EU Hypocrisy With palestinian Funds?
Jan 26th
This is classic.
You’d think members of the EU would have more sense.
The EU has given millions of euros (dollars) in aid to the Palestinian Authority to help reconstruction efforts in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank _ funding that was called into question following Hamas’ win.
“It is obvious that the EU would never countenance funding a regime that continued an armed fight against Israel,” said Ignasi Guardans, a Spanish member of the European Parliament. “But we cannot push for democracy and then deny the result of free and fair elections.” (full article)
So, a hamas lead government is a regime that is committed to an armed fight against Israel, but Arafat’s government wasn’t? Hello! Wake up call, boys, you were giving billions to Arafat (and you knew he was putting it into his private coffers- just ask his widow in Paris!), and you knew that he was promoting and actively planning and performing armed attacked against the state of Israel.
There’s little difference between a government lead to blood stained Arafat, Arafat Jr Abbas, or hamas. The only difference is, even the less informed among us hear the name hamas and realize it’s terrorism, while many never knew of the terrorist activities of Arafat and his successor.
Further Proof- The “palestinian” People Support Terrorism
Jan 26th
I’ve said it numerous times…the “palestinian” people, for the most part, actually SUPPORT terrorism. They teach their children hatred of Jews, the schoolbooks promote hatred and violence, they send their kids to terrorist kid camps, they have their kids attend terrorist rallies, etc. These people don’t want peace, and they are, in general, not a partner IN peace with Israel. Not even the government under Abbas is a partner in peace- Abbas, a terrorist founder himself, is surely a man only a fool would trust.
Now, as I mentioned before, the election of terrorist members to the “palestinian” government is surely proof that far too many people in certain areas support terrorism…it seems, the problem is turning out to be even worse:
from a CNN breaking news alert:
In wake of apparent Hamas victory in Palestinian elections,
Palestinian Cabinet members resign, say Hamas must form new
government.
Let’s be real for once…the roadmap to peace was a roadmap to a dead end from the start. Until the “palestinian” people turn away from their hatred and their support of terrorism- no progress can ever be made. Until they stop teaching every new generation nothing but hatred and mayhem- nothing can truly be done. This is just another step back in the process that has been going downhill the entire time, no matter how many pundits and leaders claim that progress is actually being made.
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