(no subject)

For those who haven't yet seen it, the international trailer for OotP (which reminds me a bit of 1984, but maybe that's just me):

Watch on YouTube

In other news I finally got to see The Sun Kings play Saturday night and boy did they put on a show. Four hours of music (minus a few intermissions) if you can believe that. They did a lot of early Beatles stuff which was good, but when they got to the later stuff they kicked total ass. moonlightnrain and I ended up sitting next to a guy named Clay who was rockin' out right from the start. By the first intermission R- had struck up a conversation with him and by the second we were all excitedly chatting. He was praying they'd do "Old Brown Shoe", "Happiness is a Warm Gun" and "Hey Bulldog" and he got two out of three so he was over the moon. R- got to hear "Eight Days a Week" which is the one she'd been hoping for, but they didn't do my own personal fave, "She's a Woman" so I was a little disappointed but what can you do? We've decided we must go see them next time they play and drag as many other Beatles fans as we can manage along with us. And, hrm, they appear to be playing the weekend before my birthday in Campbell...

And a quick warning, my stomach is super bad right now in new and interesting ways which may require me to go back to the gastro guy. I keep hoping it'll clear up on its own but just so you know, I may need to back out of plans 'cause I need to go home and curl up in a fetal ball. No offense is intended. Now I'm going to go back to drinking my new Pomme/Strawberry Jamba and hope it all stays where I put it.

Colonel Gentleman's list of "Columnists Who Need a Smack in the Mouth"

Yes, still more unrelentingly dumb commentary on the V Tech shootings:

Camille Paglia, professor of humanities and media studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia and author of Sexual Personae, believes Cho is emblematic of the crisis of masculinity in America. “Women have difficulty understanding the mix of male sexual aggression with egotism and the ecstasy of self-immolation,” she says. Or to quote Martin Amis on that other killer, Fred West: he became “addicted to the moment where impotence becomes prepotence”. […]

Cho is a classic example of “someone who felt he was a loser in the cruel social rat race”, Paglia says. The pervasive hook-up culture at college, where girls are prepared to sleep with boys they barely know or fancy, can be a source of seething resentment and alienation for those who are left out.

“Young women now seem to want to behave like men and have sex without commitment. The signals they are giving are very confusing, and rage and humiliation build up in boys who are spurned again and again.”

Yeah, it's all the women's fault! If they'd only dated (but not slept with!) him everything would've been just fine. But wait, there's more:

“Young women now seem to want to behave like men and have sex without commitment. The signals they are giving are very confusing, and rage and humiliation build up in boys who are spurned again and again.”

So if I'm understanding this all correctly Cho went on a killing spree because the women around him were too promiscuous with most guys but not promiscuous enough with him which undermined his masculinity and created rage and humiliation. And as we all know the natural outcome for this kind of thing is to go buy a couple of semi-automatic weapons and shoot 'til you feel better. I have to imagine that these morons keep coming up with goofier and goofier theories on purpose, to keep the rest of us from actually talking about the real issues regarding gun control, the plight of the mentally ill, and the need for a higher level of legal response to the problem of stalking. I mean if the problem here is just liberalism or feminism then we don't have to have a serious discussion that actually, you know, makes some goddamn, positive change and saves lives. Much simpler to just spend our time coming up with even fruit-loopier explanations for why Cho snapped and went on his spree.

*sigh*

Yeah hindsight's all 20/20 and shit:

The most powerful indictment of the news media for falling down in its duties in the run-up to the war in Iraq will appear next Wednesday, a 90-minute PBS broadcast called “Buying the War,” which marks the return of “Bill Moyers Journal.” E&P was sent a preview DVD and a draft transcript for the program this week. […]

Among the few heroes of this devastating film are reporters with the Knight Ridder/McClatchy bureau in D.C. Tragically late, Walter Isaacson, who headed CNN, observes, “The people at Knight Ridder were calling the colonels and the lieutenants and the people in the CIA and finding out, you know, that the intelligence is not very good. We should’ve all been doing that.”

At the close, Moyers mentions some of the chief proponents of the war who refused to speak to him for this program, including Thomas Friedman, Bill Kristol, Roger Ailes, Charles Krauthammer, Judith Miller, and William Safire.

But Dan Rather, the former CBS anchor, admits, “I don’t think there is any excuse for, you know, my performance and the performance of the press in general in the roll up to the war…We didn’t dig enough. And we shouldn’t have been fooled in this way.” Bob Simon, who had strong doubts about evidence for war, was asked by Moyers if he pushed any of the top brass at CBS to “dig deeper,” and he replies, “No, in all honesty, with a thousand mea culpas….nope, I don’t think we followed up on this.”

Instead he covered the marketing of the war in a “softer” way, explaining to Moyers: “I think we all felt from the beginning that to deal with a subject as explosive as this, we should keep it, in a way, almost light – if that doesn’t seem ridiculous.”

I'm sorry, Bob, but that does, in fact, seem ridiculous. I really hope it helps you to sleep at night, but aside from that it's about the lamest goddamn rationalization I've heard in a while. I also really hope it comforts the families of those who have been killed in Iraq. What? Not "light" enough for you, you jackass? Read the rest if you really want an excuse to beat your head against a wall.

Governor Spitzer, please stop making me want to move back to NY!

Dammit, my political crush on Eliot Spitzer just keeps getting worse:

Gov. Eliot Spitzer will introduce a bill in the coming weeks to legalize same-sex marriage in New York, his spokeswoman said Friday, a move that would propel New York to the forefront of one of the most contentious issues in politics.

Though he has long voiced support for same-sex marriage and promised during his campaign last year to introduce legislation to legalize it, Mr. Spitzer did not mention the issue in his State of the State speech in January or in remarks a week ago outlining his priorities for the remainder of the legislative session, which ends June 21.

But the spokeswoman, Christine Anderson, said that Mr. Spitzer would not back away from his campaign pledge.

“The governor made a commitment to advance a program bill, and he will fulfill that commitment during this legislative session,” Ms. Anderson said, using the term that refers to legislation introduced directly by the governor rather than through a state agency or by the Legislature.

A politician who actually fulfills his commitments? Oh be still my heart!

Even more OotP

Is it wrong of me to be considering this as a costume for the Deathly Hollows release party:



I'd have to get a wig 'cause my hair's too short and the wrong color, still...

Oh and this shot of Scruffy!Remus is Teh Sex: