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tilbageidanmark · 2 years

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Movies I watched this week #68

The most unusual film I’ve never heard of, Lost in London, an audacious directorial debut. A Woody Harrelson production, written by him, directed by him, headlined by him and recreating "the worst night of his life from 2002". Also, it was shot in a single take with one camera, and was live-broadcasted to over 550 theaters at the same time as it was shot, on January 19, 2017. On top of all that, it was an heartfelt roller-coaster with a great confessional story, and was so funny that at 2AM my 92-year old mom woke up next door and burst into my bedroom, when - forgetting where I am - I loudly screamed (at the shocking vomit scene at the club toilet). A technical marvel!

(Also, I didn’t know that he was a serious Chess player). (Poster Above). 9/10!

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Summertime X 2:

🎦🎦🎦 Summertime. David Lean’s glorious Technicolor tourist brochure of 1955 Venice. Lonely teacher Katherine Hepburn’s ‘affair to remember’ with the suave Continental lover Rossano Brazzi. Enchanted summer romance in the most seductive and exotic locale. 8/10.

You are like a hungry child who is given ravioli to eat. 'No' you say, 'I want beefsteak!' My dear girl, you are hungry. Eat the ravioli...

🎦🎦🎦 La Belle Saison (’Summertime’ in English) is a 2015 lesbian coming-of-age romance story. A young provincial woman in 1971 France, the only daughter of small time farmers, falls in love with a feminist girl in Paris, and has to choose between her love and the need to support her parents at the farm. No need to compare it to ‘Blue Is The Warmest Color’. 6/10.

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How is it possible that you could recognize a piece by Ennio Morricone by hearing the first note, asks Hans Zimmer in Ennio: The Maestro. The last Giuseppe Tornatore film that I saw recently, ‘The Best Offer’, was disappointing, but this latest extraordinary tribute was my best film of the month.

Morricone, the most popular and prolific film composer of the 20th century, was so much more than a film composer. This documentary makes a strong assertion that he was actually one of the greatest film-makers that ever lived.

My ‘To Watch Movie List’ just grew by 528 titles! Damn, now I have to go back and visit so many more movies!

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2 with Ginger Rogers:

🎦🎦🎦 “...I’d better lock this joint before the acrobats and the midgets start flocking in...”

A Busby Berkeley musical, Gold Diggers of 1933, including Ginger Rogers singing "We're in the Money" in Pig Latin. A perfect Hollywood extravaganza served on the bread line of the depression.

🎦🎦🎦 RKO classic comedy Swing Time, with Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire's magnificent dancing. Most of the dance scenes are shot in a single long-holding camera shot, with very few cuts! Including a "Bojangles of Harlem" number with unique special effect shadows AND a blackface number.

Now I have to go back and watch all of Fred Astaire dance films!

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Blind, the only film directed by Eskil Vogt, who co-wrote all of Joachim Trier‘s films. An odd drama about a married woman in Oslo who recently lost her sight, and who starts narrating to herself erotic fantasies about her husband and various neighbors. A slow and internal drama that turns at times completely explicit, as the woman explores various porn scenarios in her mind. If it was directed by a woman, it would feel better. Unfortunately, it suffers a bit from a ‘Male gaze’ problem. 3/10.

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2 with Bob Hoskins:

🎦🎦🎦 Alan Parker’s horrifying musical of Pink Floyd’s seminal album The Wall. With evocative visuals, anarchistic despair and descent into madness, it’s a masterpiece of anti-war, anti-establishment and anti-life pain. Fueled by abandonment and wrapped in the trappings of a skinhead nightmare. With the most explicit flower sex sequence imaginable and the foreboding "marching hammers" fascist symbolism by illustrator Gerald Scarfe. The all-around ‘Wall of Sound’ soundtrack must be played at maximum loudness. Stunning, provocative, surrealistic. Re-watch. 10/10.

🎦🎦🎦 First watch: Mona Lisa. A small-time gangster is released from prison after 7 years, and gets a job as a driver for a high-class hooker. Predictably, he falls in love with her, and helps her find her young, abused friend. Dark twist at the end: She’s in love with the girl, not with him. Stories about ‘Saving a prostitute’ always expose sexual blind spots about their writers, and (with few exceptions, f. ex. Paul Schrader’s ‘Taxi Driver’ and ‘Hardcore’) are filled with unconvincing clichés. 5/10.

“Is that Channel 4?”

🍿 Another film that starts with Nat King Cole, the delightful remake The Parent Trap, which I had seen a few times before together with Adora. Lindsay Lohan (who was cast in the double role over for Scarlett Johansson and Mara Wilson) crashed it. Nancy Meyers regular ‘wealth porn’ at full display. 8/10.

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Shaolin Soccer, my second Stephen Chow. A broad martial arts comedy. Silly slapstick about bringing Kung Fu to the people, Puma product placement, and the worst case of acne ever shown on the screen.

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2 with Yahya Abdul-Mateen II:

🎦🎦🎦 Ambulance, my first film by Michael Bay. Another over-the-top psychopath Jake Gyllenhaal leading an LA bank robbery gone wrong, and shooting his way out of it. A manipulative adrenaline-and-cliché filled action film, fast, loud and full of explosions. Based on ‘Ambulancen’, a 2005 Danish film (and using Danish Falck ambulances as a tribute). I don’t usually watch “action” movies, but I liked this one a lot - 7/10

🎦🎦🎦 "I fucked a polar bear and I still couldn't get you out of my mind"... In Black Mirror’s Striking Vipers episode (S5 E1) Yahya Abdul-Mateen and Anthony Mackieare are old gamer friends who develop a heated sexual obsession with each other when they start playing a Virtual Reality version of their old fighting game. Different from most other Black Mirror stories, it features two macho black male friends (in an all -black cast) whose discovery of Virtual Sex brings them to question their heterosexuality. Re-watch. 8/10.

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The Men Who Stare at Goats, an idiotic & misfired satire about a secret ‘new age’ unit at the US army which tries to employ psychic powers as a weapon during the last Iraq war. The bullshit ‘Jedi warriors’ farce brought back unfortunate memories of the despicable George W Bush, about whom I didn’t think for the last 5-6 years.... 2/10.

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In Meet The Parents, imposing father-in-law-to-be Robert De Nero intimidates male nurse Gaylord Focker. Sitcom-like comedy with some genuinely funny bits, and very weak ending. ...”You never told me about your cat milking days in Motown...” Re-watch.

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I used to love watching Bill Maher, when he played the politically incorrect unabashed liberal. Now that he is playing the unabashed old libertarian shouting at the 'woke’ kids to get off his lawn, he lost his edge and appeal for me. His latest HBO special #Adulting is unfunny and cringe-inducing. Pass.

(But then he does The war on democracy this Friday, and that 'Rules’ again)

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Throw-back to the art project:

Adora in ‘The Wall‘.

The Parent Trap Adora.

Adora with Fred Astaire.

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(My complete movie list is here)

#movies

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deogenezen · 3 years

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A Leader’s Great Influence

Hello! We are Group 3 and today we proudly present to you our blog!

To give you all a short preview, when all our essays are compiled, it revolves around one topic - A Leader’s Power in Effect to his or her Followers.

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─── ──── ──── ❝ Ways of being a Leader ❞ ──── ──── ───

(By: Alfonso Herrero)

Napoleon, who is the leader of Animal Farm, and Duterte, who is the President of the Philippines, have some similarities and differences on how they run their government and how they rule their people. Sometimes, one leader is better than the other in how they do things. With so much power in their possession, Napoleon and Duterte used their powers in many different ways that made their own followers have conflict with themselves or their supporters into their enemies.

These two leaders have a distinct way of addressing their followers. They both have others who act as a dictionary to make the people understand what they said or did. These two leaders have others twist their words and actions to make it less controversial. Duterte has Roque as the Presidential Spokesperson, as he is the one who sometimes, sits in front of the cameras to repeat what the president said. Napoleon has Squealer to explain his actions to the other animals to make them think that Napoleon is not breaking the seven commandments.

Both of these leaders have lied to their followers multiple times. These promises were made as a way to gain the favor of everyone. Back at the 2016 election, Duterte promised to fight for the West Philippine Sea. Right now, all we see is him being friendly with China and just letting them take what is rightfully ours. Napoleon lied to the animals because he broke majority of the rules that he implemented for everyone. An obvious commandment he broke was “Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy” as we read in the last chapter that he was walking on two legs.

These two leaders, no matter what they do, they will always have some people who will not always agree with them. While they experience the same thing, they have different ways on how to respond to those people. Napoleon will kill anyone who will go against him. Like how he killed the chickens because they weren’t willing to give up their eggs. He killed other animals as well because they confessed that they had been working with Snowball all along. As for Duterte, he answers back to his critics in a non-professional way and acts immaturely. When he receives criticism from anyone, he will take it as a personal attack and not as a way to improve himself. An example of this is how he responded to Leni Robredo’s criticism against him during Typhoon Ulysses. He answered back to Robredo by saying that she herself was not doing anything and that she was just sleeping with another man while the Typhoon was happening.

Both Napoleon and Duterte have a special group of people that will help them intimidate their opponents and anyone who will try to go against them. This show of force is a way to strike fear within people so any sort of resistance against them will be discouraged. Duterte’s way of intimidating people is with the use of the Military and Police. He uses the military and police against the communist party of the Philippines and any drug users. Napoleon has his dogs that he stole from their parents when they were born. Napoleon uses the dogs to chase Snowball out of Animal Farm and to kill animals who confessed their crimes.

The people in their land work hard for the benefit of everyone else, but they were treated differently. In the Philippines, when you’re a taxpayer and already retired, every month you get a pension depending on how much you contributed during your working days. Another benefit is that you are granted benefits from PhilHealth if anything happens to you or to anyone from your family. Napoleon treats his people differently. He bosses everyone around only for the benefits of himself and not for other animals. He has no respect towards them and doesn’t care about their contribution to the animal farm. He killed the chickens because they did not want to give up their eggs and he killed Boxer because he could no longer do his work properly.

Napoleon and Duterte have some similarities and differences on how they run the land that they lead. One similarity is that they lied to their people to gain their favor and one difference is how they treat the people who work hard for the benefit of their land. While our officials are terrible leaders right now, we’re lucky they aren’t worse than other leaders were.

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── ─── ❝ Perfecting Absolute Fascist-Communism ❞ ─── ──

(By: Allan Dela Cruz)

In animal farm, Orwell explicitly made direct allegories to real-life counterparts. Among which include the creation of animal farm; in which the real-life counterpart would be the Russian revolution – seeing as the animals overthrew the “Czar” in this case. The different and diverse class system and their familiar government system named “animal system” which screams of the modern-day socialist system built by Marx. But the most prominent similarity by far is the representation of totalitarian dictators, in this case, Napoleon; is to Stalin.

Both leaders assert their influence in both the military and the constitution. Both have played their own share of politics – and both have won with ruthless force and became dictators. Using both of their absolute and authoritarian power to corrupt and exploit too much of what is, “necessary”. And both having been an inspirational leader. These are the qualities that Orwell clearly wanted to point out to his readers. In terms of contrast, while both leaders are downright power-hungry. I think with Napoleon; he is more interested in his personal (or his kin’s) goals and gains compared to Stalin. While Stalin is greedy, greedy in a sense for the “betterment” of his country, I mean all classes regardless of noble-born or peasants as he was one of the people who revolted against the much privileged and unfair Czars that it only made sense to him for Russia to reform. Stalin's problem was his means to get there, which involved the gulags that made them no better than the 3rd Reich. I do not think Napoleon and the pigs care about the other farm animals, as they focus too much on their self-interest and abuse it to the point of exploiting the other animals. While Stalin technically exploited his citizens, his “first plan" [also called the great turn] – industrialized and modernized Russia in just five years. Russia turned into a once primitive and backward empire - whilst taking no heed by the Czars - into a prospering union – with the help of the gulags of course. While back in animal farm, while they have their own version of gulags – albeit less brutal – the benefits they get from it anyway is almost nonexistent, and that most of it just goes immediately to the pig’s self-interest.

That being said, I think what Orwell’s trying to aim at is that the nature of totalitarianism can be easily distinguished – albeit the way he portrays it can be exaggerated – and that it must be avoided, which is propaganda really.

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── ❝ The Practice of Abuse in the Russian Revolution ❞ ──

(By: Eurick Gamboa)

Orwell has allegories hidden in the story Animal Farm. It overlooks the Russian revolution. The Animal Farm also focused on the system dictatorship, symbolizing Napoleon. There was also a social class system which was called the “Animal System”, which shows the modern day socialism system. Orwell's main message in Animal Farm is that power can corrupt, even when idealism is at the start. The allegory of the Russian Revolution of 1917, where the Bolsheviks overthrew the tsar to establish a communist regime.

One of the novel’s most impressive accomplishments, is its portraits of not just the figures in power, but also the oppressed people themselves. Animal Farm is not told from the perspective of any character in the story. Rather, the story is told from the perspective of the common animals as a group. Foolish, loyal, corrupt, and hardworking, the animals gives Orwell a chance to tell how situations of oppression rose, not only from the motives of the oppressors, but also from the naiveness of the oppressed. When presented with a situation, one of the characters, Boxer, prefers not to be suspicious, so instead he repeats to himself the mottos such as, “Napoleon is always right” and “I will work harder.” Animal Farm demonstrates how the inability to question authority criticizes the working class to suffer the full extent of the ruling class’s oppression.

One of the Commandments was “All animals are equal”. However, this equality was shortly diminished and the pigs began to bend the rules until inequality returned to the farm and the pigs gained power. Orwell used the animals and their actions to make the reader think about equality and inequality. Before 1917, the majority of Russian people suffered from great inequality. They had far less money and food than the ruling classes. However, before the rebellion in Animal Farm, Mr. Jones takes everything that the animals have been keeping or have been caring for away from them. After the Rebellion the animals were free from the tyranny of Mr. Jones and seek to establish equality amongst themselves once and for all.

In conclusion, Orwell's message warns readers about allowing smart, selfish politicians to abuse power and gradually take away civil rights and independence. He warns his readers about the various methods of manipulation and propaganda used by oppressive regimes to crush and control the people.

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─── ──── ──── ❝ Napoleon and Trump ❞ ──── ──── ───

(By: Breanna Geronimo)

The boar, named Napoleon, is the leader of animal farm. He became the leader of the Animal Farm (also known as Manor Farm) when the animals rebelled against the humans, specifically Mr. Jones which was the owner of the Manor Farm. The current President of the United States now is Donald Trump, he won his position last January 20, 2017 and his term will end on January 20, 2021.

Napoleon is a corrupt leader because he only does things that benefits himself. One example was when he stole the idea of Snowball, which was to build a windmill. Another example is that he would also use Squealer to tell all of the animals lies and anything that will make him look correct and good. He is also a greedy leader because he wants all the power of being a leader to be his. He also has a tendency to get too much of everything/ tend to get things that he does not need. An example is when he and the pigs drinks all of the milk and does not give/ provide for the other animals. In my opinion, he is a leader who does not promote/ give equality, because he does not treat the animals equally. For an instance, he said that “no animal, shall sleep in a bed” then he changed it to “no animal, shall sleep in bed, with blankets.” He changed the rules so that he and the pigs can sleep in a bed, while the other animals aren’t allowed to.

Trump as I have said is the President of the United States. He is a corrupt president, because just like Napoleon, he would do anything that can benefit him and his family. For an instance, he corrupted the tax system and funded his own taxes (David Halperin, Oct 26,2020). President Trump can also be a greedy leader because he eviscerated health care, because of his hatred for the former President of the United States, Barack Obama. In my opinion, I also do know and believe that he is a President who does not give/ promote equality. For an instance, He calls “Black Lives Matter (BLM)” a symbol of hate. I do believe that what some of the Americans did was inappropriate (like breaking glass of buildings and stealing) but he still does not have the right to say that it was a symbol of hate. Because what the Americans only wanted was for them to have equality.

Both Napoleon and President Trump are leaders of a certain area/place and they can also tend to be corrupt and greedy leaders. The only difference that I can find between Napoleon and President Trump is that Napoleon is a fictional character and President Trump is not. They are also not the same type of animal Napoleon is a boar while President Trump is human. I just hope that someday people will be able to learn from people who are trustworthy, kind and loving to their country and countrymen.

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─── ──── ──── ❝ The Rule of Dictators ❞ ──── ──── ───

(By: Liezl Montemayor)

Lives dictated by leaders, such as Napoleon and Ferdinand Marcos, had their followers struggle with threats, abuses, and inexorable deaths. These two leaders are corrupt and used all means to keep their power and wealth all for themselves. Because of how much they wanted to satisfy their greed for power has brought many to rebel against them. Therefore, corrupt and dictating leaders, such as themselves, must be impeached for a better society.

To start, Napoleon and Ferdinand Marcos have quite a similarity in their excellent side of leadership traits, though they will soon break their image of good leadership in the future. An example of Napoleon’s leadership trait is uniting and directing the animals to a specific goal. He also organized the structure of power of the animals on the farm. On the other hand, Ferdinand Marcos treats his officials with civility and respect. He also approved building infrastructures to increase the economic growth of the Philippines.

With such leadership, there is no doubt that the threats and civil strife will arise against Napoleon and Ferdinand Marcos’s position. Luckily, they could see this coming and used their power to threaten and terrorize such menace against them. For Napoleon, he used his loyal dogs as a shield to protect his position. Meanwhile, Ferdinand Marcos declared Martial Law, which will soon bring abuse, threats, and deaths among his country’s people.

The dogs, Napoleon raised were used to kill and terrorize the animals who dared to threaten their master’s position. They were monsters that got brainwashed with the teachings they learned from Napoleon as they were isolated when young. Because of such a horrific event that the animals experienced, Napoleon’s greed has shown that the surviving animals could no longer differentiate pigs from humans. At the same time, Ferdinand Marcos was no different from being greedy with all that he possessed. He violated human rights of his citizens through armed forces and other means. Then, time went by that these violations could no longer be tolerated, and people started to perform reformist oppositions, revolutionary oppositions, and religious oppositions.

Greed to gain power is the paramount satisfaction of leaders that corrupt and abuse their followers and environment. To attain a prosperous state, a leader must have a great passion and qualities that may influence everyone and everything that surrounds them. Keep in mind; dictators have pros and cons that significantly affect their followers and the situation itself. Goals are set for citizens to seek development of their environment, not its destruction. Eyes must open to free oneself from lies and fear because a life dictated like a puppet is not a solution for a better society everyone aims for.

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References used for the Blog:

More Equal Than You- (Napoleon Animal Farm) by Stardust-Legend on. (2018, January 24). DeviantArt. https://www.deviantart.com/stardust-legend/art/More-Equal-Than-You-Napoleon-Animal-Farm-727346398

References used by Herrero:

References used by Delacruz:

PLOT SUMMARY, BBC, https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/guides/z9w7mp3/revision/1#:~:text=Animal%20Farm%20was%20written%20by,Russian%20politicians%2C%20voters%20and%20workers.

World war I Russian revolution, Ducksters Education site, https://www.ducksters.com/history/world_war_i/russian_revolution.php#:~:text=The%20Russian%20Revolution%20took%20place,country%20of%20the%20Soviet%20Union.

Fascism, Britannica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/fascism

http://euromaidanpress.com/2014/07/26/stalin-was-a-greater-fascist-than-bandera-or-mussolini/

https://www.slideshare.net/prime_metin/animal-farm-17943780

References used by Gamboa:

https://www.history.com/topics/russia/russian-revolution

http://links.org.au/russian-revolutions-1917-paul-le-blanc

https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/george-orwell-s-message-in-the-novel-448825

https://www.achievementfirst.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Ideas-8.pdf

References used by Geronimo:

https://twitter.com/pinkpolitical/status/1001824330446237698?lang=ga

https://www.bbc.com/news/av/world-us-canada-53261067

https://www.republicreport.org/2020/ten-reasons-trump-is-the-most-corrupt-president-in-u-s-history/

References used by Montemayor:

Human rights abuses of the Marcos dictatorship. (2020, December 16). Retrieved January 04, 2021, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_rights_abuses_of_the_Marcos_dictatorship

(n.d.). Retrieved January 04, 2021, from https://study.com/academy/answer/what-made-napoleon-a-great-leader-in-animal-farm.html

Three important leadership traits from Ferdinand Marcos. (n.d.). Retrieved January 04, 2021, from https://www.fef.org.ph/gerardo-sicat/three-important-leadership-traits-from-ferdinand-marcos/

Arillo, C. (2015, November 13). Marcos's unmatched legacy: Hospitals, schools and other infrastructures: Cecilio Arillo. Retrieved January 04, 2021, from https://businessmirror.com.ph/2015/11/13/marcoss-unmatched-legacy-hospitals-schools-and-other-infrastructures/

Animal Farm. (n.d.). Retrieved January 04, 2021, from https://www.enotes.com/homework-help/how-does-napoleon-from-book-animal-farm-contribute-129633

How Napoleon Takes and Maintains Control Of Animal Farm in George Orwell's Novel. (n.d.). Retrieved January 04, 2021, from https://www.bartleby.com/essay/How-Napoleon-Takes-and-Maintains-Control-Of-P3JR8GAZTJ

M. (2017, February 12). ANIMAL FARM. Nerdy254. https://kathmandupost.com/opinion/2017/12/06/dialectics-of-dictatorship. (2017, December 6).

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burritodetodo · 4 years

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Burrito’s Guide To Survive Coronavirus Quarantine

We got to keep social distance (1 or 2 meters each other) or stay home during coronavirus outbreak so I thought I can share with y’all some things I’m gonna watch or do doing quarantine (this is a very long post, REBLOGS ARE VERY MUCH APPRECIATED!).

BUT FIRST SOME RULES:

Wash your hands: do it for 20 seconds or a while, but ALWAYS do it. It prevents the virus from spreading. If you don’t have sanitizer, water and soap! The cheapest and best ally against the disease.

Buy everything you need: if you can, try to buy stuff so you can stay some days at home. If the place is crowded, go back home and come later when it’s more empty. Same as medicine.

You can go for a walk: stay at home all day can be overwhelming for your mental health, but unless the goverment puts a curfew or gets strict about it you can go walk outside for a while always respecting the 1 or 2 meters from other people and without making contact (chatting) with other people. This ain’t my rule, a CDC professional says. DON’T go visit your friends or to crowded places such as bars, restaurants, shoppings, etc. If you want to buy something, ask for delivery or take away.

If you have coronavirus sympthoms (high fever, diarrhea, cough, feeling tired, breath difficulties) DON’T GO TO THE HOSPITAL YET, CALL TO YOUR PUBLIC HEALTH ORGANISATION OR WHATEVER YOU GOT AND THEY’LL TREAT YOU.

(credits to whoever made this meme)

SO YOUR LIFE IS ON QUARANTINE

Let’s say your boss or your school told you can stay at home. Okay then, you gotta prepare for some days inside *Isolation by John Lennon plays in the distance*. The first thing you think is you have to prepare a batch of series and movies to watch in order to kill some time. I’m gonna recommend you some you can find on VOD or cable, if you don’t have it don’t worry because I got you covered!

Infinity Train: a yet two seasons saga about people who got to face their problems aboard an endless train. The protagonists are joined by creatures who have different nature and help them, or not, to acknowledge their issues and leave the train. It’s on CN, it will continue on HBO Max.

The Owl House: a teen girl who daydream a lot was going to be sent to a down-to-earth camp but then she crosses a portal to the Boiling Isles, a magical world where she is taken care by a powerful Owl witch/saleswoman and her adorable demon. Lots of fantasy, some action scenes and many many puns. It’s on Disney Channel, it’ll be on Disney+ in some weeks.

Primal: Genndy Tartakovsky delighted us with the alliance of a caveman and a dinosaur, two rivals in a wild world who ally after facing a devastating event. It IS brutal and beatiful, has no dialogue and keeps you watching closely. Five final episodes are set to premiere this year. It’s on Adult Swim, maybe on HBO Max.

Tuca and Bertie: for the critics, one of 2019 best shows. For Netflix, a show that had to be cut off because the studio unionized. Two friends in their late 20s face changes in their lives: from living with a boyfriend and plan a life to look a way to stay sober and get a job. Deals with trauma, ptsd, anxiety and more harsh moments very well. In fact, the creator is a vital part of Bojack Horseman! It’s on Netflix.

Aggretsuko: red pandas are cute eh? But what about a antopomorphic red panda who releases her anger and frustrations by singing at a karaoke? This awesome comedy by Sanrio & Netflix is one of anime’s big hits lately. Like T&B, has a good handle of adult problems but not going too deep just to not break the comedy. You can watch it on Netflix.

Regular Show: yeah-uuuuhhhh! Eight seasons, a movie, five Halloween specials and some others. The adventures of a racoon and a blue jay with their co-workers/friends that relies on psychadellia and 80s and 90s nostalgia. It begins good, gets better, then lowers the quality (they were producing the movie at the same time tho, give some credit) and with and after the movie ends awesome. It’s on CN web, dunno if on Hulu (US only) and proably on HBO Max.

Evangelion: it’s a classic at this point, but addictive to me because I end rewatching the series or the final movie many times. A post apocalyptic future where the world has to deal with strange creatures known as the Angels and a boy with lots of traumas has to get on a mecha to save the humankind. All the characters have traumas and issues, the interaction between them or the action makes it worth. The End of Evangelion is a movie that ends the unfinished series. Warning: at some point it becomes very twisted and there are scenes which are too much violent. Viewer disclosure etc. It’s on Netflix worldwide.

Steven Universe & SU Future: this is the tale of the gem boy who ends a galactical tyranny and brings democracy to the universe. A acclaimed show that broke through many topics like gender, identity, ptsd, relationships and many more. Besides it’s got the best scores of the Milky Way and beyond thanks to the talent of Rebecca Sugar, Aivi Tran and Surasshu. And the actors and acrtresses! I don’t forget the movie, a musical that is an introduction to the epilogue: Shippuden Future. The show is available on CN and will be on HBO Max. Worldwide? No news.

Adventure Time: something that began as an innocent boy and a magical dog having adventures in a post apocalyptic world turns into the journey of Finn Metens from childhood to almost adulthood. There is a lot of fantasy and comedy you enjoy, but there are dark moments and serious ones through S6 that find a balance with early seasons form S7 to the finale. It also has great music, memorable moments and colaborations. And guess what? There is going to be a special set to premiere on HBO Max in some weeks! You got plenty of time to catch up or rewatch before that on CN or only (!!) S5 on Netflix.

Final Space: a dude tries to save the universe with their friends, where we can find his love interest, a cat-man and his kitten son, a intersexual alien, an AI then robot that is the best of them, two particular siblings and an annoying bot that prevents insanity that makes you insane. Crazy adventures in space, lots of situations, sadness, an evil smol bean who is a space emperor, a dude who looks for revenge, space deities that can destroy the universe. Is this a lot or info? It is not, because there is more and you can watch it on TBS, Adult Swim and Netflix (the world except US).

Rick and Morty: the most powerful, smartest human in the universe has adventures with his grandson. It’s awesome, but has a very toxic fanbase. Anyway, you can enjoy it on Adult Swim or Netflix (which is up to date!) and the rest of S4 is set someday.

Bojack Horseman: a Hollywood satire about human relationships, fame, traumas with a pour of comedy. Alongside the previous series, the best adult animation of the decade. Sadly cut by Netflix because the studio unionized (see T&B), said by both the creator and Aaron Paul. You can watch the six amazing seasons on that platform.

I’m not an animated movies guy, but here are three I really like and you can watch:

Porco Rosso: a handsome Italian combat aviator turned magically to a pig has a face off with an American pilot hired by pirates to get rid of him before WWII in Fascist Italy. It’s entertaining and, like every Ghibli movie, nice to watch. It’s on Netflix and will be on HBO Max for US.

Lego Batman Movie: Batman is depressed and has to get over it. It’s wacky and has lots of comedy. Plus Will Arnett is top 3 Batman. On Netflix (Latinamerica).

Spiderverse: Oscar winner movie about your friendly neighbour Peter Parker Miles Morales. Miles sees Spiderman die and feels bad after being transfered to a private school. Then a radioactive spider from a Fisk compound bites Miles and he’s Spiderman... among other dimensions’ Spiderpeople: Gwen, Peni, Peter Parker, Noir and Peter Porker. It’s visually amazing. On US it’s on Netflix (I guess), on Latinamerica on HBO.

Some interesting live actions I watched lately

Atlanta: Donald Glover is Earn, a dude who struggles to find a job for her baby girld and sees an opportunity when his cousin, Paper Boi, has a hit and uses him to make his cos famous. Sometimes a comedy, sometimes a social satire with touches of drama. And all protagonists are now big shots, like Zazie Beetz, Brian Tyree Henry or Lakeith Stanfield. There are two seasons and two seasons set for 2021 (2022 possible beacuse of coronavirus). It’s on FX, Hulu (US) and Netflix (world)

Avenue 5: this is brand new. On 2060 space cruises are a thing, and one cruise (the Avenue 5) has an accident that leaves the crew and passangers stranded for years. The captain (Hugh Laurie) has to solve this shit with a bunch of incompetent crew, bosses like Judd (Josh Gad), except one female engeneer who is very smart. Lots of crazy things happen in this series from the creator behind Veep. It’s on HBO (it’s free in the US!).

Peaky Blinders: it has some years but damn it’s epic. A gang from Birmingham makes their way to the top during the late 1910s after the Great War and extends through the 1920s. S5 is right in the ascension of fascism in Britain. ALL THE CAST acts spectacular, names like Cillian Murphy, Tom Hardy, Anna Taylor-Joy and a long etc. But my fave is Paul Anderson, that ultra violent junkie Arthur Shelby is splendid, then is Tommy and aunt Pol, the baddest badass woman in Britain. Blinders is going to have seven seasons, there are two left. You can watch it on BBC or Netflix.

Sex Education: speaking of Britain, excellent teen comedy. Horny, doubtful teenagers going through those hard years. Stories of sex (duh!), abuse situations, abortion, there are gay relationships either, Gillian Anderson! It’s on Netflix, go go go!

Watchmen: despite not having Alan Moore on board, Damien Lindeloff did a tremendous job with the comic. Way better and less misleading than Zack Snyder’s 2009 film, Watchmen is again at the gates of the world’s end (like today) and handles the problem of racism and white supremacy quite well. Just 9 episodes, but worth to watch. On HBO.

CAOS: Sabrina the Teenage Witch is over. Warner and Netflix made a revival of the Archie Comics character and brought her to XXI Century. But gorier, hornier, dark and magical than the nice 90s sitcom. Sabrina Spellman goes from a doubtful teen who has to decide if she has to be a witch or a powerless woman to rule Hell. How she does it? Find out on Netflix! Note: S1 and 2 take some episodes to start properly. Don’t get bored too easy.

There are A LOT MORE to recommend and I make a list: Harley Quinn (DC Universe), OK KO (Hulu -US only-), House MD, Young Justice (DC Universe/Netflix), Ken Burns’ documentaries (Netflix), Titans (DCU), Over The Garden Wall (CN), Seis Manos (Netflix), Thundercats Roar (CN), Easy (Netflix), GLOW (Netflix), Star Trek Discovery (CBS, Netflix) and Picard (CBS, Amazon Prime), etc.

- You named cool shows, but I’m not from the United States or I don’t have a subscription to (insert VOD here) because I can’t afford it

- Glad you asked, I have the answer here

Introducing Stremio. It’s an open source platform where you can watch shows, movies or even live TV on Windows, Linux, Apple or Android. You create an account, install some addons and start looking for what you want to watch.

Stremio is based on torrents, you should install addons from many known torrent sites. So maybe you find an old show, but there aren’t many seeds to watch. And it could be frustraiting, so make sure there are people sharing so you can watch it.

You can download Stremio here and check the FAQs which is very clear.

NOTE: Stremio is note quite “clean” way to watch, but if you do please support the shows you watch by posting, commenting about them, making memes, thanking the creators and crew for their work, buying merchandise if you can. They put a lot to make the shows we love, let’s give ‘em back that love and effort.

You’re tired of the same music, the same movies or need to leave something to make company? There is Vaughn Live, a streaming page where are lots of channels with movies and series on strem (not VOD). For example, there is a channel that streams Adventure Time, other Regular Show, other Sci-Fi shows, another with DBZ and so on. Take in count that if the channel has +70 viewers, the free access is cut and if you want to watch it you have to pay.

En Vaughn también hay canales en español, como Simpsonmanía, Dragon Ball, Futurama, dibujos viejos y muchísimo más. Anyway, go to https://vaughn.live/ and enjoy yourselves!

Y hablando de canales en español, pueden ir a SeriesLan donde está el mayor reservorio conocido de series animadas de entre 1960 a 2010 en español latino. Pueden encontrar tesoros desde Don Gato, los Halcones Galácticos o Street Sharks a Flapjack y Mechas XLR. Otra alternativa para que pasen el rato.

Some interesting facts:

Epic Games releases a free game per week in their store. This week will be two games. You can check in https://www.epicgames.com

Steam has good prices on games and some free ones. There even is the latest Football Manager for free until March 25th. Check on https://store.steampowered.com/

If you’re interested,

I got this playlist I made on Spotify

with songs I liked in more than one year. More than 1200 songs.

And that’s pretty much it! You got resources for a lot of days, 14 initially since that’s the quarantine time in my country. Remember: obey the indications of the Health authorities, this is no time to play the “fuck the goverment” game. We will overcome this pandemy together, helping and caring for each other. That’s why I did this guide, to keep your minds busy in these tough times! Wash your hands, keep social distance, stay at home, go outside if necessary and have some patience please. This has been a PSA.

Stay strong!

Burrito

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lamaestramendez · 4 years

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en route to fascism

Ok, class.

I am angry. I am words I cannot use on this blog out of the very remote possibility my actual students google me.

Our 45th president (henceforth known as 45 because I refuse to give him the name recognition that he wants) is a fascist pig. Let me teach you about this terminology so that you understand my full meaning.

Let’s begin with “pig” as it’s a more commonly known term than “fascist.”

Pigs, also known in English as hogs, swine, etc. Let’s look at my favorite the Oxford English Dictionary for a literal definition.

Notice that the 1st definition in the noun section is a literal definition, “an omnivorous domesticated hoofed mammal with sparse bristly hair and a flat snout for rooting in the soil, kept for its meat.” I’ve been told that pigs are delightful creatures with higher intelligence than many other small mammals. That is NOT my meaning. In defense of the pig, I share share some pictures of its beauty for you, class, to enjoy.

Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/skeeze-272447/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=1507208">skeeze</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=1507208">Pixabay</a>

Look how clean they are! Want some more cuteness before we get metaphorical? Check out this pig swimming with a bird!

Image by <a href="https://pixabay.com/users/larsen9236-47917/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=171908">Lisa Larsen</a> from <a href="https://pixabay.com/?utm_source=link-attribution&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=image&utm_content=171908">Pixabay</a>

Okay, now to all pig-loving friends, I beg your forgiveness. I cannot come up with better word choice. Pigs are not despicable creatures. I’m even somewhat fond of them. However, the only other terms that convey my full meaning when I say “fascist pig”, are inappropriate for my real life students to be reading when they inadvertently google me and stumble upon this post. I love them too much to expose them to that kind of English.

So when I say “fascist pig,” I am not referring to the many, many good qualities of the wild boar’s descendent. I am referring to those characteristics which humans find repugnant because we are wired differently than pigs are.

Yucky traits I am referring to with the term “fascist pig.” (Feel free to skip this section if you have a delicate stomach).:

Pigs, for instance, do not sweat, so they cool off by covering themselves in mud. Clever idea, right? Modern humans from my culture wouldn’t do that because the mud would dry out and stick to your hair; there could be something nasty in it; and dry mud under your nails is unpleasant. We also sweat, so mud as a cooling technique is rendered unnecessary.

Pigs are not picky eaters. My dad is the son of a large animal vet. When I was a kid, he told me about how farmers have pigs go into a cornfield after the cows have finished the post-harvest leftovers because the pigs will eat whatever unprocessed corn is left from the cow’s droppings. Needless to say, the image stuck what me.

Due to the rooting through excrement habit, pigs stink.

Now on to the word, fascist. Following is a screenshot of the Oxford English Dictionary’s definition for the term “fascism.”

The screenshot demonstrates that the definition of fascism is, “an authoritarian and nationalistic right-wing system of government and social organization.” The next line explains a way the term is used generally to mean “extreme authoritarian, oppressive, or intolerant views or practices.”

Examples of 45′s fascist behaviors:

Children separated from their families in concentration camps. I have second-hand knowledge of this. The Gestapo Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) locked up a friend of mine for 45 days. He was taken from his uncle. He was 5 years old. Here’s his story: https://youtu.be/Xa6NYkQWF4I . It’s also been documented by many reputable news sources. https://apnews.com/9794de32d39d4c6f89fbefaea3780769

Children and adults placed in hieleras (ice boxes/coolers). I know people from multiple Central American countries who have suffered this at the hands of ICE. What happens is , the family turns themselves into ICE to apply for asylum. ICE locks them up and turns the temperature down to just above freezing. ICE lets them go within 3 days. There is no benefit to these families making up this story. Being from different countries, they did not know one another before telling me the exact same story. Here’s a similar story that happened to another family from a reputable news source: https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/trump-s-family-separation-policy-never-really-ended-why-ncna1025376

Flint, Michigan still does not have clean water. Yes that’s more in the hands of state government officials but I don’t see 45 using any political clout to help mitigate the situation. https://detroit.cbslocal.com/2020/07/30/michigan-supreme-court-rules-flint-class-action-can-proceed-over-lead-in-water/

45 is violating court orders in regards to DACA. ***Side note: Just like Andrew Jackson. Can we please take him off the $20 bill and replace him with Harriet Tubman already???*** https://www.npr.org/2020/07/28/896334928/trump-administration-will-reject-new-daca-applications-administration-official-s

Journalists are arrested and manhandled by law enforcement when covering protests which is a clear violation of the 1st amendment. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/arts/television/cnn-arrest.html

He’s attacking his own citizens. https://www.npr.org/sections/live-updates-protests-for-racial-justice/2020/07/27/895713277/tear-gas-fired-on-protesters-again-during-overnight-protests-in-portland

He thinks Kim Jong Un is awesome. https://www.npr.org/2017/05/02/526520042/6-strongmen-trumps-praised-and-the-conflicts-it-presents

He’s trying to lengthen our border wall - again, shades of North Korea. https://www.npr.org/2020/05/25/861837314/trumps-border-wall-would-go-through-laredos-historic-downtown

140,000 deaths from COVID keep getting minimized. Steps to mitigate the pandemic keep getting minimized. https://www.npr.org/2020/07/19/892787298/some-young-people-have-the-sniffles-trump-downplays-the-coronavirus-severity

I’m starting to work myself up into a state with this list. In order to preserve my sanity, I’m skipping the rest of the reasons and going to the most salient one.

45 is advocating for a delay of the 2020 presidential election. See this screenshot from twitter?

Delay the election?????????? A delay would inevitably extend the length of 45′s current term, no matter the election’s outcome. That’s not how a republic works. It’s how a fascist who is trying to make it look like he’s operating in the people’s best interests, steals absolute power for himself.

Post-Nazi Germany, Germans often said, “We didn’t see it coming.” I say that is a bunch of baloney. I say, Hitler’s contemporaries did not WANT to see what was happening, so they lied to themselves to make their own reality more comfortable.

You should not be comfortable right now. You should be sick with worry.

Get the word out about the evil that is happening in America. Our own citizens are victims of 45′s fearmongering. Do not let them be comfortable with his actions. If you are silent, you are complicit. Do not be complicit. A true American pulls all the stops to make this country that we LOVE a better place. Staying silent in the face of fascism has the opposite effect.

Oh, and in case you forget, today’s learning objective is to understand why I am correct when I describe 45 as a fascist pig.

#black lives matter #speak up #america #usa #the united states #patriotism #patriotism not nationalism #love your country #fascism #abolish ice #melt ice #daca #no ban no wall #families belong together

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nightcoremoon · 4 years

Text

I like horror.

(this post has screenshots of horror media)

I don't like 3edge5u gore porn that ~looks so realistic because tom savini used a real pig~, paints the walls with blood, and makes you find entertainment in watching characters you care about die.

I hate friday the 13th

I hate nightmare on elm street

I hate dawn of the dead

I hate hellraiser

I hate halloween

I hate final destination

I hate the hills have eyes

I hate texas chainsaw massacre

I hate hereditary

I hate escape room

I hate unfriended

I HATE anderson's resident evils past the first

I hate the conjuring LITERALLY SHUT THE FUCK UP ABOUT THE CONJURING

I hate fucking birdbox

I hate most stephen king adaptations (except for reiner's misery)

I hate most american remakes of japanese films (except for verbinski's ring)

I hate everything by blumhouse productions (every single goddamn horror movie they made is a billion dollar steaming pile of shit and only their horror comedies are worth anything)

(saw is a guilty pleasure of mine because it's just so off the walls insane and cartoony if you go by "everyone dies except cary elwes and matthew passmore" because they're the only famous people in the series except for tobin- because well he IS saw- and chester b because he's famous for other reasons)

I hate gory jumpscarey horror. it's shit.

but with that being said:

I fucking love dead space.

It is literally my favorite FRANCHISE.

Not just video game: favorite fucking franchise.

My first tattoo is gonna be the marker (and my second will be rainbow dash's cutie mark right next to it and my third will be a tramp stamp that just says "this machine kills fascists" in block letters), the first games I cracked into when I first got an xbox 360 were dead space (up against bioshock, the orange box, fallout 3, elder scrolls: oblivion, and gta iv) because it was the coolest horror concept I'd ever seen. "shoot off the limbs and not the heads? THATS AWESOME!". I even loved dead space 3 even though it sucked and killed the series. I read the comics, watched the movies, played the multiplayer, love every game in the series yes even the puzzle game and the rail shooter (the iPhone game is legit amazing). only part I don't like is the awakened dlc because that's dumb. But dead space 1&2 are in my top 10 faves, 2 in the top 3 (behind resident evil 4 and tales of symphonia, of course).

But sheena, I hear you say,

I thought you hated gory jumpscarey horror, and that's exactly what dead space is! It's 3edge5u and has incredible graphics even for 2008 (!) and literally paints the walls with blood and guts, and you watch at least four beloved character deaths over the course of the series!

and you're right

clearly I don't mind gore in horror since there's gore in dead space, resident evil, silent hill, the evil within, cry of fear, and doom 3.

clearly I don't mind jumpscares since there's jumpscares in dead space, cry of fear, five nights at freddy's, and spooky's house of jumpscares (fuck you that's what I call it).

clearly I don't mind edginess, realistic effects, overuse of blood, and character death either.

so what gives?

and I gotta say

idk

I don't know why I love dead space even though it's just system shock 3 but resident evil 4 with scientology and 90% of the mainstream horror staples I hate. but clearly there's something that dead space does differently from horror films.

maybe

just maybe

horror as film is overly predictable and follows traditional story arcs we've all seen a zillion times and there's no influence on the outcome no matter how many times you watch, it's just the same bloody mess each time and that's why I have no desire to watch any of them again because there's no ethical way to derive entertainment from watching people die in the same way over and over again.

perhaps I like dead space and horror games as a medium a lot more because the control and the direct integration into the game as a factor of immersion plugs it deeper into my brain juices and lets me actively enjoy it as a participant (even though I love horror music so that argument holds no water)

...

*avgn voice* or maybe it's just because schlocky sensationalist horror movies suck ass, merely appealing to the lowest common denominator recycling the same shit to keep audiences happy and make billions of dollars off of loud noises and a red filter over a cgi monster.

ffs I hate highschool of the dead because it sucks but it's still better than 90% of horror movies because there's actual meaning and heart behind all the panty shots and jiggling titties and skimpy underwear on junior high school girls which is you know still weird but like... japan be japan when it comes to anime and that's just how it be; it's still entertaining though and very gory and with high stakes and lots of character death but HOTD is still eons better than the similar walking dead became, partly because hotd didn't wanna go past the source because the author died but TWD was like EH, FUCK IT, KILL EVERYONE. and anyway this isn't a criticism of japan as a culture at all, just at the men in charge of anime, because japanese FILMS are incredible. their horror is so much more compelling than american and it really shows in the side by side comparisons (except for gore verbinski's version of the ring which was... better in some ways. nakata hideo sama please don't kill me for saying this, it's just that gore's an amazing director from a punk rock background- literally he was in a band and he was like "hey bad religion and nofx can I do your music videos" and they were like hell yeah bro- and only it makes sense that he would make a better horror movie). and I can say with no amount of irony that highschool of the dead is a better zombie series than george romero is physically capable of producing (well, outside of call of duty black ops).

if you disagree...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯ hey it's your opinion man

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darrowsrising · 5 years

Note

(this is about your previous two post and i fear gonna be several ask long, i apologize for it but i wanted to express my unasked opinion😅) i don’t think there should be necessarily a reason for her seeking power and an important position. First of all, she is born in a society (and i mean it without capital letter) that consider all those without power and prestige Pixies. So first of all she grew up knowing that she had to get the best position she could afford (an high one considering...

...her brilliance). Then she became a Reformer, because she wanted to change negative things in her Society, but there’s a gap between being a Reformer and a revolutionary. She is not Darrow. We don’t know what she expected without the war (because when she was Octavia’s lancer nobody would have guessed a war like that was coming) but what if she wanted to be Sovereign because it was a childhood dream just as Cassius’ one was to be an olympic? being ambitious is not being bad or good. It was...

...It was after she considered darrow’s cause, after golden son, that she decided there was the need for a deeper change. i love her and i think that the best thing about characters in RR is their humanity, flows and all. Yes, she was marrying cassius to protect her family, and she wanted to do good things for the others, this is for sure, but humans are allowed to want things for themselves without shame. This doesn’t mean she is like Nero or Adrius. (And now that my rant has ended, i want...

...(And now that my rant has ended, i want to specify that this is not meaning hate towards Virginia, who’s one of my all time favorite, or (more important) towards the opinion you expressed. On the contrary, i really like reading your rant post since you always provide excellent points. hope i don’t annoy you)

Ok, let’s establish right now that opinions other than mines DO NOT BOTHER OR ANNOY ME. What bothers and annoys me are haters and self-rightous arseholes. What I can’t tolerate under no circumstace are sexism, racisim, lgbt+ - phobia, bullying and people telling me how I should live my life.

I have literally begged people to send me asks with their random thoughts about the RR series for...2 or 3 years now. Since I havemade this blog in any case. Do not worry, you do not annoy me. You’re always welcome to state your opinion.

Now, to delve into the answer:

People are totally valid if they want something for themselves, especially careers. VIrginia is as well. But, let’s be clear on one thing - in my previous posts I argued against Virginia wanting power for selfish reasons/for the sake of power. It’s one thing to have no specific reason as to why you want a position of power (you’re good at it so you might as well do it) and quite another to want power for yourself.

The society (no capital letters) doesn’t consider powerless and prestigeless people Pixies. They consider them Bronzies like Sevro and Fitchner. Pixies are entitled Golds who never worked a day in their lives to deserve the power they have, but they abuse it like they own it. Pixies are not Peerless Scarreds or Bronzies, they indulge too much in very expensive vices and thus they get addicted (Pearl Clubs, caviar and champagne, drugs etc). Tactus and Apollonius are borderline Pixies, because they indulge in vices to the extreme, but they are never overwhelmed by them and they are fine warriors compared to the soft Golds that die first in the Iron Rain, not out of unluck but because they are not skilled.

I think that Virginia’s open stance as a Reformer even though she is an Augustus and a protegee of Octavia au Lune was not only bold af, but a statement. She pushed openly for reformist legislation to help other Colors, she never hid her political colors. That is dangerous to do in the Core, but she did it nonetheless. I agree to some degree she did it for herself - she wanted to carve her own path. You can’t tell me that she had to do that, she didn’t. She is the ArchGovernor’s daughter, she could have easily got into one of Nero’s projects, but instead she rebelled. We all know what Nero thinks of Reformers, but this is his daughter. He was clearly more disgusted with Adrius’ media empire buissness than her political agenda. Still, her stance is very far away from his views. Not only that, but she could have done just about anything else with her life (buissness, charity, military career, etc). But thing is, she believed in that stuff and she showed it. She is a genius at politics, she used her abilities to push for fairer treatment of Colors in the bloodydamn Core. Of course, she idealised things and the Reformer agenda is still a milder kind of slavery, but I think that her reasons for craving Octavia’s power are totally different from Nero’s. Nero wanted it for himself, to be just another tyrant. Virginia wanted to Reform the Society, though. Because that was what she felt was right, in a world that doesn’t care at all about what’s fair or not when it comes to other Colors than Gold (and not much when it comes to Gold either).

I also said in my previous post that she learnt the answer after Darrow revealed to her who he is...she felt betrayed, because she felt she didn;t know the man she loved, but she would have shot him in the tunnels if she thought him a threat. The fact that she didn’t says that he was right. Her feelings aside, the Society was too putrid and had to be broken and re-built. It took her time to understand what was Darrow’s plan with the Rising. But that’s fair, as she had to be sure that the plan included a rebuilding, a better future for everyone, not an upturning of the pyramid.

I said that she had to change her views and she did after she came to understand Darrow and the Rising better. I have never said that that happened in Golden Son while being Octavia’s protegee, it obviously happended at the end while she was away from Darrow and through out Morning Star. But that doesn’t mean she just wanted power for herself or that she just wanted power for no reason at all, just an ambitious career path. Cassius wanted to be an Olympic Knight to protect the Compact, the Sovereign and serve the Society - the status quo Society, fascist shitpit. Virginia wanted to reform it (kinda like Romulus did in those 10 years as Sovereign of the Rim Dominion). And she did that without knowing about the Rising or the upcoming war. She actively pushed to change it. Just because she is not Darrow/a revolutionnary doesn’t mean she didn’t care about the lowColors enough to want a better/fairer life for them and actively pursue that on a more peaceful path. She is ambitious and it’s normal to set eyes on such a high position as Sovereign, but...a childhood dream? Sure, sounds plausible...but there is more to it than just that. She surely wanted to be a Reformist Sovereign,

It wasn’t that dramatic of a change in my opinion - how she allied with the Rising. She was halfway there. She comes to agree to war - to build, you need to destroy first. And she gave up most of her power so she wouldn’t be tempted to abuse it. Everyone, except Darrow, expected her to want that throne very, very badly and abuse power. She didn’t want it and she is walking Silenius’ Stiletto. No way she went from ‘career path’ to ‘some measly change’ to ‘full on Demokratic Sovereign of the Solar Republic’. From her reformist views to her stance for demokracy when even her closest allies didn’t like it one bit, it can’t be that much.

In Golden Son, when Nero invites the Reformers to the table and offers them a chance at...well, reforming in exchange for help against Octavia, she is hopeful, she still wants to reform the Society and she is not under Octavia’s wing anymore. It wasn’t for show or just plain rebellion or whatever. She did crave Octavia’s power, but her stance as reformer is not capricious. And I can;t believe that her wishes for Sovereigncy were capricious either.

I know it sounds weird for me to defend Reformer!Virginia. I love and adore Demokract!VIrginia way more and I am happy af that she got over her reformist views...she herself looks at them like I look at my teenage self. But I think that the reformer current was part of what made her who she is in Dark Age. In Dark Age we come to understand how she sees other Colors...I mean, Faust tortured her son and she feels no small amount of pity for what Golds, her people, did to him. She has huge respect for Holiday and Theodora. I know there were 10 years, but Romulus is also a Reformist and look at what he did. His regime is still slavery, even if it is more merciful. He is obviously cruler than she ever was, but still, her seeing another approach, the best one for all Colors, even if it’s hard as fuck, and painstakingly walking that Stiletto for 10 years tells me one thing - it wasn’t a world-turner for her to change. I always though her stance as bold and ballsy and a breath of fresh air compared to all the fascist pigs in the Core. I knew she could do better and was a just a step or so away from that.

So, craving Octavia’s power...good? bad? I can’t say. But it wasn’t a career for her, it was an ideal - she’ll have all this power and change things how she wants them. When you look at Silenius’ Stiletto, you have to laugh at the thought, but truth is, at that moment, it sounded good. Too good. No more debating silly Senators and Politicos, no more sucking it up to Octavia (who apparently made her wait for hours until her meditation eneded) to pass laws that grant some Colors a few basic human rights and some resources (Jove knows they have enough of the latter anyway).

Of course, you are entitled to your opinion and I’m entitled to mine as this is more of a thing of interpretation. I’m not trying to change your mind here, so we can agree to disagree, of course. That’s just how I see things...

Hope I’m making sense...

Howl on!

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aion-rsa · 2 years

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Doctor Who: Ranking the Dalek Stories – Which is the Best?

https://ift.tt/3Fgz7zj

“… hideous, machine-like creatures. They are legless, moving on a round base. They have no human features. A lens on a flexible shaft acts as an eye, arms with mechanical grips for hands.” Terry Nation’s script for ‘The Survivors’ (aka ‘The Daleks’ Part Two)

The Daleks, along with Judge Dredd, are fictional fascists beloved by a wide audience. At their heart is a combination of terrifying concept – Nazis who always return (imagine) – with a triumph of design. The greatest Dalek stories tap into this uneasy alliance.

A quick summary of the thinking behind this article:

A. We thought people would enjoy it.

B. If a story features the Daleks in a small cameo role, I’ve not included it (for example, ‘Frontier in Space’, ‘The Wedding of River Song’, ‘The Pilot’). I’ve removed ‘The Day of the Doctor’ and ‘The Time of the Doctor’: it seems silly to rate them based on their Dalek content.

The rankings are not based purely on how entertaining I find the stories, but also on how the Daleks are used and developed, the Doctor’s response to them and what that says (within both the larger context of the show’s history and the stories surrounding it). As this only covers television stories, I should mention that I think the best Dalek story of all time is the Big Finish audioplay ‘Jubilee’ by Rob Shearman, which you should know as little as possible about before listening to.

25. Planet of the Daleks

Having not seen this until its DVD release, I don’t have any residual affection for this story from childhood (unlike other stories on this list; I thought ‘Resurrection of the Daleks’ was great when I was nine).

‘Planet’comes across as lazy now. To be fair to Terry Nation, no one could rewatch episodes in 1972, and so his first script for the show since 1965 drew heavily on his old stories. The result is a rote traipse through the familiar.

It’s not without positives: The Doctor’s grief and rage when he thinks Jo is dead is very well acted, although the oft quoted “Courage isn’t just a matter of not being frightened” line works better in isolation than in the actual scene, which feels like HR has invited Jon Pertwee in to do a motivational seminar.

24. Destiny of the Daleks

Terry Nation’s final script for Doctor Who clashed with Script Editor Douglas Adams. Adams tried to zest up what he regarded as tired Nation standards (including radiation poisoning, overambitious monsters, a rare mineral, a quest, things named after their primary characteristic, invisible monsters, jungle planets, aggressive vegetation, flaky Daleks, unfortunate comedy episodes and plagues). The lack of budget is obvious, with knackered Dalek props and an ill-fitting Davros mask (actor David Gooderson also cannot lift Davros’ generic villain dialogue).

Some jokes land (‘Ooh look! Rocks!’) as does some of the Mild Peril (Episode 3’s cliff-hanger especially), but the story about inertia reflects its subject. K9 doesn’t appear because Nation didn’t want him to distract from the Daleks, then reduces them to impotent robots in thrall to their creator anyway.

23. Daleks in Manhattan/ Evolution of the Daleks

It’s not that this re-treads ideas from ‘Evil of the Daleks’, or that the science strains credulity even by Doctor Who standards, it’s that this story feels strangely perfunctory despite its ambitions. This is a shame because there are some great moments in the first episode where the Daleks plot, skulk and lament. It feels salvageable, but Russell T. Davies was ill and unable to perform his usual rewrites on the scripts, and the result feels like ticking off items on a Tenth Doctor Bingo card.

We do get the mental image of the Cult of Skaro sneaking around 1920s New York trying to kidnap a pig though, so you can’t say that it’s all bad.

22. The Chase

‘The Chase’ starts off well and cosy. Terry Nation sets the initial action on a desert planet called Aridius where some aliens from RADA are menaced by a giant ballbag. The regulars are all enjoying themselves. Then we getawkward comedy skits, a poorly judged trip to the Marie Celeste, and a sequence in a haunted house where everyone is stupid for some reason. The momentum never fully recovers from this.

Giving the Daleks time travel to pursue the TARDIS is an important development, and it’s a fantastic set for the interior, but the middle of this story lets it down.

21. Resurrection of the Daleks

From this point on, using the Daleks required approval by Terry Nation or his estate. Nation had been unsatisfied by other writers’ version of the Daleks, which is quite the take, and refused to allow another writer to tackle them until a convention appearance changed his mind. Nation’s feedback on an Eric Saward script meant that the story was revised and became overfull to satisfy both writers’ visions.

A delay in production gave time for streamlining, but nonetheless ‘Resurrection’ is messy and ultimately doesn’t seem very interested in the Daleks (focussing again on Davros and Saward’s mercenary characters). Indeed, the Daleks here seem even weaker than in ‘Destiny’, relying on mercenaries to take over Davros’ prison ship and being insecure enough to give them little Dalek decorations on their helmets.

In its defence, Matthew Robinson directs it with gusto, somewhere in there is a critique of its own violence, and Tegan’s departure is excellent.

20. Revolution of the Daleks

This is not a story that uses the Daleks on more than one level, and yet also possibly the nearest thing its era gets to political satire. We have someone using the remains of a Dalek to build security drones, associating a representation of fascism with law enforcement and connecting it to government, but the story moves away from this idea into cloned Dalek mutants hijack the drones and kill people, and then the original Daleks turn up to kill them because they’re not genetically pure. The Doctor’s solution to the remaining Daleks is good, but while this one doesn’t do anything outrageously wrong, it doesn’t do anything especially right either.

19. Resolution

Likewise, this story is just sort of there, like Shed Seven or thrush. The Daleks have a new form of controlling people, with the mutant wearing them like the title creatures from ‘Planet of the Spiders’ (as strong an image as it was in 1975) and the DIY Dalek shell mirrors the Doctor’s rebuilding of the sonic screwdriver.

The Dalek also demonstrates its firepower quite impressively, but contrasting this with ‘Dalek’ shows what’s missing: this doesn’t have anything like the personal stakes of that story, and so we have some pulpy and familiar thrills but little depth.

18. Into the Dalek

The main job of ‘Into the Dalek’ isn’t getting under the skin of the Daleks, but setting up the Series 8 arcs. We have a good Dalek, which turns out to have a damaged inhibitor allowing it to feel compassion, and a Fantastic Voyage-style journey through its interior. This lacks existential dread (in contrast to Clara being trapped inside a Dalek during ‘The Witch’s Familiar’), but Ben Wheatley directs the Daleks in combat extremely well.

It’s very busy, ambitious and patchy: the gag where the Doctor keeps finding Clara unattractive gets old quickly, the dialogue is of variable quality, and everyone has to be stupid for the plot to happen. There’s an interesting story to be had about a broken Dalek and the Doctor’s response to it, but this isn’t it.

17. Victory of the Daleks

Another riff on a Troughton-era story, in this case ‘Power of the Daleks’, this is easier to criticise now separate from the outcry over the New Paradigm design.

And it is… okay. The twist that the Doctor’s hatred of Daleks is what progresses their plan is a better use of this than the usual abyss-gazing. The Daleks win, but this doesn’t land with sufficient weight as the meat of the ending is given over to the ongoing series arc.

It’s a hybrid of Dalek event story and Companion Proves Themselves (with all the iconography of Churchill, World War Two and the Daleks) and is so by necessity somewhat pat in its resolution. Also, by Printing the Legend of Churchill a more interesting story is compressed into the line “If Hitler invaded hell I would give a favourable reference to the Devil”.

Putting aside the Dalek designs, which didn’t work for most people, this story fulfils a function and attempts to disguise this amiably enough.

16. Death to the Daleks

This is a story that, thanks to it being four parts rather than six, we could afford on video. I can’t say for sure how much this impacts my preferring it to ‘Planet of the Daleks’, but I do think it stands out slightlyfrom other Terry Nation stories despite the familiar elements (rare minerals, quests, a first episode featuring just the regulars).

Carey Blyton’s score, along with Arnold Yarrow’s performance as Bellal, has an endearing quirkiness. There are little flourishes like the Daleks using a model TARDIS for target practice, and the Doctor’s melancholy at the destruction of the city. Its oddness occasionally overcomes the quaintness of Nation’s approach to Doctor Who, which doesn’t seem to have changed since 1965.

15. Eve of the Daleks

While the romcom parts of this episode rely on conventions that allow a really creepy guy to be a legitimate love interest, the Dalek parts are pretty strong. I feel that this story started with an attempt to solve the problem ‘Why don’t the Daleks just shoot the Doctor?’

The obvious answer is ‘because then the show would be over’, but this means the most deadly race in the universe have to be regularly defeated and have reasons contrived as to why they don’t just shoot Doctor Who in the face (for example: Steven Moffat has Davros describe the build-up to a Dalek exterminating someone, suggesting they wait to fire in order to build tension). Here, Chris Chibnall comes up with a temporary solution: the Daleks do shoot the Doctor – a lot – but like a computer game she gets to try again until she runs out of goes. It’s largely effective, and the small cast with established relationships mean the exterminations have impact (there’s genuine shock and horror from Sarah and Nick at their initial deaths). There’s also a genuine sense of tension at the midpoint as to how this will be resolved.

The eventual resolution is perhaps a wee bit of a fudge (the Daleks, having effortlessly predicted the Doctor’s whereabouts and increased their number, are effectively beaten by Jodie Whittaker shouting ‘Look over there!’ and running the other way) but one it’s easy to forgive.

The Daleks’ dialogue is initially quite strong here too until the variations on ‘Daleks do not ___’ become monotonous. However, because the format of Doctor Who means that the Daleks cannot ultimately kill the Doctor, we have that rarest of things in the Chibnall era: an ending with a sense of catharsis and victory.

14. Army of Ghosts/ Doomsday

Having successfully brought the Daleks back, Russell T. Davies held off on using them again until the Series 2 finale. We have the Daleks versus the Doctor and – for the first time – the Cybermen. The Dalek threat is resolved fairly swiftly as a mechanism to separate the Doctor and Rose, but what we do get is the Cult of Skaro (the return of the Black Dalek! Daleks with names! I don’t know why these are exciting but they are!) and the joy of subverting the two biggest monsters finally meeting by – instead of a huge space battle – having four of them read each other in a corridor with sassy putdowns.

13. Revelation of the Daleks

Eric Saward’s second Dalek story features Davros turning humans into a new race of Daleks leading to the stirrings of a civil war with the originals.

There are always garish edges to Saward’s writing, but the sequence where a character discovers her father’s body inside a glass Dalek – and he alternates between ranting about genetic purity and begging him to kill her – is at its core such a terrifying idea that it succeeds where the horrors of ‘Resurrection’ seem shallow. It does share that story’s lack of interest in the Daleks for the most part though, but this scene makes them scary for the first time since ‘Genesis’.

This also features Alexei Sayle fighting Daleks with a ray gun that fires rock’n’roll. If you don’t like that then we’re probably not going to agree on much about Doctor Who.

Doctor Who: Ranking Every Single Companion Departure

By Andrew Blair

Doctor Who: A History of Dalek Redesigns and Fan Reactions

By Andrew Blair

12. Day of the Daleks

This is an example of the Daleks’ importance to Doctor Who. After talking to Huw Weldon, who had been responsible for the length of ‘The Dalek Master Plan’, producer Barry Letts decided to bring the Daleks back for the Season 9 finale, with Terry Nation’s permission, only to decide that the show instead needed a hook for the opening story of Season 10. As a result, the Daleks were inserted into the story planned for that slot. This is a common feature of Dalek stories: it’s hard to write something original that they’re intrinsic to.

The production suffers from the small number of Dalek props available, and director Paul Bernard not using the ring modulator effect for their voices. This is a good story (though maybe not a good Dalek Story) with a then novel time paradox plot and Aubrey Woods’ Controller is a really strong performance. Viewing figures broke the 10 million mark for the first time since ‘The Dalek Master Plan’, so the decision to bring the Daleks back was absolutely vindicated.

11. Mission to the Unknown/The Daleks’ Master Plan

Essentially a longer and darker version of ‘The Chase’ with higher stakes – it’s not simply that the Daleks want to kill the Doctor, it’s that the Doctor stole part of their superweapon – with a subpar comedy episode and lots of hostile planets (deadly plants, invisible monsters, a rare mineral: such familiarity!). Extended to twelve episodes, it loses its way but commits to its scale with an incredibly downbeat ending that uses jungle planet cliché for contrast: Kembel is reduced to sand and dust.

A highlight of this story is the alliance of Outer Galaxy emissaries who join with the Daleks, a group of Doctor Who villains who inevitably bicker and betray each other. This, rather than the Space Security Service, is what Terry Nation should have focussed on for his spin-offs.

10. Asylum of the Daleks

Steven Moffat’s first proper Dalek story was part of Series 7A, an attempt at weekly blockbusters driven by high concepts. Here, then was the promise of a Dalek asylum with old and replica props, while also attempting to unify both the New Paradigm designsand the lack of emotional fallout to Amy and Rory Pond’s baby being kidnapped. Moffat also threw in a surprise new companion appearance and it’s this, combined with a nano cloud weapon that turns people into Daleks.

It’s not that the others don’t get resolved, but it’s done swiftly in another busy story. While the Daleks have previously controlled people, the idea of actually being turned into Daleks is both macabre and slightly jarring. It feels like, considering their last story involved a plotline about genetic purity, this isn’t the right fit. What does work better is the concept that the Daleks have a concept of beauty, and it’s based around hatred. While this episode does fulfil its blockbuster ambitions it also feels like it needs more room to breathe in order to do justice to all its concepts.

9. The Stolen Earth/Journey’s End

This is the logical conclusion of the Daleks’ return to the show: invading present-day Earth with a huge fleet (complete with Davros backseat driving). Also here, on top of the scale and sheer pace of the storytelling, is the logical conclusion of the Daleks: they attempt to destroy all other life in the universe in one go.

However, there’s also a sense of their ‘Day of the Daleks’role. They’re the Big Guns, so out they come for Doctor Who’s version of Infinity War. They’re developed here by virtue of Davies giving some of them distinct characters (Hello Dalek Caan, hello another stellar Nick Briggs performance). The Daleks here are aggressive and powerful (until Donna finds the off-switch in their basement), but the Doctor’s storyline is more tied up with the companions’ fates than the Daleks.

Davros is also here, trying to suggest to the Doctor that his friends trying to kill Daleks – the most evil race in the universe who are currently trying to obliterate all other sentient life – is bad (this idea worked once in a specific context and no one else has managed it before or since). On the other hand, Davros recognising Sarah Jane again is a thrilling way to bind Doctor Who to its past.

8. The Daleks

On the one hand, I find this story drags towards the end after a strong and uneasy start, but on the other Doctor Who doesn’t exist as we know it without ‘The Daleks’.

It’s hard to imagine the impact of this story on a 1963 audience, especially as we’re so familiar with what the Daleks and Doctor Who were to become. Consider, then, a story with the fear of the bomb writ large (broadcast a year after the Cuban Missile Crisis) and the Daleks in that context. That’s the existential fear angle for the adults covered, which meant they were happy to watch along, but more important was the response from children: love.

Many people contributed to the story and to the Daleks. Nation’s desire to avoid a Man-In-A-Suit monster is important, but key is the work of designer Raymond Cusick, voice actor Peter Hawkins and the Radiophonic Workshop’s Brian Hodgson. What the initially sceptical BBC found was that by the third episode, children who had watched the show were impersonating the Daleks.

There’s a lot to be written about the ageing geek audience who take their childhood toys with them into adulthood, and this article is written by a 35-year-old man who grew up when Doctor Who was off-air. However it’s worth stressing: next time you complain about the show reaching out to primary school aged children, remember that without kids in the playground, Doctor Who would simply not have survived.

7. The Evil of the Daleks

This is an excellent four-part story. Unfortunately it’s seven episodes long.

After a ludicrously convoluted scheme to get the Doctor into the actual plot, amid subplots that go nowhere, there are great parts of David Whittaker’s tale: The Daleks have kidnapped the Doctor and Jamie in order to isolate the Human Factor – the quality humans possess that enables them to regularly defeat the Daleks – to enable them to finally overcome humanity.

Firstly, if Russell T. Davies had written this the forums would never stop complaining about its scientific accuracy. Secondly, what this concept does is allow Whittaker to put the Doctor and Jamie into conflict, with the Doctor’s trickery leading to the unnerving scene of Daleks acting like children and then ultimately a Dalek civil war. We also see the first appearance of the Dalek Emperor, with a huge prop built for the story. When ‘Evil of the Daleks’ is good, it’s electric. You can see this in the surviving episode when the Doctor realises just before they appear that the Daleks are involved.

It’s a shame that the superfluous padding significantly detracts from the rest.

6. The Magician’s Apprentice / The Witch’s Familiar

A story which is primarily about the relationship between the Doctor, Davros, Missy and Clara, but which also casually drops in several new concepts which get under the skin of the Daleks more successfully than anything since ‘Dalek’. The focus is on Davros, but as the Doctor observes ‘Everything you are, they are.’

Firstly, there’s an elegant piece of writing from Steve Moffat where Davros narrates the moments before a Dalek fires, explaining they are waiting for Clara to run. Not only does this explain the Daleks not immediately shooting people, it offers a glimpse into their sadism and malice (as exemplified by Davros). Similarly, the idea that the creature inside the Dalek clings on outside of their life-support system, as they cling onto their home planet, ties into what we’ve seen on screen before.

Finally, anything in a Dalek casing trying to express individuality will have those words and thoughts twisted into the opposite meaning. This returns to the idea that original voice artist Peter Hawkins had for the Daleks – that the creatures inside were trapped. It’s an insidiously nasty idea, perhaps explaining behaviour such as the Dalek that commits suicide in ‘Death to the Daleks’when it sees its prisoners have escaped.

5. The Dalek Invasion of Earth

This and ‘Genesis’ confirm that Terry Nation’s strengths were in war stories rather than the pulp science-fiction adventure story he relied on. ‘Dalek Invasion of Earth’ is a thriller full of post-war fears that forever intertwined the Daleks and The Doctor.The production team pull out all the stops to show a conquered Earth with harrowing matter-of-factness, but the Doctor takes delight in opposing them (Hartnell is great here, taking the edge off with a twinkle but playing Susan’s leaving scene with great pathos too). The last episode is little rushed but overall this is well balanced.

The Daleks here are more mobile and powerful, their regime oppressive, their plans for turning the Earth into a spaceship bizarre and ineffable. As Nation puts it ‘They dare to tamper with the forces of creation’, the sort of boldness that would seep out of his own storytelling in future stories.

4. Genesis of the Daleks

‘Genesis of the Daleks’is another war story realised extremely well. The production does not pull many punches, and is atypically grim for Doctor Who: The Doctor loses but clings on to the slim hope that he hasn’t.

This is clearly Terry Nation’s best script, and is still clearly a Terry Nation script: radiation poisoning, over-ambitious creature requests – I don’t think Doctor Who could ever do a giant clam well, even now – and the endearingly-crap naming conventions (the mutants in the wastelands are called ‘Mutos’ and their dialogue could slot effortlessly into The Mighty Boosh).

Outgoing producer Barry Letts called Nation on his bullshit when he attempted to hand in a similar script for the second time, and suggested an origin story. From here Nation developed the war of attrition, Nazi parallels and the character of Davros (created to have a Dalek-like character who could be given interesting dialogue). Nation commits to making the origins of the Daleks plausibly horrifying. Contrast the halfway stage of ‘The Chase’ – with its misplaced comedy episodes that sap the momentum of the story – with the halfway point here: Davros willingly destroys his entire race to ensure the survival of the Daleks.

Where it feels lesser in comparison is that it is neither connected to an everyday, material reality (unlike ‘Spare Parts’, the story exploring the Cybermen’s origins) and its famous scene where the Doctor asks if he has the right to commit genocide, which looms large in later stories.

And yet, this scene only works in isolation. In context it’s jarring. In surrounding stories, the Doctor kills a sentient robot, a Sontaran, and some Zygons; he will later poison someone with cyanide, all without any qualms. Here, though, he compares destroying Dalek mutants – which are already attacking people – to killing Hitler as a baby. The Doctor worries he’d be as bad as the Daleks if he wipes them out. A few scenes later he has changed his mind, trying and failing to kill them. If it was linked to Davros’ aspirations of godhood, fine, but it’s neither written nor played that way.

It’s not as if the Doctor hasn’t already instigated attacks that seem to wipe the Daleks out, but there other people did the dirty work. It’s this, going forward, that becomes the key aspect of the scene for future writers.

3. Remembrance of the Daleks

‘Remembrance’takes the brewing civil war situation of ‘Revelation’ and connects it simultaneously to Doctor Who and British history. The Doctor is trying to trick the Daleks into using a superweapon hidden in 1963 London, knowing it could result in people dying. The Doctor’s trap feels like a response to ‘Have I the right?’ – clearly he feels he has but doesn’t want to directly press the trigger. It’s both a significant change and logical development in the series and the character, with Sylvester McCoy wanting to play both the weight of the character’s years and actions.

The Daleks are here because it’s an anniversary series but also because if you want a demonstration of power then potentially defeating the Daleks is a clear statement. Writer Ben Aaronovitch doesn’t just involve Daleks with a view to blowing them up, but addresses the reasons for their civil war: the hatred for the unlike that has defined the Daleks but also been part of British culture the entire time Doctor Who has been on screen and beyond, explicitly linked to the most evil creatures in the universe. Not only that, he places that hatred in the supporting cast: the ostensible good guys, the UNIT precursor, the family home.

This has scale, depth and feels important on different levels. This is Doctor Who back to its playground-influencing best.

2. The Power of the Daleks

As Terry Nation was unavailable, David Whitaker wrote the initial scripts before Dennis Spooner’s uncredited rewrites. The Daleks are in this story to bring viewers back on board after the first regeneration, and they also legitimise the new Doctor in contrast to the Daleks. The Mercury swamps that bookend the story also evoke Terry Nation in terms of putting the characters into a hostile alien environment.

The action takes places on a human colony, Vulcan. The Daleks are introduced as a potential solution to their problems, with an insurrectionist faction interested in using them as weapons and the scientist restoring them obsessed with his discoveries. The Doctor’s lone voice of dissent comes across as lunatic ravings, but the audience know the Daleks are manipulating everyone else.

Daleks obviously have the power to kill, but ubiquity had already removed their uncanniness until this story. The suggestion of deeper thought and intelligence builds, and this story gives the lie to the notion that you can’t give the Daleks good dialogue: “Why do human beings kill other human beings?” is full of chilling curiosity, “Yes, you gave us life” a future echo of their capacity for destroying father figures, the almost mocking repetition of “I am your servant”, and the cacophony of “Daleks conquer and destroy” that becomes a disorientating swirl of hatred.

This culminates in a final episode of mass slaughter. The release of tension is colossal. The very end suggests this is not over. The Daleks will never be more unnerving.

1. Dalek/Bad Wolf/The Parting of the Ways

This isn’t a three-parter in the usual sense, but these episodes are inextricably linked, with Russell T. Davies using a series arc to delay and distract the audience from their connection.

What’s key to all three episodes is Christopher Eccleston. He sells the threat of the Daleks better than any other Doctor, elevating the already strong scripts. These are the best performances against the Daleks there will ever be.

If you’re reading this website there’s a strong chance you know that the Daleks were seen going upstairs in the 1980s, but for most viewers ‘Dalek’ was the one that took all the jokes and weaponised them (Indeed Rob Shearman asked his partner what she thought was silly about the Daleks before writing his script): they not only go upstairs but crack skulls with their sucker arm, with added revolving weaponry and force field.

The carnage is well-realised, with director Joe Ahearne letting the Dalek take its time to build the tension, Shearman’s script taps into Russell T. Davies’ new Time War mythology and companion dynamic to allow the Dalek more intelligence in terms of dialogue and emotional manipulation. This Dalek has the threat of those in ‘Genesis’and the intelligence of the ones in ‘Power of the Daleks’.

Their redesign is a microcosm of why ‘Dalek’ works so well: it doesn’t change much, rather it takes what already works and improves upon it. I can’t imagine the return of the Daleks being handled better, while stealthily setting up the stakes of the previously unimaginable series finale.

Over this article I’ve talked about different aspects of the Daleks’ appeal. Children love them and fear them. They tap into adult fears of death, fascism and the uncanny (exemplified by the cacophonic chanting of ‘Exterminate’). That they can appear comical can be weaponised, as can the fact their hatred is not unique to them. Their reach extends into the mundane.

The reasons these episodes work so well is partly because they tap into these strengths, but also that they tell more than anything tell the story of the Ninth Doctor. He’s already committed a double-genocide, as far as he’s concerned, and is barely keeping it together without the prospect of having to commit another one. This is contrasted with the fact of one Dalek being demonstrably dangerous, and now there are hundreds of them. We know what they can, what they will do, and the only way to stop it is for the Doctor to kill Daleks and humans alike. It’s a much more effectively constructed and persuasive dilemma than the one the Doctor proposes in ‘Genesis’.

This story also puts in work with the supporting characters, and rather than being soldiers the staff of the satellite are office workers put into a desperate situation, or people who just wanted to be on telly. While ‘Bad Wolf’isn’t as Dalek-heavy, its satire is subtly devastating. If you look back at clips of The Weakest Link now you can see casual and sadistic cruelty meted out, so connecting this to the Daleks is a stroke of genius (especially with celebrity voices unwittingly joining in their own condemnation), bringing their evil to the everyday.

The Doctor’s closest friends here are merely the people who die last; he knows they’re going to die, and he hears it happen. It becomes increasingly personal, while also satiating that morbid fannish desire to see the Daleks kill someone. Here they seem sadistic, devious, and unstoppable. The need to stop them is obvious, as is the cost.

So rather than an unearned moment of moralising here we have a situation where the Doctor’s decision makes sense, is not abstract to him. This also, in the first series back, makes an important statement: Doctor Who can be dark, and nice people can die horribly, but it is not a series where the grimness becomes overwhelming. Here the Doctor’s decision not to kill is one he knows will also cost him his life, and then his ideals inspire his salvation: it is Rose, not Davros or the Doctor, who is set up among the gods, and her instinct is not – to paraphrase another franchise – to destroy what she hates.

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The reason I love this one is because it delivers on so many fronts: these stories define this Doctor. The story is epic but steeped in the everyday. The Daleks are terrified and terrifying, silent and shrieking, devious and brutal. They feel unstoppable here in a way they simply haven’t since. For a story to do this many things is impressive, but to do them all well is astonishing.

The post Doctor Who: Ranking the Dalek Stories – Which is the Best? appeared first on Den of Geek.

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thesociologicalcinema · 6 years

Photo

Artwork from The Black Panther newspaper, 1970.

1. [TOP] "Imperialists - All this proves even more clearly that U.S. imperialism is the most barbarous and shameless aggressor of modern times, the main force of aggression and war, the chieftain of world reaction, the bulwark of modern colonialism, the strangler of the national liberation and independence, and the disturber of world peace."

2. "By any means necessary, unless you got something better."

3. "For the salvation, liberation, and freedom of our people, we will not hesitate to either kill or die!" 4. "Just wait till that landlord comes around with his hands all stuck out - smiling talkin bout, 'Why Mrs. Mae what a lovely day.' Kill the greedy slumlords!"

5. "When I spend more time fightin the rates, than taking care of my children you know, it makes me realize that I have a right to kill the greedy slumlords who forces me to live in these inhuman conditions. We want decent housing fit for shelter of human beings."

6. "The pigs think they can intimidate me when I say free Bobby and Ericka, but intimidation breeds resistance. Free Bobby, free Ericka! Death to the fascist pigs!"

In 1969, a number of Black Panther members were participated in the murder of fellow Panther Alex Rackley, who they came to suspect was a police informant. Among those police arrested and charged for the murder were Bobby Seale and Ericka Huggins, despite their claim to have nothing to do with the murder. Their 1970-1971 trial took place in New Haven, Connecticut.

Artist: Emory Douglas

#emory douglas #the black panther party #imperialism #racism #social movements #ericka huggins #bobby seale

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iruutciv · 7 years

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Hello again! I was wondering if you're familiar with studio ghibli? If so, top four movies? ~Shy anon

Hello :DD Thank you for the question! I love Studio Ghibli so muuuuuuch

5. My Neighbour Totoro

4. Porco Rosso (fav line: ”Better a pig than a fascist”)

3. Princess Mononoke

2. Howl’s Moving Castle (almost solely because of Howl and how beautiful he is)

1. Spirited Away (cliched choice but seriously it’s so good)

#Anonymous #gia answers

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commiedervish · 4 years

Text

Masterpost on the United States of America

[posted by /u/user_name_101ofcl on /r/communism]

This master post is divided into 2 parts:

The failure of the USA to protect its citizens

A list of US imperialism and the crimes they have committed

The Failure of USA to protect its citizens and the crimes committed in her own country

The USA is the largest and most powerful capitalist country to have ever existed. It has had the pleasure of

Being the most powerful country in its continent for about 150 years

Has the most favourable terrain imaginable. With fertile river valleys covering its land and all of its borders surrounded by forests, a large desert or oceans, practically making an invasion almost impossible.

Has plentiful resources like iron, coal and oil.

And lastly, a large amount of immigration. So a lack of a labour force won't ever be a problem

With such favourable material conditions, if we want to prove that capitalism works, the USA should be the best example of it. Let's look at how the US population is doing.

Worker rights and public services in the USA

The US has always repressed its workers. The federal minimum wage (7.25 $) is so low it barely allows people who are paid in it to live. The workers can not ask for a better wage, because they will get fired if they do.

The US has the least powerful unions and the workers stand alone against the capitalists. Basic things like paid maternity leave are optional and up to the employer. The US used to imprison and assassinate Union leaders so they wouldn't spread a pro worker message.

Privatisation is also a major thing in the US. The railways have always been private and this has resulted to them underperforming in speed, cost and affordability. In countries where it is nationalised, like China, the railways are extremely efficient.

The healthcare system in the US is private and this, according to Harvard, results in 45 thousand preventable deaths each year.

An other thing that is privatized, at least partly, is the prison system. Private prisons cost less to the government, about 17 $ less per prisoner per day but have more violence, worse facilities and are less likely to give parole than government ran prisons.

Poverty in the USA (statistics)

41 million Americans go hungry, including 13 million children and 5.4 millions seniors

More than 1 in 5 children in America (21.8%) are living under the official poverty line. Half of all children will be on food stamps before they turn 20, including 9 out of 10 black American children

Only 48% of Americans can handle a $400 emergency

For every 22 empty homes, there is 1 homeless person

Democracy in the USA

The USA prides itself in being the most democratic country, "the leader of the free world" but in reality the citizens of the USA have no real say on what their government does. The United States government only serves the interests of the bourgeoisie.

Don't believe me? Well, a recent report shows that about half of Congress and two thirds of the Senate are millionaires.

The elections are also completely undemocratic. The power of political lobbying in the USA is unprecedented. Both parties rely on the support of the bourgeoisie to win.

We shouldn't also forget the extreme gerrymandering that has been happening lately by both parties. Voting districts have been purposely redrawn across the country so the parties can keep their seats.

Now let's talk about voter suppression. The US has suppressed the vote of minorities since its creation. When the USA was created, only white male protestant land owners were allowed to vote. Gradually the USA was forced by civil rights activists to allow minorities and women to vote, but this doesn't mean that voter suppression doesn't exist. To this day incidents of voter suppression happen in states like Texas, south Carolina and Georgia. They specifically target black Americans, to stop them from voting.

An other way the US tries to stop black Americans from voting is felony disenfranchisement. Basically in most of the US, if you commit a felony, you are no longer allowed to vote (end in some states even if you get out of prison). This targets black and hispanic people in more than a few ways. They commit more crime than usual but they also get arrested more often than white people for the same crime.

The awful treatment of minorities in the USA

The US has historically oppressed every minority in its territory. From blacks to native Americans, from Latino communities to asians.

As I said above, only white men where allowed to vote when the US was created. In fact, not only where black people not allowed to vote, but they were slaves and where worth "three fifths of a white person". They were also not considered citizens despite them being born in the US.

When slavery was abolished the oppression continued. Segregation was the official policy of most states. They claimed that it was a policy of "separate but equal" but in reality it was far from that. White people had access to better schools, healthcare, housing and transportation.

Today although segregation being officially over, black people still face discrimination and disadvantages in schooling, police (we will get to that in a minute), healthcare, voting (as I showed you above), housing, and many other fields. Let's also not forget that the US has not paid ANY sort of reparations to black Americans. This and the effects of the institutionalized discrimination has left a unimaginable difference in the average wages and living standards of black Americans.

The median net worth of whites remains nearly 10 times the size of blacks. Nearly 1 in 5 black families have zero or negative net worth — twice the rate of white families.

(This even comes from a liberal source)

Let's also not forget the awful conditions in native reservations, with some lacking safe drinking water and some suffering from overcrowding. There is also a lack of wifi on a lot of these places.

And finally, the US literally has literal concentration camps in the border to place illegal migrants and their children, even though the illegal immigrants are fleeing violence and poverty the US caused in Central America (we will get to that)

Police brutality

Police brutality in the US has always been an issue. The main target are black people, worker rights activists, Muslims (especially after 9/11) latinos and some LGBTQ rights activists.

Police killed 1,147 people in 2017. Black people were 25% of those killed despite being only 13% of the population.

Black people are 25% more likely to be killed by police than white people

21% of black victims were completely unarmed

(This doesn't account for the people that were armed but didn't do anything wrong and cooperated with the police)

In 99% of cases the police officer was not convicted of a crime

A list of US imperialism and the crimes they have committed

This will be a list of US interventions from 1946 to 2019, this proves that the US remains an imperialist power and the primary threat to democracy

1 ) The US openly backs Greek nationalists in the Greek civil war against the communists, despite the communists having by far more support(1946)

2 ) The US helps with the creation of Israel(1948-1949)

3 ) The US helped in the establishment of the FRG (West Germany)

In 1957, 77% of the ministry's senior officials were former Nazis, which, according to the study, was a higher proportion that during Hitler's Third Reich government, which existed from 1933 to 1945.

A report released late last year found that between 1949 and 1970, 54% of Interior Ministry staffers were former Nazi Party members, and that 8% of them had served in the Nazi Interior Ministry, which at one point was run by SS chief Heinrich Himmler.

Also when the Stalin notes came, calling for a neutral unified Germany with elections , the US refused

4) CIA directs war against Huk Rebellion in the Philippines (1948-54)

5) Independence rebellion crushed in Ponce, Puerto Rico (1950)

6) The US, after expelling a workers government in South Korea, establishes a fascist dictatorship and helps it fight the communists (1951-53)

7) CIA overthrows democracy in Iran, installs Shah. (1953)

8) The CIA directs a coup in Guatemala after the democratically elected government nationalised fruit land from cooperations that were exploitating the Guatemalan people(1954)

9) The Suez crisis in Egypt (1956)

10) Army & Marine occupation against rebels in Lebanon (1958)

11) Fought South Vietnam revolt & North Vietnam, 1 million killed, atomic bomb threats in 1968 and 69 (1960-75)

12) CIA-directed Bay of Pigs exile invasion fails in Cuba (1961)

13) Caused an international crisis over missiles in Cuba while they had similar ones on Turkey (1962)

14) CIA organizes coup in Iraq that killed the president, brings Ba’ath Party to power, Saddam Hussein as secret service head (1963)

15) The terror to black American communities and the black Panthers massively increased. Assassinations left and right, including M.L.K (1963-66)

16) People in Panama shot for urging canal’s return (1964)

17) 3 million dead in a CIA backed coup in Indonesia (1965)

18) CIA backed coup in Greece against democratically elected leftist (1967-73)

19) Cia backed dictator, up to 2 million killed in decade of bombing, starvation, political chaos (1969-75)

20) US directs Iranian marine invasion in Oman (1970)

21) US directs South Vietnamese invasion in Laos,“carpet-bombs” countryside around Ho Chi Minh Trail (1971-73)

22) Democratic elected leftist president in Chile replaced with a fascist US backed regime (1973)

23) Telling Turkey to invade Cyprus so they can't join the Warsaw pact(1974)

24) Assists South African-backed UNITA rebels in Angola (1976-92)

25) Iran, raid to rescue embassy hostages, 8 troops die in helicopter-plane crash, bombing aborted. Soviets warned not to get involved in revolution. (1980)

26) The US helped Islamic extremists against socialist Afghan government(1981-1989)

27) CIA directs exile (Contra) invasions, plants harbor mines against Sandinista revolutionary gov’t. (1981-90)

28) Lebanon, Marines expel PLO and back far-right Phalangists, Navy bombs and shells Muslim rebels, Syrian forces (1983)

29) Invasion topples 4-year leftist revolutionary gov’t in Grenada (1984)

30) Honduras, Maneuvers help build bases near Nicaragua borders (1985)

31) Air strikes to topple Qaddafi gov’t in Libya (1986)

32) Army assists raids on cocaine region in Bolivia (1986)

33) U.S. intervenes on side of Iraq in the Iraq - Iran war (that Iraq started by the way), defending reflagged tankers & downing civilian jet (1987-88)

34) Panama, Noriega gov’t ousted by 27,000 soldiers,2000+ killed. Canal Zone & bases returned in 1999 (1989-99)

35) Iraq countered after invading Kuwait. 540,000 troops stationed also in Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, UAE, Israel. (1991)

36) No fly zones and sanctions on Iraq (1991-2003)

37) Intervention in Croatia(1992-94)

38) Rigging of Russian elections so the communists would not win (1993)

39) No-fly zone in civil war; downed jets, bombed Serbs (1995)

40) Zaire, Troops at Rwandan Hutu refugee camps in the area where Congo revolution began. (1996-97)

41) Heavy NATO air strikes after Serbia declines to withdraw from Kosovo. NATO occupation of Kosovo. (1999)

42) The US invades Afghanistan (2001-now)

43) Yemen, Drone missile attack on Al Qaeda, including US citizen (2002)

44) The war on Iraq, Saddam Hussein regime toppled in Baghdad. 250,000+ U.S. personnel participate in invasion. US & UK forces battle Sunni & Shi’a insurgencies. 160,000+ troops & many private contractors stationed on bases (2003-11)

45) Haiti, Marines & Army land after right-wing rebels oust elected President Aristide, U.S. forces him into exile (2003-04)

46) Pakistan, CIA drones, air strikes, Special Forces raids on alleged Al Qaeda & Taliban refuge villages kill multiple civilians. Drone attacks on Pakistani Mehsud network (2005-now)

47) Libya, NATO coordinates air strikes and missile attacks vs. Qaddafi government during uprising by rebel army (2011)

48)Air strikes & Special Forces intervene vs. Islamic State insurgents, training other Syrian rebels, bomb alleged Syrian gov’t chemical arms sites (2014-now)

49) Coup in Bolivia against a democratically elected president, replaced with a religious fascist that also hates indigenous people (2019)

50) Meeting with and funding the Hong Kong protestors (2019-now)

51) The killing of an Iranian general (now)

The photo I used - http://imgur.com/gallery/HvyTkEh

List of US atrocities: https://github.com/dessalines/essays/blob/master/us_atrocities.md

Sources

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2009/09/new-study-finds-45000-deaths-annually-linked-to-lack-of-health-coverage/

https://www.rollcall.com/news/hawkings/congress-richer-ever-mostly-top

https://kairoscenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/Poverty-Fact-Sheet-Feb-2015-final.pdf

https://www.thedailybeast.com/cheats/2014/01/09/most-lawmakers-are-millionaires

https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/article/court-north-carolina-voter-id-law-targeted-black-voters/

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/oct/19/georgia-governor-race-voter-suppression-brian-kemp

https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/felon-voting-rights.aspx

https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/race/reports/2019/08/07/472617/systemic-inequality-displacement-exclusion-segregation/

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/10/24/us/ice-kids-detention-invs/index.html

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2017/09/28/black-and-hispanic-families-are-making-more-money-but-they-still-lag-far-behind-whites/%3foutputType=amp

https://www.britannica.com/topic/Police-Brutality-in-the-United-States-2064580

https://mappingpoliceviolence.org

https://sites.evergreen.edu/zoltan/wp-content/uploads/sites/358/2019/11/InterventionsList2019.pdf

[The rest of the sources were not included in this post due to the character limit. However, they can be seen in the original post on reddit.]

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krispyweiss · 7 years

Photo

Roger Waters at Nationwide Arena, Columbus, Ohio, July 20, 2017

Roger Waters’ Us + Them tour is a brilliant, beautiful and high-intensity assault on the senses - more than two hours of extraordinary music delivered with enough visual and audio extras to ensure even the most attentive concertgoers missed something.

Inside a virtually sold-out Nationwide Arena in Columbus on Thursday, the former Pink Floyd bassist and his impeccable band - three guitarists, two keyboardists, a saxophone player, a drummer and the two vocalists from Lucius - played 24 songs culled from Meddle (“One of These Days”); Dark Side of the Moon (all of it but the instrumentals); Wish You Were Here (the title track and “Welcome to the Machine”); Animals (a significant chuck of it - that is, two songs); six cuts from The Wall; and five from Waters’ just-released Is This the Life We Really Want?, derivative numbers that worked much better in the context of the show than they do on the record.

All of this was delivered through a 360-degree sound system that filled the hall with not only music, but all of the delicious effects that color Pink Floyd’s decadent discography, plus ambient sounds that rendered the 140-minute performance as much a tone painting as a concert.

Though he did plenty of singing, Waters wisely ceded most of David Gilmour’s vocal parts to one of his guitarists. While he was away from the mic, Waters busied himself on bass or six-string guitar and engaged the crowd by mimicking the lyrics and cheerleading.

Clad entirely in black, the band played before a gigantic, high-definition screen that showed images that illustrated Waters’ songs - and his distain for the current political environment and the current president - with vivid clarity for those who didn’t know the words already.

There were flying pigs and floating satellites hovering around the arena; a three-dimensional pyramid of lasers; a recreation of the power station that graced the cover of Animals; and children who lined the front of the stage and doffed orange prison jumpsuits to reveal black T-shirts emblazoned with RESIST in white, which was the first of many times Sound Bites got goose bumps and a lump in his throat.

The children filed onstage as a helicopter spotlight searched the arena just before the first-set closing run of “The Happiest Days of Our Lives” and parts 2 and 3 of “Another Brick in the Wall.” When this climax to the 14-song opening stanza ended, the arena fell dark and the crowd - save for a relatively small number of displeased Trump supporters - roared as RESIST appeared in huge letters behind the band.

Waters and company had eased into the show an hour earlier with a languid and faithful run through “Breathe.” A thumping bassline signaled the chaotic “One of These Days” that followed before the band returned to the Dark Side for “Time,” with the sound of clanging and banging clocks echoing from all corners of the house.

The energy continued pulsating through the subsequent “Breathe (Reprise)“ and “The Great Gig in the Sky,” which found the women of Lucius facing off at the front of the stage, wailing away in wordless beauty and demonstrating the power of the human voice to communicate forcefully even when it’s saying - or in this case singing - nothing at all.

Politically charged new songs like the delicate, foreboding “The Last Refugee” and the angry anti-Trump screed “Picture That” - picture a leader with no fucking brains, Waters spat, as he stalked the front of the stage - blended in perfectly with the even-more revolutionary feel of set 2, which showed how little has changed in the four decades since Pink Floyd released Animals.

With the house lights still on, the sound of a riot and police action to quell it flew at the audience from all corners of the arena. As the lights dimmed, a bank of horizontal screens descended to just above the patrons on the floor and divided the hockey arena in half; smokestacks slowly rose from the faux power plant and billowed white steam as the band kicked into “Dogs.”

For the next 30 minutes, through this song and the following “Pigs (3 Different Ones),” Waters and his band took performance art to a new level as they cranked out virtually flawless recreations of the prescient songs; donned pig and dog masks to have a small party for the wealthy at a table set up on stage; and generally gave 45 a ginormous, musical middle finger as pictures of the fascist president depicting him with a tiny penis, with vomit spewing out of his open mouth and the word Charade flashing across his grinning face. Some his most egregious statements shone in white letters on a black background while a pig flew overhead and the band just sizzled.

It’s impossible to overstate the power of these performances and the electricity carried through the versions of “Money” and “Us and Them” that followed as the screens expanded and contracted above the audience before being sucked back up into the ceiling.

Before long - after the new “Smell the Roses” - a 3D, multi-colored pyramid appeared for the set-closing twofer of “Brain Damage” and “Eclipse” while the sounds of madcap laughter ricocheted around the arena.

Without leaving the stage, the players moved into what served as the encore, as Waters, strumming an acoustic guitar, and Lucius gathered for sparse, gorgeous renditions of “Vera” and “Bring the Boys Back Home.”

Confetti was wafting from the rafters by the time Waters began wading through the audience to trade fist bumps with the first few rows while the band vamped on the coda of “Comfortably Numb” and a feeling of stunned disbelief settled over the crowd. Waters had just proved age - he’s 73 - and the maturity that comes with it don’t necessarily lead to mellowing.

Grade card: Roger Waters at Nationwide Arena,7/20/17 - A+

#roger waters #pink floyd #david gilmour #lucius #meddle #animals #dark side of the moon #the wall #wish you were here #is this the life we really want?

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leftpress · 7 years

Text

Santiago: New explosive attack claimed by Antagonistic Nuclei of the New Urban Guerrilla (Chile)

admin | 325 | March 7th 2017

At about 01:40AM on Monday, February 27, 2017, a loud explosion shook the wealthy suburb of Providencia on Suecia avenue between Cornel and Lota streets.

A fire extinguisher filled with gunpowder detonated in the Cap Ducal restaurant in front of the headquarters of the ultra-right political party UDI (Independent Democratic Union) without causing any major damage or any injuries. Immediately after the bombing, police and personnel from GOPE (Group of Special Police Operations) and LABOCAR (Criminal Laboratory of the Carabineros) arrived to inspect the area.

A leaflet was found at the scene which, according to quotations in the media, proclaimed:

“The justice of the street does not forgive nor does it forget. We are getting closer! …The real terrorists are in the Congress, the Palace and the institutions that govern the State..Take note, because we have returned. Neither Chileans, nor Argentines. Internationalists”.

The bastard secretary genera...

l of the ultra-right UDI, Pablo Terrazas said “We do not want to get used to these facts. This is not the first time that the UDI has been the victim of a bomb attack…It is unfortunate because we know that this comes from the left, who always try to silence us…I would like to see (some reaction from) the Communist Party, an announcement to the left, who are part of this government. Why do they not condemn these facts? There is always silent complicity in this (type of) attack that are always against the UDI”

The investigation of the attack, as with other attacks of this nature is in the hands of the Southern Metropolitan Prosecutor’s Office.

Not long afterwards, the Teodoro Suarez Vandalism Gang from the Antagonistic Nuclei of the New Urban Guerrilla claimed responsibility for the explosive attack against the Cap Ducal restaurant. The group previously claimed an attack against the Mutual Circle of Retired Non-commissioned Officers of the Federal Police in Buenos Aires in July 2011.

******

Responsibility claim for the explosive attack against the Cap Ducal restaurant

“We warn you: be careful. In any part of the places you frequent there may be a bomb; In your homes, in your supermarkets, gyms, shops and restaurants. In short, your days of tranquility are over. Your neighbourhoods will be transformed into minefields, so take care of every step you take, because you may encounter our explosive charges.”

–Iconoclastic Caravans For Free Will–

Just like we did a couple of years ago in the territory dominated by the Argentine state, bombing its sacrificial banks (Palermo and Nación), the branches of two major airlines (American Airlines and Alitalia) and the Mutual Circle of Retired Non-commissioned Officers of the Federal Police, today we again attacked capitalist interests. This time it was the turn of the Chilean political-business mafia that stubbornly insists on believing that places like the one that we visited last night are safe.

The restaurant Cap Ducal, located at #281 Suecia Ave in the bourgeois Providencia commune was not a random target. Here the most diverse group of fascists meet. Sinister characters such as ex-DINA (National Intelligence Directorate) and former colonel, Cristian Labbe, currently prosecuted for various crimes against humanity, or the presidential candidate and daughter of the former Air Force Commander and member of the Military Junta, Fernando Matthei, Evelyn Matthei, who, like her father, played an important role during the Military Dictatorship, being the head of the AFP (Pension Funds Administration), are all recurring faces at this place. It should be noted that the disastrous pension model that this filth worked for is still to this day a headache for millions of Chileans. As you can see, the fruit never falls far from the tree, and in this case, its small and despicable daughter is no exception.

But it is not necessary to look for those responsible in the pages of the dictatorial history of this filthy country to realize that this place shelters rogues and leeches of all kinds. With that in mind it makes sense to take note of some of the endless provocations that have been realized by some of these dark characters, for example:

* Joaquín Lavín Infante: Supernumerary member of Opus Dei; Married to the daughter of former Fatherland and Liberty Nationalist Front member Alberto León Fuentes, one of his sons married the popular mayor of Maipú, Cathy Barriga, giving continuity to his political-economic legacy; During the dicatorship he was appointed dean of the Faculty of Economic and Administrative Sciences at the University of Concepción for being functional to the policies of Pinochet; He is a Chicago Boy and directly responsible for the implantation of neoliberal doctrines that have made Chile one of the most unequal and unjust countries in the world; Today his is mayor of Las Condes; Between 2010 and 2011 he served as Minister of Education during the government of Piñera, his resignation was demanded for having capitalist interests in this area, since he was a founding member of the fascist University of Development and, as if that wasn’t enough, he profited from it along with his dear and despicable friends from the Penta group because, apart from being the owner of a percentage of the university, he was also an active member of Ainavillo real estate, who were responsible for the ‘lease and sublease of real estate, construction or modification and exploitation, as well as the administration and management of real estate business’ for the above mentioned house of studies where he managed to avoid the legal provision that, theoretically, prevents foundations and corporations for the purposes of profit; To all of the above, as if that were not enough, it should be added that he sold the rights over water to the company Aguas Andinas SA when he was mayor of Santiago (2000-2004), giving enormous financial support to his compadre, the fascist dog Andrés Chadwick, who was, along with others, a shareholder of the company. This is Joaquín Lavín, an experienced criminal who has used his strategic positions in national politics for his own benefit; Needless to mention, in addition to all of the above, is his total adherence to the Pinochet regime.

* Jacqueline van Rysselberghe: This psychiatrist currently serves as President of the UDI; His family has a history strongly linked to the political world (Tatarabuelo – Minister of Public Works – Abuelo – Director of Municipal Works, Councillor and then Mayor of Concepción – Father – Deputy of Concepción – Brother – Councillor for Concepción). For a while she was Intendant for Biobío region and a Councillor for Concepción as well as Mayor of this commune; Member of Opus Dei; in 2000 her father’s company (Constructora Rysselberghe and Co. Ltd) faced a lawsuit for a debt with CORFO for non-payment of a mortgage loan and another loan of $514,719,516 (plus IPC adjustments) from the Municipality of Concepción for the extraction and commercialization of non-patent aggregates between 1973 and 19996. On that occasion she faced the complaint without any consequences after she was elected Mayor; in 2011, the Comptrollers Office investigated left for the municipality of Concepción left during her term, which amounted to a deficit of 3 billion pesos, in addition to 623 million pesos that were not recorded in accounting, checks drawn for 157 million without being recorded in accounting and 4,133 million pesos listed as expired cheques; Today she is being investigated for bribery in the Corpesca case, after some emails between the current Senator and Luis Felipe Moncada (former president of the Fishing Industry Association) were leaked.

* Andrés Chadwick Piñera: This fascist dog was Deputy and Senator during his tenure; He was appointed president of FEUC by the Military Regime for being a faithful hound to the dictatorship’s designs; In 1977 he participated in the meeting organized by the Youth Front of National Unity in Cerro Chacarillas. Joaquín Lavín, Patricio Melero, Julio Dittborn, Pablo Longueira, Carlos Bombal and Juan Antonio Coloma, among others, also attended this meeting; Already in power, this piece of garbage did not think of anything better than imposing his limited doctrine, trying to promulgate, along with Longueira, a law in which marriage was consecrated as exclusive for men and women; Being a shareholder of Banco Penta saw his actions fall to the ground after the tremendous scandals in which his cronies were enveloped; As a shareholder of Enersis SA and Copec SA (of the Angelini group), it was not uncommon for the Energy Minister Jorge Bunster of having a conflict of interest with his portfolio; How can we forget when this pig, trying to protect politicians linked to emblematic cases of corruption, tried to whiten them as Government Spokesperson under the command of Sebastián Piñera (his cousin-brother), saying that these little white doves could delete the investigated emails for being a part of their private lives; Nor can we forget when this coward applauded what today still terrifies thousands of poor and marginalized people in the countryside and the cities, the infamous Preventative Identity Control, which empowers the police to undo and redo in the sectors of popular origin; And not to mention when this fascist hound supported the terrorist actions of the Carabinero who violated students following the massive mobilizations of protest during an already distant year of 2011. As if this were not enough, he did whatever was humanly possible to remove his heroes of the homeland from the prisons of luxury where they were serving sentences for human rights violations, as all of Chile could hear in the Chamber of Deputies in his capacity as Minister of the Interior; This is Andrés Chadwick, a facetious dog thirsting to bite back.

* Ena von Baer Jahn: Until recently she was the vice-president of the UDI; She has been Senator of the Republic twice; She was spokesperson during the rule of Sebastián Piñera; Her grandfather was a member of the Nazi Special Forces who very bravely escaped at the end of the conflict, evading any responsibility to justice, which, by the way, now seems to be a family trait (cowardice); She has been part of the putrid Liberty and Development Institute, being the director of the Politics and Society Program, where among other topics, she had the temerity to speak about the anarchist comrades Francisco Solar and Mónica Caballero and about the peñis and lamienes who resist in militarized Wallmapu; She has taught at the elitist Adolfo Ibáñez University as well as the Development University (owned by her idol Joaquín Lavín), where she has been heard on more than one occasion to venerate dictatorial work and defend profiting from education; We also had to listen to this scum vomit their ‘pseudo-ideals’ on several Sundays in the year 2010 via the television program ‘National State’; but if all this was not enough, this snake is also being investigated in two case of corruption, after communications were leaked on December 18, 2013 where this piece of garbage asks for 100 million pesos from Carlos Alberto Délano to pay her debts from her election campaign. Subsequently extracts of the statement of the latter were leaked to the prosecutor investigating the case, where he notes that Von Baer personally went (together with Jovino Novoa) to request financial support for her candidacy.

* Jovino Novoa: Founding member of the UDI and in his time he was also its President; He was President of the Senate, during his time he was also Senator for Santiago; Under Secretary General for Pinochet between 1979 and 1982, during the time that Tucapel Jiminez was assassinated by elements of the CNI linked to the Department of Civil Organizations, which was under his command; That same year he assumed the role of publisher of informative services for the daily liar The Mercury, which did not cease in covering up the sinister assemblies of the CNI in those years; in 2003 he was involved in the Spiniak Case, being acquitted by the benevolent justice of the rich; Today he has been condemned to a ridiculously light sentence for tax crimes by the rich bourgeois justice for the Penta and SQM cases, where he received the sum of 30 million pesos to finance political campaigns in an illegal manner after recognizing that he had occupied ideologically false ballots, evaded tax and made false returns from the SII to the Pena group.

* Hernan Larrain: Like the dog Chadwick and the miserable wretch Longueira, he was instructed by his mentor, the now dead Jaime Guzmán, in Colonia Dignidad (Dignity Colony). In fact, this pig was a member of the Friends of Colonia Dignidad Corporation, a place known for providing various types of support for the Pinochet regime and the continuation of human rights violations; He was President of the Senate and until recently was President of the UDI; He joined the Standing Committee on Agriculture, Decentralization, Regionalization, Legislation and Justice, and taking advantage of his powers as a senator – which he still has – approved the ‘Monsanto Law’, which greatly benefits foreign capital by giving them legal coverage in the regime that regulates licences for crop farmers, promoting privatized seeds and genetically modified food to the detriment of natural biodiversity. It privatizes the seed and assigns it a code which is then paid for by the consumer, taking advantage of a loophole in the genetically modified food categorization in favor of big industry. It is also worth mentioning the strong debate regarding the generation of cancer cells following the consumption of genetically modified foods, which are incredibly harmful to people’s health. Is there any doubt as to who this pig is?

* Juan Antonio Coloma: This homophobic cockroach was Deputy from the beginning of the Transition (period between the end of the dictatorship and the beginning of bourgeois ‘democracy’) until 2002, later he became Senator, a position that he still occupies until the present day; He has been Secretary General and President of the UDI, and is currently its Vice President; in 1977 he was designated President of the FEUC (Federation of Catholic University Students) to adhere to and be functional for the regime, That same year he participated as president of the organization that chaired the meeting in Cerro Chacarillas; He was a member of the Standing Committee on Agriculture in which he voted as a parliamentarian in favor of the ‘Monsanto Law’, giving a strong economic backing to the family of ultra-fascist Senator Ena Von Baer, as his father owns a large genetically modified seed company in the south of the country.

* Pablo Longueira: This xenophobic snake began his political career during his university days as president of the Center for Engineering Students and then of the Feceh (University of Chile Student Federation, an organization which replaced the Fech – which was banned during the dictatorship), to later become one of founders and most revered members of the UDI; From the ‘democratic’ Transition until 2006 he was Deputy, to then become Senator until 2011, a position that he also left to take charge of the Ministry of the Economy under the government of Piñera; This cowardly former presidential candidate has enriched himself enormously, taking advantage of his extensive powers to try and promote various initiatives as a parliamentarian; Most well known is the famous ‘Fisheries Act’ or ‘Longueira Law’, which greatly benefited big industry to the detriment of the artisanal fishermen. In this way, this individual received – via different suppliers – no less than the sum of 730 million pesos between September 2009 and March 2015 from, among others, the Corpesca company, controlled mainly by the Angelini family as a bribe to ensure that the law would be favorable to them; But this scoundrel has not only been enriched at the cost of our ignorance, but he has also mocked us all on countless occasions. How can we forget when this opportunist pirahna to use the sensitive issue of Disappeared Detainees for his own self-benefit; Not to mention the paradoxical result of the so-called ‘Lago-Longueira Agreement’ of January 17, 2003, to modernize the state and make a politically negotiated settlement to the numerous cases of corruption that affected institutional stability; The SQM case, controlled by Julio Ponce Lerou, Pinochet’s former son-in-law, where he was also involved, only serves to corroborate the political life of a wolf dressed sheep’s clothing.

* Jaime Orpis: This shameful and cowardly bird of prey used nothing more and nothing less than the current account of his own secretary for the payment of bank credits with which he even gave to the luxury of paying up to the Yacht Club of Frutillar, funds received, by the way, with the bribes from Corpesca in exchange for voting in the Senate in favor of the interests of the fishing industry; if this were not enough, to this xenophobic parliamentarian we can attribute, in addition to the more than 235 million pesos stolen via ideologically false ballots, the responsibility for the fact that areas of Parinacota, Arica and Tarapacá are practically war zones for undocumented and illegal migrants, since that under his management as Senator of the 1st Constituency the border and security systems were strengthened. As well as being a thief and a coward, he also turns out to be a xenophobic discriminator.

All these filth are militants of the extreme right and assiduous diners at the Cap Ducal. Also, we have seen them ourselves, we have observed them at their meetings, while they eat, drink and laugh.

The Cap Ducal is not a neutral restaurant, quite the opposite. It is an entry point, of meetings, linkage, planning and support that shelters miserable politicians, many of them involved in multiple scandals. Additionally, it should be noted that the owner of this chain of hotels and restaurants is none other than Tomas de Rementaria, founder of not only these club, but also (along with Ricardo Lagos) of the PPD (Party for Democracy). It is worth pointing out that this guy besides being a prominent businessman, was Councilman of Viña del Mar and a militant of the Chilean PS (Socialist Party). After all, they are all the same, they all have lunch together, they do business, they are friends and family. Repeated cases of corruption can account for this. They shake hands, smile and pose in photographs for posterity while people are swindled.

In the face of such infamy our response is forceful! We light the dynamite of Emile Henry and we blow up their centers of power!

With this text, we claim the explosive attack that occurred before dawn on Monday (27/02) in this area. We attacked one of the dens where Chilean fascism meets disguised in suits and elegant costumes to cook the laws and decrees with which they crush civil society as a whole purely for their own benefit. And they should thank us for having the decorum – which they certainly do not deserve – to visit this place at night and not in broad daylight, since we could have done so, and of course we would not have missed. We decided on this course of action as a clear political position so as not to hurt innocent people and workers at the restaurant.

We dedicate this action to the revolutionaries of yesterday and today, Freddy Fuentevilla Saa, Marcelo Villarroel Sepúlveda and Juan Aliste Vega, unyielding prisoners who hold firm to their convictions from the High Security Prison with a dignity that is greater than the walls that enclose them, facing fascism in all its various manifestations and forms.

In conclusion, we do not want to limit our words to mere justifications for our action. We can attest that it was a great pleasure to carry out this attack. We toast the fact that we were able to operate in the commune where these gentlemen feel untouchable. We will continue to take the Social War right up to the doors of their homes.

The justice of the street does not forgive nor does it forget! We are getting closer!

The real terrorists are in the Congress, the Palace and the institutions that govern the State!

Take note, because we have returned!! Neither Chileans nor Argentines!! Internationalists!! As long as there is misery there will be rebellion!!

Teodoro Suarez Vandalism Gang Antagonistic Nuclei of the New Urban Guerrilla via Noticias de la Guerra Social, translated by Insurrection News

#leftpress #Direct Action #Antagonistic Nuclei of the New Urban Guerrilla #Anti-Fascism #Arson #Cap Ducal restaurant #Chile #International Solidarity #Sabotage #Santiago #news #resistance #politics

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brainfoodgp · 7 years

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Brain Food Garden Project Blog February/2017

“If you have a garden and a library, you have everything you need.” –Cicero-

Reading has been important to me from my earliest childhood memory. My grandmother taught me to read when I was very young and gave me my first “big boy” series of books, 9 lovely stories of early prairie life starting with Little House in the Big Woods, as a gift when I graduated kindergarten. My first and lasting literary memory is of a little Laura Ingalls playing a game of throwing a hot pigs bladder, like a ball with other children, after the seasonal slaughter and preserving of the pig of course. Now that’s a memory you want sticking with you for the rest of your life…right?

When you are bullied as a child for being different or not behaving exactly the same way everyone else behaves you look for any means of escape. You don’t at eight years old identify diving with the Nautilus for deep sea adventures or escaping pirates on Treasure Island as a “wellness tool.” However, at 44 when you are waving your wand around at a Death Eater for let’s hypothetically say the millionth time, reading the Harry Potter series, it is probably time to make the connection…OK!

All joking aside, the importance of reading for me is one of my most important wellness tools. And that is why this month’s feature section is a short list for some of the books that keep me going or informed me in some way or that I discovered at that perfect moment in time. In “Notes From The Resistance” this month, we continue to share some important and relevant news stories about the current state of our democracy. And who says a healthy meal can’t be decadent. One of or BFGP gardening family members brought this Cauliflower Crust Grilled Cheese Sandwich to our attention. Every time I make it I’ll thank Ruth Gendreau Bennett and trust me when I say you will too. Whatever you read in the coming months I hope you are entertained, educated or inspired to change the world to make it a better place. Happy reading.

The BFGP Feature:

So many books so little time. These are a list of books that I have been reading since the election in November until now. Next month I will bring back the “What I’m Reading” section but all of these books listed in this feature are books that literally have helped keep me focused and have worked their magic to keep me mentally healthy.

In A First-Rate Madness: Uncovering the Links Between Leadership and Mental Illness by Dr. Nassir Ghaemi a book I read several years ago that I picked up and started re reading after the outcome of the election. This amazing read helped to prepare me for what was to come with the new leader of the free world being a fascist authoritarian. Dr. Ghaemi breaks down the leadership styles of many historical figures to showcase how their mental health concerns, if there had been such a diagnosis in their time, contributed or hindered their leadership styles. It is a fascinating read that covers Lincoln to Kennedy and Gandhi to Hitler.

Long before my hero Khizr Khan offered to loan the fascist his copy of The United States Constitution at the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia. I myself have been carrying around my own copy of the Constitution for years. There is no better sword for fighting ignorance in those that probably haven’t read the document since high school government class. You want to argue why our founding father’s wanted to build a “Christian nation” let me slap you down with their own words. You don’t understand why the fascists contempt and suppression of our free press is Unconstitutional please let me introduce you to Amendment 1 of the Bill of Rights. You think all Americans should have the right to bare semi-automatic weapons let me introduce you to the actual second amendment. I can’t help but feel if more Americans carried around a copy of the US Constitution instead of a gun we all might be better off for it.

Books have always had this magical way of finding me just when I am at my lowest and always in the most unexpected ways. In this scenario picking up a book from my mother’s bookshelf that I had never read and sent her as a Mother’s Day gift. Relationships between mothers and sons can often be challenging even difficult. However, add a Christian fundamentalist mother to a gay, bipolar activist son and life is often combustible. The Rainbow Comes and Goes by: Anderson Cooper and his mom Gloria Vanderbilt entered my life at the perfect time. Although their story is far different than my mothers and my story. It made me realize that even the best mother and son relationships have limitations. It is how we deal with those limitations that make us stronger.

The Book of Joy By: His Holiness the Dali Lama and the Archbishop Desmond Tutu was a gift from a friend waiting for me after the long holiday break. Reading their discussions and breakdown of the 8 pillars of joy helped me through a growing depression that could have gotten much worse. The four pillars of the mind: perspective, humility, humor and acceptance and the four pillars of the heart: forgiveness, gratitude, compassion and generosity continues to heal me every day. One of the books greatest teachings that I am still processing is you cannot truly have forgiveness unless you are fully capable of total acceptance of things you have absolutely no control over.

Gardening as everyone reading this blog knows is one of my greatest wellness tools it is the very foundation that Brain Food Garden Project is built on. Starting my first two Farm School classes in January and February—Food Justice and Botany opened up many lines of questions for me. The reading material that accompanied each class opened my eyes to new ideas and concepts that I had been thinking about for a long time but provided answers in a completely different context. Beyond the Kale: Urban Agriculture and Social Justice Activism in New York City By: Kristen Reynolds and Nevin Cohen, Symbiotic Planet: A New Look At Evolution By: Lynn Margulis, Botany for Gardeners By: Brian Capon and A Botanist’s Vocabulary By: Susan K. Pell and Bobbi Angell. I am grateful to the teachers that provided these resources, answered my questions and inspired many more questions that only I can answer for myself.

One of the reasons I love gardening so much is its ability to make us all more mindful. I have been revisiting a book I read many years ago in preparation to introducing the material to my garden club members this season at ACMH. The book Digging Deep: Unearthing Your Creative Roots Through Gardening By: Fran Sorin. This lovely book with wonderful exercises helped me to envision my best self at a time I needed it most. Now I’ll see if Sorin’s message will inspire others.

Reading has brought me greater empathy for others, a deeper understanding of my true inner self and immense joy and pleasure throughout my life. During dark and difficult times books have lifted me up making it easy to embrace reading as a cherished tool for recovery. If any of the books I discussed here find their way onto your reading list drop me a message and let me know about your thoughts. I started this writing with the line so many books so little time. I plan on getting through as many wonderful books as I can before I take my final breath! Reading truly brings me infinite joy.

Notes From The Resistance:

So we are 15 weeks in and the fascist authoritarian party (formally known as Republicans) have been busy. They have enacted an un Constitutional ban on Muslim immigrants and citizens in many cases. They have ended protections in schools to stop bullying and keep our Transgender kids protected. They are working overtime to kill The Affordable Care Act taking vital insurance or limiting resources for some 20 million Americans. These are some stories from the front lines over the past month. We must never normalize any of this hatred we must keep fighting and resist.

1.) The regime still continues to attack science any way they can… Click here

2.) Many of us living with mental health concerns cringe a little when we hear people refer to the fascist leader as mentally ill. This article sums up those feelings… Click here

3.) The protests over the fascists police state immigration round up continues as “detention” camps and private prisons profit… Click here

4.) The big Agriculture farmers that voted for the fascist are starting to have doubts over his leadership… Cick here

5.) Guns let’s put them in the hands of our most vulnerable citizens sound like a good idea?… Click here

Healthy & Delicious Recipes:

When I curl up with a good book on a rainy afternoon nothing makes the day even more perfect than sipping and munching two of my childhood favorites a cup of tomato soup and a grilled cheese sandwich! You know cauliflower is one of my favorite brain foods and this recipe for a Cauliflower Crusted Grilled Cheese Sandwich is going to become one of your favorites, trust me.

Ingredients

Makes 2 grilled cheese sandwiches

Cauliflower crust “bread” slices

1 small head cauliflower, cut into small florets (should yield 3 cups of cauliflower rice)

1 free-range organic egg, lightly beaten

½ cup / 1.7 oz / 50 gr shredded mozzarella cheese

½ teaspoon fine grain sea salt

¼ teaspoon ground black pepper

Grilled cheese

1 tablespoon butter, room temperature

⅓ cup / 3 oz / 85 gr sharp cheddar cheese, grated/shredded, room temperature

Directions

Cauliflower crust “bread” slices

Preheat oven to 450°F (220°C) and place a rack in the middle.

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper and liberally grease it with olive oil. Set aside.

In a food processor rice the cauliflower florets (it should be evenly chopped but not completely pulverized).

Transfer cauliflower rice (about 3 cups) to a microwave-safe dish and microwave on high for 8 minutes, until cooked.

Place the cauliflower rice in a tea towel and twist it to squeeze as much moisture as you can (I usually squeeze out over a cup of liquid). This is very important. The cauliflower rice needs to be dry, otherwise you’ll end up with mushy dough, impossible to use as slices of bread.

Transfer the cauliflower rice to a mixing bowl, add egg, mozzarella, salt and pepper and mix well.

Spread cauliflower mixture onto the lined baking sheet and shape into 4 square.

Place in the oven and bake for about 16 minutes until golden.

Remove and let cool 10 minutes before peeling them off the parchment paper (be careful not to break them!)

Assemble cauliflower crust grilled cheese

Heat a pan over medium heat.

Butter one side of each slice of cauliflower crust bread (preferably the top part).

Place one slice of bread in the pan, buttered side down, sprinkle on the cheese and top with the remaining slice of cauliflower crust bread, buttered side up.

Turn the heat down a notch and cook until golden brown, about 2 to 4 minutes.

Gently flip and cook until golden brown on the other side, about 2 to 4 minutes.

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adambstingus · 5 years

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6 Actors Who Tried To Teach Lessons (And Madness Ensued)

A celebrity public service announcement seems like a fine idea in theory. People love having a popular, attractive person tell them what to do — that’s how God-Emperors are made. So how can you screw that up? Well, let us count the ways …

Mario Tells Kids That They’ll Suffer Hell On Earth

“Captain” Lou Albano had the honor of being both a professional wrestler and Mario on The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, which to children is about as impressive as being a crimefighting dog who can magically summon ice cream. So it’s not surprising that Albano was seen as a great choice for an anti-drug PSA aimed at kids. It is surprising that they filmed the whole shebang in a closet while Albano looked like he was wasted on a whatever he was telling kids to stay away from.

Albano crams a lot of words into 19 seconds, and while it’s mostly standard PSA stuff (“Don’t be afraid to say no,” “People who want you to take drugs aren’t really your friends,” “You’ll probably stop giving a crap about what Mario says when you go to college and some cutie invites you to smoke weed with them,” etc.), there’s a last-second twist. Albano warns that if you do drugs, “you’ll go to hell before you die,” while fading into a corner of a screen and whispering the word “please” in a way that would really mess with your head if you were tripping.

Always remember, kids: According to a professional athlete who played a hero whose power comes from magical mushrooms, drugs have no benefit whatsoever and will send you to a nightmarish plane of brimstone and fire.

The Cast Of The Wire Wants You To Wear A Condom

Teenagers, generally speaking, are the demographic that most need education on sexual safety, both because they’re lacking in life experience and because they’re getting laid way more often than we are. So if you had to make a hip safe sex PSA in the mid-2000s, what celebrities would you work with? The stars of a teen drama? Maybe the cast of a reality show? How about the heroes of their dad’s favorite gritty police drama, The Wire?

Luckily, a whole chunk of The Wire‘s cast is here to prestige people into practicing safe sex. Unfortunately, this PSA is less of a coherent call to action than a laudanum-induced fever dream. There are no statistics or stern lectures — merely the dying hallucinations of a ’80s music video director made surreality.

Monique Richert/YouTube “Why, I’m practicing safe sex right now!”

The whole thing comes across like aliens have kidnapped humans and are trying to make a soothing simulated reality for them based only on the trivia that we like sex, award-winning television, and outdated music. Clarke Peters looks like he’s about to teach us either Tae Bo or how to use your orgasm to ascend to a higher plane of existence.

Here’s Jackie Chan Hanging Out With A Giant Condom

“You all know me as an action hero,” is how Jackie Chan walks into this PSA. But he wants to introduce us to another action hero: Mr. Condom, who sounds like the stuffed bear of a Victorian British child — something to keep in mind the next time you use one.

Mr. Condom and Jackie clearly have a strong and respectful master-student relationship, and Chan explains how this strong warrior prevents STDs. Meanwhile, an energetic Mr. Condom shows off his fighting moves. Because if there’s one thing you want a good condom to be, it’s flexible enough to move around wildly on its own.

Mr. Condom then launches himself into the air, spins around, and stretches himself out, in case you’ve ever wondered what it looks like when a condom has its own orgasm, before reminding us to use him when you have sex. Chan then wraps up the PSA by telling us that while he can fight visible enemies, even he needs Mr. Condom’s help in keeping HIV at bay, which can definitely be a risk when you cheat on your wife. Then Jackie and Mr. Condom embrace, and Jackie definitely doesn’t die a little inside before they punch the camera.

Don’t Drive Angry, Or Evander Holyfield Will Beat You To Death

If you make the wrong decision while driving, you can end a person’s life. Someone’s loved one could be snuffed out in an instant due to your carelessness. But apparently some people require a more “What’s in it for me?” incentive than that, so Evander Holyfield made a PSA about how he’ll beat the shit out of aggressive drivers.

Scene: A car pulls into traffic and cuts off another driver, who then angrily honks and forces the car over. The man gets out of his truck and reveals himself to be a redneck stereotype whose string of profanity makes it clear that he intends to beat the fuck stuffing out of his new nemesis. But then, surprise twist! The man he wants to murder is Evander Holyfield! Now who’s about to die?

The moral clearly ought to be “Avoid road rage. You never know who you might run into. But counterpoint: If you can clearly see it’s some soccer mom or a grandpa, feel free to go full King Immortan Joe on their asses.” If the only way you can think of to appeal to violent maniacs is to remind them they’ll sometimes cross paths with a professional fighter, you haven’t made a PSA against road rage, but one in favor of keeping a gun in the glove compartment.

Mel Gibson Doesn’t Want The Feds To Take Away Our Vitamins

Holy shit, check out this thrilling Mel Gibson movie set in the grim future of 1993!

Whose fancy house is being raided? A corrupt politician? An unscrupulous CEO?

No, they’re arresting Mel Gibson. And while it was prescient for Gibson to portray himself as being in trouble with the law, here he’s being hauled in for the simple dystopian crime of owning vitamins. “Guys, guys! It’s only vitamins!” he protests. But what he doesn’t know is that the government wants to make vitamins illegal. This video is here to warn good American citizens that their supplements are under attack. Now, you probably don’t know anyone who has been dogpiled by a SWAT team for cracking open a bottle of Flintstone’s, but in the chilling, stupid reality of Mel Gibson’s world, the answer is “It’s already happening.”

As shown in this obviously based-on-real-events footage, the fascist pig cops are unimpressed when Gibson explains to them he was only taking Vitamin C, “like in oranges.” He’ll have plenty of time to adjust his mindset during his four-month stay at a Dietary Supplement Reeducation Camp. But that future doesn’t have to be ours, the cards say, if we just call our senators.

If you’re wondering what the hell is going on, this “PSA” was funded by the Nutritional Health Alliance, a lobby group formed by the supplement industry to prevent the government from looking into what a huge scam supplements are.

Specifically, in early ’90s, the FDA wanted to crack down on supplements that made completely unsubstantiated health claims on their packaging and in ads, because if there’s one thing the Man loves to do, it’s pushing around honest, hard-working Americans by forcing them to stop buying dangerous products that hospitalize tens of thousands and might accidentally kill people. It’s unclear if Gibson actually believed in the supplement industry or was letting them supplement his income, but luckily, Gibbers was unable to terrify Americans with his vision of a vitamin-hating police state. The FDA’s new regulations went through, and Gibson found himself on the wrong side of history — a position he’s since become intimately familiar with.

Kid Rock And Sean Penn For Generic Unity Between Americans

It’s no secret that America is a politically divided country. And who better to bridge that bitter gap than Kid Rock and Sean Penn, two of the most beloved and kind artists in the world. Between Kid’s political savvy and Penn’s famous calmness, only these two could ever unite Americans across the political spectrum — mostly by making all of them ask “Wait … what the fuck?”

This nearly 11-minute (no, seriously) public service Sundance entry is called “Americans,” and it features one of America’s favorite (alleged) spousal abusers sitting down with one of America’s least-favorite aural abusers for a conversation that absolutely no one asked for.

We open with Penn sitting at a bar and ordering vodka, even though he already looks and sounds completely shitfaced.

Mitt Romney (this was made in 2012) is giving a speech on TV. Penn asks for the channel to be changed, but the justifiably scared female bartender ignores him, just in time for Romney to introduce his special musical guest. It’s Kid Rock, and for a moment, we are all Sean Penn:

Then, gasp! Old Man Rock appears in the bar! How Penn failed to notice a six-foot-tall overall-wearing Americana scarecrow right next to him is left unexplained.

But Mr. Rock, who also seems drunk, plops himself down next to Penn and starts complaining about “Obummer’s” tax policies, like a totally relatable middle American. The two start sniping at each other like YouTube commenters — Penn quotes Goebbels, while Kid Rock says “Fuckin’ suck it, commie.” They both take turns delivering incoherent tirades, although Penn seems to be winning the debate. After all, it’s hard to take Kid Rock seriously when he’s dressed like he’s on his way to play the Country Bear Jamboree.

They nearly come to blows, in a fight we could only hope they somehow both lose, until a random sassy bar patron tells them to shut up and appreciate everything America has to offer. Her passionate speech about what American citizenship means to her is somewhat undercut by the fact that she finishes by calling them “fucking pussies,” but never mind that –there’s some breaking news on the bar TV that inexplicably isn’t just on ESPN. 26 marines have been killed in Afghanistan! Cue sad music and Kid Rock failing to act!

Thankfully, those soldiers didn’t die in vain. Rock and Penn are inspired by their sacrifice to toast “to freedom” and apologize to each other — while babbling over everyone else’s respectful moment of silence. Naturally, the next step is a wacky montage! The first thing Kid Rock does is sell his car and buy a Prius, as any relatable conservative American who wants to learn more about his liberal friends could totally afford to do at the drop of a hideous hat.

Next, we get a shot of an environmental protest, Kid Rock urinating in the background, and Penn catching his urine in a bucket because … Kid Rock’s dehydrated lizard juice still counts as potable water? No time to reflect, because it’s time for Penn to trade places! Kid Rock teaches him to drink a beer instead of a girly cocktail! As the day is winding down, Penn takes Rock to a gay wedding, which, according to this movie, involves one of the men wearing a wedding dress! Are we seeing this wedding through Rock’s Republican eyes?

They then buy each other T-shirts and exchange them on the beach! Kid Rock and Sean Penn are totally about to fuck! After the pair leaves the beach to go bone down, the message of this inspirational tale appears onscreen for the benefit of the slower viewers: We’re all Americans, whether we love PETA, own guns, or are a sassy black woman. Those are the only three kinds of Americans. You too can put aside your cavalcade of liberal and conservative stereotypes and stop yelling crude insults at each other long enough to bond over some dead marines and go car shopping. Because in the end, aren’t we all just South Park jokes without the irony? Fuck yeah, Sean Penn and Kid Rock. Fuck yeah.

Mark is on Twitter and has a book.

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