Yowch! I just saw that Max Hardcore got 46 months in prison (insert pound-me-in-the-ass prison joke here). Looks to me like it was a real set up (show trials, a symptom of the growing fascism in America), and I have to wonder who’s next… Not that Max isn’t a scumbag that’s been taunting the feds for ages, but there’s certainly a lot of people producing analogous material, to say nothing of people producing more “extreme” material. I have to wonder as well why adult content is prosecuted but “torture porn” a la I Know Who Killed Me or the Saw series — true glorification of violence — is not.
Given America’s love for porn in general, the whole thing reeks of politics that pander to the borders of society. I have to wonder why the Christian right-wing nutcase fringe has so much political power…? I guess it’s that they’re vocal whereas people keep their porn fandom in the closet. Either way, I have to admit that I am very glad that I’m no longer in the adult content business (to say nothing of being glad to be in Canada… keeping my fingers crossed that Harper loses power of course).
Caitlin got Nefarious the Wii game “Cosmic Family” as a present. It has pretty mixed reviews online, so I thought I’d offer my feedback for those looking for semi-educational games for a five year old (the market is very limited). Nefarious so far has been having lots of fun with it, although many of the games are overly simple even for a five year old… There are some good pattern matching and puzzle games, and some simple drawing and arranging type games as well. For a first game (I don’t really count Wii Sports) it seems to be a hit with her. That said, so was the dollar store recorder!
I read somewhere recently that they’re passing new laws about rating/filtering hardware in televisions because the average kid watches over four hours of television a day… Nefarious watches maybe half an hour a day (after breakfast; before school) of non-commercial kid’s TV. Today she played her new game after school (she decided that she’d rather do that than swim today), and I felt weird enough about that… I can’t imagine allowing four hours of TV… Not I don’t watch more myself!
One of my favorite things in our house is the wall of Ari’s little drawings and school works… She’s started reading and writing a lot more this year to prepare her for “real” school next year. The note says “Ari is hpe [happy] and tiyrd [tired]. luch [lunch] wus [was] good.” I love her drawings but it is interesting that on a technical level they’ve become far less refined over time — although as I think I’ve mentioned before, I was reminded that when I started going to school I reverted to drawing stick figures because “that’s how everyone else draws”.
When making weekend plans with a classmate of Nefarious’s, they mentioned they were moving today. The good news is that they’re our new next door neighbors! In other five year old news we got some new books as a reward for her improvements in reading skill — The Woman Who Married a Bear was a big hit, and definitely a book I’d recommend for kids of her age or a little older. Tomorrow I think we’re off to see how the animals at the zoo are preparing for winter…
I mentioned in the previous entry how much I like Talk Talk‘s Spirit of Eden and Laughing Stock, the so-called heroin albums, but I think that my current favorite album and top album of 2008 by a long shot has to be Spiritualized‘s Songs in A&E, which I’m sure has plenty of morphine and opiates influencing it as well… I hate to say it, because obviously heroin does so much damage to people’s lives, but in terms of its musical influence it’s easily my “favorite drug“. As to my personal preference? “No comment!”
Nefarious and I got fresh fish today, as in freshly killed. Got to watch the trout being smashed over the head with a giant hammer and twitch about while it was being cleaned, which she found completely fascinating. Later while we were at the pool (which was a good day because another kid her age was there too for her to play with) Caitlin started the meal so I’m looking forward to a delicious feast, and then an evening of entertainment, which I expect will be metaphorically similar to the fish killing we watched earlier.
…I could never forgive them for the death of my boy. It seems to me our mission to escort the Chancellor of the Klingon High Council to a peace summit is problematic at best. Spock says this could be an historic occasion, and I’d like to believe him, but how on earth can history get past people like me?
I watched a great pro-Obama union speech about racism, and from that followed a link to the video below, which makes the point that John McCain’s relatively unrepentant racist statements — ie. “I hate the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live.” — are deeply problematic, and more so than just the subtle (and overt) racism that’s a part of mainstream American culture.
It’s not just that he’s using a racist term… Gook isn’t a word like “nigger” (a derogatory word wrapped up in the subjugation of blacks by whites), but is a specific wartime slur that is directly associated with the concept of genocide. That is, it implies not just a prevalence for racist thinking, but a desire for racial genocide. At a time in America’s history where there is a pathological fear of Arab culture, this is definitely not the subconscious foundation that America’s foreign relations should be built on.
