Hello Reader,
Got a yearning for URLs again?
(Again? Yes: This post is the sequel to a light-hearted post that hasn’t run yet)
I have been perusing my older essays. As you know, I like to collect my various links all on one blog page. This time, unlike my post of (hasn’t run yet), these older URL’s were not intended as “brights” at the end of a page; therefore this “URLs Again” post has more prose, less music and darker content.
If a URL here is not clickable, then I would expect you, Dear Reader, to use your “Copy” (not cut) and “Paste” feature to go to the web sites. With my usual contempt for SEO, Search Engine Optimization, I present no links on a silver platter for “surfers” who are “patience challenged.” (“Why not link?” you ask. See my top ten (by visitor count) essay No Links is Good Links archived July 2012)
Bullying:
(God bless society for slow-w-w-ly starting to become ready to begin to face the effects of child bullying)
Being returned to a sixth form bullying environment can later cause PTSD-like trauma for a wife and mother
(After referring to a controversial Bullies and Teachers quote…) I had felt foolish from the thought of readers scorning me for daring to say that children would bully and sexually assault each other. But they do. Since then, here is a story where a teacher called a six year old victim a silly girl. Her assault from peers during school playtime only became undeniable when she was too sore to sit down.
And here’s a new story where the mother notes that today her “raped on a play date” son “is not the same boy”
Of course I like our dear school teachers… AND I’m also feeling strident today, like a new feminist.
Music videos:
A whimsical parody song by a (former) history teacher, as an assignment for her night school class.
It made my computer technician howl with laughter—he thanked me for showing him. By the way, that’s her own child in the video, how sweet.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RO0-7YAxxDY&feature=c4-overview&list=UUAiABuhVSMZJMqyv4Ur5XqA
Same history teacher, singing like Lady Gaga for Bastille Day. The link was in an essay on alienated young folks in big cities getting caught up in communism, holy terrorism and other revolutions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wXsZbkt0yqo
David Wong of Cracked Magazine has a piece that uses funny photos to explain a serious subject.
Although now a liberal city slicker, Wong grew up in the country He remembers how it was, and can still “method act” what it’s like to be rural.
Six Reasons for Trump’s Rise that No One Talks About.
Two favorite quotes from Wong:
To those ignored, suffering people, Donald Trump is a brick chucked through the window of the elite. “Are you assholes listening now?”
And “But you might as well take time to try to understand them, because I'm telling you, they'll still be around long after Trump is gone.”
https://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-one-talks-about/
The Ca-na-da song
that all of we who knew centennial year sang.
I found it by using a search engine. This is NOT, unfortunately, the version that played on TV commercials, causing the CBC telephones to ring off the hook with folks requesting the lyrics. That one the CBC must have lost, as I saw no trace of it during Canada’s 150th anniversary.
Blog essay
Ten Things Most Americans Don’t Know About America. Written by an American, but not by an “Ugly American.” Mark Manson, living abroad, has truly mingled as an equal, and has a Brazilian wife.
Song by Carol King of Anticipation, (These are the good old days) sung outdoors
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4NwP3wes4M8
*** *** Got Feminism? *** ***
There is a viking exhibit on now at the royal museum in Edmonton. Turns out the scientists were wrong about gender:
Today feminist theory is not from regular folks in consciousness raising circles, reflecting on lived experience, but from ivory tower academics:
News story: As regards a women’s liberation “laundry list” of the attributes of domestic violence and emotional abuse, only now being recognized by the Scottish police, old-is-new-again, here is a link. I had placed the link not on my blog but in one of my comments on Penelope Trunk’s blog post about why there is no “hashtag me too” for domestic abuse.
Blog page: Curiously, although Penelope’s post has her usual vast number of readers, it has far less than her usual number of commenters. Some readers could only bear to contact her privately.
https://blog.penelopetrunk.com/2019/07/20/the-reason-theres-no-metoo-for-domestic-violence/#comments
One can submit to Allah and still, just like the Muslim with daughters I wrote about in London, believe in basic rights for women, even unto infuriating the Mullahs in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The London attraction with the most visitors is the Tate Modern:
“At the exhibit gift shop—some shelves and counters by a cafe—I picked up a collection called Sister Outsider, essays and speeches by Audre Lorde, the U.S. Black poet and university teacher. About a decade before the taking down of the iron curtain, she went to Uzbekistan, a Soviet Socialist Republic. She wrote on page 29:
QUOTE
But she talked most movingly of the history of the women of Uzbekistan, a history which deserves more writing about than I can give it here. The ways in which the women of this area, from 1924 on, fought to come out from behind complete veiling, from Moslem cloister to the twentieth century. How they gave their lives to go bare-faced, to be able to read. Many of them fought and many of them died very terrible deaths in this battle, killed by their own fathers and brothers. It is a story of genuine female heroism and persistence. I thought of the South African women in 1956 who demonstrated and died rather than carry pass books. For the Uzbeki women, revolution meant being able to show their faces and go to school, and they died for it. A bronze statue stands in a square of Samarkand, monument to the fallen women and their bravery. Madam went on to discuss equality between the sexes. How many women now headed collective farms, how many women Ministers. She said there were a great many ways in which women governed; there was no difference between men and women now in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics…
UNQUOTE”
*** *** End Feminism *** ***
Another blog feature.
I make no comment to you about this one, showing diverse views, thanks to the US freedom of speech, regarding US management of social resources.
http://noahpinionblog.blogspot.com/2014/01/why-does-america-have-potholed-roads.html
Song by Pete Seeger, singing Who killed Norma Jean, from my essay about Group Level Integrity of February 2012
http://www.musictory.com/music/Pete+Seeger/Who+Killed+Norma+Jean
*** *** Start Doctor Who *** ***
music by fans
Here is a sentimental fan collage over the song I don’t deserve you
fan music video
a gorgeous fan music video that has glimpses of Clara's last Christmas.
Song
If you remember Don Maclean’s sympathetic song “Starry starry night,” and if you don’t mind “stills,”
(still photographs from the moving pictures)
then here is the sympathetic song “Chances,” performed by Athlete, with lyrics, where the doctor gives aide and comfort to the greatest painter who ever lived.
Incidentally, as they go up the art museum stairs, on the landing is a statue of a Greek hero using his polished shield as a mirror to see Medusa.
Drama clip: “It’s OK to change, as long as you keep moving”: The 11th doctor’s fated change from his life as #11 into #12, with comfort from a dearly departed companion. You see a close up of her wedding ring hand as she goes down the bannister. It’s a comfort to fans: the girl who did stripper-grams married at last; she and her husband passed on at the same time. As Amy said, “Together, or not at all.”
*** *** End Doctor Who *** ***
Lengthy BBC news feature documenting how you can immigrate “on paper”
and yet “in reality” not like or respect your new homeland,
but for this family,
in the end, love finds a way
“I was forced to marry my cousin”
Seven Reasons Why Europeans Don’t Like the EU
From the Washington Post newspaper,
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/06/25/7-reasons-why-some-europeans-hate-the-e-u/
Live action Song, by anime fans, of gentle sympathy, like a Gregorian sacred chant,
composed in late 20th century Japan for Elfen Lied,
Surely Elfen Lied is the most violent anime I will ever see, about abandoned children, some innocent, some not, all trying hard to be brave.
Very moving, but I can’t recommend it to anyone my age because of the violence.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JvCpCg0sGkg
Another version of that song, illium, that is NOT linked on my blog:
I have just now found a full choir in a Kiev church with beautiful overlapping parts. “Comments are disabled,” perhaps to stop ignorant anime-fans who would scornfully say the innocent choir doesn’t know the splendid anime. Nice to see that Godless communism did not extinguish religion.
At Japanese pop culture festivals,
Down in the US of A,
the fans will always make music videos at a sunny campus, or convention centre, amongst warm green grass and open waters.
The only Youtube music exception to sunshine is this one, filmed in my adopted home town of Calgary,
up in Canada,
with background snow.
The music is from the end of the movie Wreck-it Ralph, by Owl City.
https://vimeo.com/56749712
A long movie review,
4/5 stars for a one-of-a-kind flic, Boyhood, on Roger Ebert’s web site. Apparently the movie, rated R, asks questions:
is “normal” a construct?; can we change ourselves?; and can we “put away childish things?” There are over 130 comments, which is unusual.
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/boyhood-2014
A sour lengthy book review about a book’s “social context,” which I don’t agree with, but handy for young people curious to realize how certain others think they see behind the curtain of this Omelas we live in.
I can understand writers becoming strident, but I have little patience for writers driven to sourness. The review is of Book Two of Simone de Beauvoir’s autobiography.
https://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2012/03/the-prime-of-life-by-simone-de-beauvoir.html
Music for Parents, opening credits
of nice anime shows:
If your teenager is trying to tell you that Japanese cartoons, anime, is NOT like childish funny American Saturday morning cartoons—with childish funny opening credits— and with American- style super-short attention spans, then here are three 13-episode “story arc” shows (one season) you can watch together:
The first is where a virtual high school has a few deceased real teens among virtual characters. The setting is limbo, before heaven. The angel-student at the piano is all alone without friends, because she wants the other students to move on past limbo into heaven, but they are “rebels against the God.” Lots of guns, but amusing, because of course no one in limbo can die. Called Angel Beats!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjnOt6xaxXg
This one is where older big angel kids take care of younger angel kids until they can move on to heaven. They live in a walled city with rustic wind turbines, full of peaceful humans. Again no deaths, no guns, no wicked witches. Called Haibane Renmei
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gjnOt6xaxXg
This one is of a lone traveler with a talking motorcycle. The first of the 13 episodes, with criminal people on the road, is a foil to set up all the lawful city-states to visit. Only if you truly hate the first episode should you skip ahead to the 13th episode. (If you do, then you’ll skip back to episode 2, for sure) Practising pulling out the pistol is not to be a western gunslinger, but to follow the eastern sensei’s teachings of the “way,” or “do,” as in ‘way of the tea ceremony’ or ‘way of the empty hand.’ (karate-do) As it happens, the tea ceremony is as rigid as tai chi or a martial arts kata.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVgHN8cfy1I
Here’s a link to a nice blog post,
inviting the reader to feel “yes!” and a sense of community, about how writing on her blog would “hold memories” and “change perception of time” and “extend time.” Well expressed. I couldn’t comment on it myself, because the comment thingy would not take my URL, but you may have better luck.
What is a nerd?
Roger Ebert explains in his movie review of Revenge of the Nerds II
A blog post about why trying something with low odds of success can be good for you, by one of my favorite bloggers, a fellow I have corresponded with, Scott Berkun.
…Queerly enough, the link was in my post about modern Arabs still being tribal, something westerners need to admit before they can ever (mistakenly) hope to impose western values.
Feature article by a pilot
on how passenger jets are pressurized, and whether it’s safe for an air marshal to fire his pistol inside the cabin at 30,000 feet.
https://www.airspacemag.com/flight-today/how-things-work-cabin-pressure-2870604/
Fiction: From the publisher, lengthy excerpt of the first three chapters of an award winning Chinese science fiction novel, translated into English. The communism history matches what I’ve read elsewhere.
https://www.tor.com/2014/09/30/the-three-body-problem-silent-spring-excerpt-chapters-1-3/
A letter by Captain Kirk’s hero, President Lincoln, read aloud by General Marshal, the best WWII general the US had, according to business guru Peter Drucker. As for General Patton? There is a good reason other generals in Europe outranked Patton, while Marshal outranked them all. His duty was to stay in the pentagon, at the request of the president, and that is where he served out the war. After the war the president made him the secretary of state, and insisted that his name be on the great plan to rebuild Europe: The Marshal Plan. The reading is from early in the movie Saving Private Ryan.
I wanted to include here my link to a South Korean Youtube of the song Marching Through Georgia but I see it is now restricted as being “private.”
Lastly, something NOT linked in my blog:
LENGTHY printed news feature that I once printed out to show a mother: My disabled son- ‘the nobleman, the philanderer, the detective’
Sean Crawford
Calgary
2019
Footnotes:
~From just two days ago comes an article on why kids become bullies, and it’s not from reasons we have traditionally assumed:
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20190913-why-some-children-become-merciless-bullies
~Here’s that controversial quote mentioned for the second link at the top, using the original fonts. I’ve included a preceding paragraph to give context.
Sorry to say, I just cannot imagine a teacher reading this quote out loud at a staff meeting. Let’s hope I’m wrong; let’s hope I’m being “imagination challenged”:
QUOTE
Since my day, according to reports by kids in the book, there are now anti-bullying assemblies, sometime complete with skits. I doubt they are any more effective than those assemblies in my day that pleaded with us to intervene if we saw someone vandalizing.
(Incidentally, at my school, vandalism included the main girls “smokers” washroom having every steel stall door ripped away)
Of course we all thought our teachers were crazy to suggest we intervene. Today the assemblies are probably as useless as ever: Obviously they didn’t help any of the kids testifying.
I wonder how many boys and girls, bullied and sexually assaulted, end up losing their innocence … growing up to be well groomed, well employed, socially skilled adults moving among us, adults who are social isolates because they have lost something along the way… A kid above says, “I just can’t be around people anymore.”
UNQUOTE
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