Quick hit on Neal McDonough
by V.E. on February 6th, 2012
filed under entertainment, wtf
All right, so I’m watching Tin Man (finally) and the title character is played by Neal McDonough… I knew I recognized him from somehwere else, but I couldn’t place it. So, I looked ‘im up (thank gods for Wikipedia, seriously). I read the info and noticed that he was fired for refusing to do sex scenes, which I’m like… kudos, man, kudos for sticking up for yourself. According to Wikipedia,
McDonough was set to star in the ABC dramedy Scoundrels but was fired for refusing to do sex scenes for the show. He credits his family and his Catholic faith for his decision.
So, good for him. Whatever. But that didn’t tell me where I’d seen him before, so… I’ve seen Minority Report (which is mentioned in the opening couple of paragraphs) but not in a long time, but I have seen it, so at first I thought it was that, but then I scrolled down the filmography and (re-)discovered that he played Bison in The Legend of Chun-Li. Which I was like, “Oooooooohhhhhhhhhh, that’s where I remember him from, for sure.”
But then I remembered that Bison (played by McDonough) at one point uses a woman for a punching bag—literally. And it was the most difficult part of the film for me. Here’s what I wrote in 2009 (links in original):
There’s a serious women-in-refrigerators moment when Bison and Balrog are in the weight room using the punching bags. The camera pulls back on Bison and we see that his punching bag is actually Cantana, Bison’s black widow of a woman who gives up important information about “The White Rose” to Chun-Li in the bathroom of a dance club. Luckily (I guess), Cantana is already dead by the time Bison uses her for a punching bag (literally), but that didn’t make it any easier to swallow.
And so I was sitting here thinking, “You won’t do sex(y) scenes on screen, but you will beat up a dead woman/desecrate a corpse/be an overall misogynist asshole?” What the fuck is that about? What happened to “family and Catholic faith” for that decision? Seriously, in what fucked up world is it okay to decline work because of sex (which is fine by itself, by the way), but not decline it because of violence towards women?
Oh, wait.
Martin Freeman and all the BAFTAs
by V.E. on January 30th, 2012
filed under entertainment, words, wtf
Yes, so here’s my contribution to The “Gee, Martin Freeman should probably have all the BAFTAs” Postcard Project.
All the information you want for this project is in that link, so don’t come running to me if you need help. (Well, I could probably help you, actually, but don’t come running until you’ve checked that page at least, will you?)
(ie: unassuming front)
(on left)
Dear Mr. Freeman,
ALL THE BAFTAS, SIR.
ALL OF THEM.Very sincerely yours,
VE Duncan
(on right)
Martin Freeman
c/o Creative Artists Mgmt
4th Floor
111 Shoreditch High Street
London
E1 6JN
United Kingdom
Honest to gods, guys; I don’t think I’ve ever sent anyone fanmail in my whole entire life, not even a postcard. Oh, okay there was that one letter of gratitude to the writers of L&O: SVU for a line they wrote for Elliot Stabler in the episode “Mask“, but other than that… never.
In any case, if you like Martin Freeman’s work in BBC’s Sherlock, please consider sending him a postcard yourself, too!
Spelling
by V.E. on January 9th, 2012
filed under meta, words, writing, wtf
This morning at 6:21 AM PT, I was left a (spam) comment on my post about Strawberry Eggs by someone calling themselves Samira Stoots (email address Kornfield[at]gmail[dot]com—yes, really). It reads
Certainly I like your web-site, but you have to test the spelling on several of your posts. A number of them are rife with spelling problems and I find it very troublesome to inform you. However I will surely come back again!
Um, no; sorry. I’m laughing at you right now. Not to be mean, but… well, yes, actually… I am being mean here: everyone makes mistakes (gasp! even me, heaven forbid!), but I’m not the kind of person who makes spelling mistakes on a regular basis. I’m a writer; I should hope I don’t make a lot of spelling errors, you think?
Anyway, I’m deleting that comment, but I thought I’d share the laughs with you all, too.
The Testaments
by V.E. on September 17th, 2011
filed under recap/review, spirituality, wtf
Author’s Note: I was going to just put a short note at the end of my Sister Missionaries: the Beliefs post, but then I realized as I actually watched the film, that there was no way my “note” would be anything close to short. So here’s another post specifically about The Testaments: Of One Fold and One Shepherd.
A note on The Testaments (wiki)—the first part of which you can watch here… It’s pretty clear to me that something is amiss when, in the official LDS media, the following disclaimer is applied: “While the exact location of the events in the Americas is unknown and some of the characters there have been fictionalized, the appearance of the Savior and His ministry actually took place” (emphasis mine). Seriously?
And what is it with—not even five minutes in—the American natives somehow knowing about the birth of Jesus by a book that a prophet gave to them? (I presume that’s the Book of Mormon.) Obviously, the man who wrote the Book of Mormon knew nothing about the native peoples of the Americas. Even I know pitifully little about them, but I’m pretty sure I’d have heard about it if there was historical evidence that they had known of the Christ’s birth during the time is occurred.
I’m not convinced. I might be able to get into it, if it wasn’t presented as Something That Actually Happened™ (something I admit I’ve had trouble with before). The main character, Jacob, has a crush on another character, and what does he do? Not go and ask her out, and not do whatever it is that the native culture expects for him to be able to court her… No, he throws rocks at her while she’s in the river picking waterlilies. That… is not impressive. The story of Jacob, as portrayed by The Testaments, portrays something that echoes Joseph Smith’s own life (or perhaps the missionaries would say that Smith’s life seems to echo Jacob’s)—and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. Good fiction writers often use what they know to make their stories more believable for their readers.
The narrative skips between the Americas and the Middle East. In the Middle East, Jesus performs his miracles, which we learn about in the New Testament of the Bible. I admit I looked more kindly upon these sequences, but I think that’s because they were introduced to me at a much younger age than the Mormon parts were, not because they’re actually any more believable. 
They might, in fact, be less believable because the Bible is so much older and has had more time to be corrupted (which Joseph Smith said it had been, which necessitated the need for the “restored gospel”)—if not for the complete lack of historical evidence relating to Jesus in the Americas accounted in the Book of Mormon.
That is to say, I’m more inclined to believe the Bible because it’s backed up by secular, historical documents—even some documents that try to discredit Jesus as the Son of God—while the Book of Mormon is backed up by… testimony. There isn’t even such a thing as “reformed Egyptian“. If the original Book of Mormon existed (Joseph Smith said that the golden plates were taken up by an angel after translation), we’d be able to see what it said for ourselves, and the people who disbelieve reformed Egyptian and other Mormon nonsense (including myself) would have a lot more to deal with—Mormons would have more than faith and testimony to stand on, and nonbelievers might actually believe.
And if Kohor really did have his life engraved in stone (see here), he would have been rich enough to have it written down somewhere else, too, and we’d have a copy or two by this time, don’t you think? (Actually, Jacob, who Kohor hires to engrave this great masterpiece, chooses to cut out of stone an image of what he says is wisdom. “It’s you, Kohor,” he says. So it is, presumably, possible to have seen such engravings from ancient America and then have the Mormons claim that they are what the Book of Mormon is talking about, whether they’re sure of it or not.) But really, if there really was a House of Holy Records anywhere in the ancient Americas, why haven’t we found any historical evidence of it at all? I mean, seriously.
The primary love interest gives this speech to her mother (after the mother stereotypically puts all women into the ‘feminine wiles’ category by saying, “A woman’s instinct is wiser than reason”) about how no one can come to God (and yes, she did mean the one God of the Jews and Christians) except through the Messiah, and without the Messiah—”They call him the Lamb of God, the Savior of the World,” she says in the fourth part—no one can be saved. It made me think about what we need saving from. If I lived in a war-torn country where my life was threatened and I was unsafe even in my own house, I would surely cry out for a savior, too. And maybe, if I was saved, I would worship my savior. I don’t know, though, since I’ve (thankfully) never been in such a position.
Kohor reminds me of the primary antagonist in Immanuel’s Veins; he could be so complicated and interesting and even good (despite being an antagonist—yes, it is possible), but no. He’s painted as completely predictably against whatever the protagonist’s viewpoint happens to be. “By this secret pledge,” he says with a sneer to group of his followers in the fifth part, “we shall combine against the believers and swear as one TO DESTROY THEM!” It was practically eye-roll inducing.
Hearing all the “thee”s and “thou”s of the King James Version as if they were how people actually spoke to one another was really off-putting, and I have to admit: hearing Jesus talk about himself as the Way, the Truth, the Resurrection, and the Life really bothered me. (It’s one thing to hear someone else talk about him that way; it’s completely another to hear him say such things about himself. It made me wonder if [1] he had such a god complex that he thought he could say that the only way to heaven was through him and get away with it, and [2] the people listening to him were delusional.)
Also, it’s implied that the natives are reading about all the cool things Jesus did during his time on Earth; when they open a scroll or book of scripture, it flashes to another part of the world where Jesus is performing miracles or speaking out against the Pharisees or whatever. That is, it’s as though they’re reading the New Testament before it was even written. These two stories (one in the Americas and one in the Middle East) are supposed to be happening simultaneously, so how do the natives in the Americas know anything about what’s happening in the Middle East? They might have prophecies—that’s something I could get behind—but even if they did, no doubt the believers would argue about whether any given prophecy was being fulfilled or not. That’s exactly the schism between Jews and Christians, after all.
The Testaments assumes that there were Christians in the Americas before Christ even got there—and that’s assuming he even went there after his Ascension in the first place. (See also the MormonInfo.org review, especially the paragraph near the end that begins with “Probably the biggest problem I have…”) There’s no evidence for such a thing outside the Book of Mormon, and that tells me that said book is fiction (which is fine) that is being presented as fact (which is most definitely not fine).
Change in perception?
by V.E. on July 15th, 2011
filed under health, personal, words, wtf
When I was a junior in high school I took a psychology class in which we all took some version of the Myers-Briggs Test. I was scored as INTJ. That is: Introverted, Intuitive, Thinking, and Judging. The Extrovert/Introvert section was so unsure that I had to answer extra questions about it so that it could score me properly.
I just took a similar test, ten years later, and was awarded with ISFP, or: Introverted, Sensitive, Feeling, Perceiving. (ISFJ came in a close second, and there was no question about Extroversion versus Introversion this time.) Here’s what I was told:
If your personality type is ISFP then you have some deeply-held values that, even though your life may be somewhat unstructured, direct the things that you do and say. You probably take a caring and sensitive approach to others, more so than may be apparent to others because you showing your feelings in acts of kindness rather than in direct statements. You probably have a strong sense of the type of lifestyle you enjoy, which you want to maintain.
Here’s how INTJ (my former score) compares, from the same website:
If your personality type is INTJ then you have a strong, private sense of strategic vision, both for the future and how that future will can be achieved. Your vision, or sense of knowing, may be difficult to articulate, but even if wasn’t others might find it difficult to accept (e.g.: as impractical or unrealistic). Pursuing your vision might be a lonely task, therefore, as you develop and pursue plans without anyone else really understanding the nature of what you are trying to achieve.
Later, the reports of both scores talk about “mental muscles” meaning… that I was once more intuitive, thinking, and judging…? and now I’m more sensitive, feeling, and perceive things better? What? How does that even happen?
Seriously, I would really like to sit down with a Jungian psychologist for an hour and hash this out. I don’t feel like I’ve changed that much… but maybe it’s true because I’m feeling it and not thinking it? ha ha ha haaaaaa
A matter of legacies
by V.E. on June 20th, 2011
filed under personal, politics, wtf
EDIT 17:03 PDT: Yes, I did actually (for reals!) send this letter to KD National and to the editor of The Angelos.
article referenced in my letter. click for larger.
Dear Kappa Delta,
I read your note about legacies (see above) in the most recent issue of The Angelos (vol. 89 no.3, Spring 2011, pg. 49, “a matter of legacies”) and am disturbed by its implications and assumptions. You mention—correctly—that it’s impossible to accept every legacy into KD. (I’m sure it’s a relief in the most impacted chapters not to be under pressure to accept them, if, indeed, they remain not pressured.) What troubles me isn’t that KD selects “the best and most harmonious women” or that some legacies choose a different sorority (or—gasp! shock and awe—choose to remain GDI). That’s to be expected.
What bothers me, instead, is this. First, you write that some legacies may “feel more at home with another National Panhellenic Conference sorority”—the implication being that there are only NPC sororities in existence at all. As I’m sure you’re aware, NPC sororities actually make up only a part of the sororities and women’s fraternities available to potential new member candidates. Other councils and associations include the National Pan-Hellenic Council, the National Association of Latino Fraternal Organizations, the National APIA Panhellenic Association, and the National Multicultural Greek Council, not to mention all the unaffiliated national sororities and local sororities that exist in the United States.
Second, you write that “[t]he important thing for KDs to remember is that NPC sororities are more alike than different.” That’s sadly true and, combined with my first complaint, makes it seem like every young woman who wants to go Greek is going to end up coming out of a cookie cutter mold by the end of college. The reason most KDs want their legacies to join Kappa Delta is for the reasons it’s different from all those other sororities and because they want to share the KD bond with their loved ones, not because the sororities are all so similar that they’re basically interchangeable.
Third, you make a point of saying that Kappa Delta can honestly hardly accept all legacies on one page (pg. 49) and then ask us to register legacies on the next (pg. 50, “Register Your College-Bound Legacy with KD“)! That’s very frustrating and seems futile after having just read your note about legacies in general. (Also, would it kill you guys to show pictures more inclusive of this country’s diversity? Seriously, I counted just one KD of color in the entire magazine [at the top of page 9], and page 50 is representative of that. Or are these pictures representative of a sorority that has done little—if anything—to curb the racism by omission that’s present in these photos?)
Kappa Delta does many good things, but I was sorely disappointed in your comment about legacies. I hope the sorority’s official stance will continue to evolve into something even greater, as I know it can.
Sincerely,
V.E.
Eta Lambda, 2008 alumnae class
Okay, seriously?
by V.E. on March 28th, 2011
filed under personal, writing, wtf
My body is mine. That means it’s not fucking yours, okay? That means don’t touch it; I can do whatever the hell I want with it; you can’t. That’s it. Done. The end.
I will get tattoos if I want. I will have an abortion if I feel like it’s necessary (and I won’t be sorry about it). I will star in pornography. I will cut myself. I will roll dice in the back alley at all hours of the night. I will take bets for illegal street car racing. I will get into fist fights after work and then get up and go to work the next day.
Just because I do what I want on my own time with my own godsdamned body doesn’t mean you have any right to say anything about it at all. Just because I look like a nice girl who’s patient and kind and generous doesn’t mean I’ll be any of those things with you.
I smile with my friends because I like them. I smile at work because I get paid to be cheerful. I’m not going to smile for you just because you think you have the right to whistle at me across the street and then call me a bitch when I ignore you. I am not a monkey trained to do tricks. At least not any tricks you‘d like, I’m sure. I can make it hurt, and with you, I want it to be as painful as possible.
Don’t call me “beautiful” or “honey” or “sweetheart” or “sugar” or “sweetcheeks” or “baby” or anything else you think might be endearing—especially when I already look angry. I am not in the mood for your misogyny. I am not the good girl you seem to think I am. I’ve done things I’m not proud of, but I have done them, and I own that. I’m not going to lie if a friend asks in all seriousness if I worked in pornography. But I don’t owe you anything. Actually, I owe you less than nothing.
I don’t need your permission. I don’t want it, either. And I sure as hell don’t need or want your approval. Who the fuck cares what you think? I don’t, and I never will.
I have never forced anyone to do anything truly not of their own choosing. All I ask in return is the same courtesy. If you don’t like what I’m doing, just look the other way. I’m not hurting anyone but my own self.
I’m so fucking tired of being the nice girl. I want to buy a motorcycle and have my entire body covered in tattoos and have visible scars so that you will finally see that I am not in the mood. My patience wears thin.
You are not allowed. No one is allowed. My default answer is always going to be “No”. And if you fuck with me, I will put your face into a car hood. (Seriously, do you not know the meaning of “Fuck off”?)
