quoththeraven

I wasn't aware of the plagiarism charges, but his writing style does nothing for me. One of the reasons I don't much like Brave New World. I also left off (forgot, really) Anthony Burgess' A Clockwork Orange. Also Stephen King's The Stand.

If you're the wrong race, you could wind up being shot by an off-duty police officer who lives in the same building, as happened in Dallas.

No, my understanding is he slipped her something to make her unconscious. Now that I think about it, Arabella, not Sue, was probably the one Jude thought with his dick over, which is how they wound up married. Arabella conforms to a lot of the worst stereotypes about women and their fickleness, yet Hardy shows how society encourages such behavior as a way to protect herself in a moralistic, patriarchal world.

Local police tried to break into mine thinking it was the apartment of a woman who called 911 but didn't give her full name before passing out. Because they're dumb, they were trying to get into her brother's apartment. (He lives next door to me.) I do not know how they thought that a mailbox marked for Theodore Drake belonged to a woman with the same last name, especially since her mailbox clearly says Kathy Drake. Furthermore they didn't try ringing all (or any) doorbells before trying to break in. And they got the layout wrong, as proved by their removing the screen on the wrong apartment.

That's a reason for you not to get them. (Isn't a local anesthetic or numbing agent applied to the skin?)

Nevertheless, women still aren't property, which is what these folks think.

I know some of what you say about Polanski's victim, but my ability to enjoy the movie has more to do with my feelings about Polanski and the material, and not only am I as a woman fed up with male entitlement around this issue, I did not know until recently that he drugged her, which I consider reprehensible and rape even though she doesn't. I would be the one watching, not her. Nevertheless, Nastassia Kinski will always for me be the ultimate embodiment of Tess. I think you're referring to Sue Bridehead. My friend who teaches Jude the Obscure (though this year she's teaching Tess instead) can't stand her. I didn't get the same impression of her as you did; I felt her moral certainty, intellectualism and embrace of the unconventional were what attracted Jude. But I found Jude's wife (Arabella, I think?) fascinating. She's both awful and impressive, and she goes through life getting a lot more of what she wants than Jude or Sue do.

Yes, it predicted future events based on current trends, but that's still broadly speaking non-fiction. I mean, essays and memoirs are considered non-fiction. So was it. Future Shock, The Population Bomb and The End of History demonstrate how bad humans are at making predictions.

I really like Bang Yongguk's "Make art, not war" tattoo (which is in English, not Korean). But I'm too lazy to go to the desktop to post it. (My tablet doesn't allow me to copy and paste images.) So here's a link. https://www.google.com/search?q=bang+yongguk+tattoos&oq=bang+yongguk+t&aqs=chrome.2.69i57j0l15.9464j0j4&sourceid=silk&ie=UTF-8#imgrc=MIi35sZffkk-eM:

Ever consider that they may be neither straight nor gay and that not all women are hung up on monogamy? I mean, a consensual Devil's Triangle sounds ideal to me. And when the Byrds refused to release David Crosby's song "Triad," Grace Slick of the Jefferson Airplane gender-flipped and recorded it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dZSII2PbeUg

And boom, we're back to posts about escorts who can't get hard.

Argh... Their bodies don't exist for your benefit but for theirs. I dislike the way half or more tattoos look myself, but complaints in this forum about tattoos ruining other men's looks have driven me around the bend. It's about them expressing themselves. It's not about you or your opinions about how they do that.

Pretty much how I feel too.

It was even more fun to learn it during a course on the history of London that was taught entirely with slides. That particular slide was a nude painting of Nell Gwyn.

Along those lines, it was always amusing when my daughter, who is pink-skinned with copper colored hair and doesn't look Asian, said goodbye in Mandarin to the cashiers at the Asian market. However, she never reported that they said anything rude or controversial.

Actually Cromwell wanted his son to succeed him and that struck many as just another form of monarchy. Besides, if they hadn't reinstated the royals, Charles II's mistress Nell Gwyn would not have become famous for saying "I am the King's Protestant whore" when anti-Catholic mobs attacked her carriage .

More on dating problems for Asian women: some Asian men feel Asian women are their personal property and that Asian women who date non-Asians are race traitors. https://www.thecut.com/2018/10/when-asian-women-are-harassed-for-marrying-non-asian-men.html

Preach!

Like I said, I want to normalize the idea that society is racist and so are we. I don't expect everyone to take that approach.

Future Shock was non-fiction. Although Brave New World is more reflective of the West (,other than the communal raising of children), I prefer 1984 and Fahrenheit 451.

I've posted this before, but here you go: Fun fact: the singer's parents learned he was gay from media reports about his debut. His friends knew; they didn't. Let's also applaud the (non-gay) actors playing his boyfriend in MVs (two out of three include same-sex kisses). They are risking social opprobrium and career damage as well.

No, they did away with the Commonwealth because the Roundheads were no fun. (Actually it was because there was no competent successor to Cromwell and the country was pretty evenly divided anyway; Charles I was highhanded but his line was viewed as the legitimate, legal rulers.)

Mainland China is the real China. Taiwan is a splinter republic. Those are facts. Which government you think is more democratic or legitimate is a different story. Taiwan is more democratic now but that was no more true at its founding than of the PRC. Both were undemocratic in different ways. Taiwan just didn't kill as many people over it later. Thanks for the correction. I had thought Mandarin wasn't the official language and that China was like India, with many official languages. Funny story: my ex attended a training course some of whose attendees were from China. The poor guy from Hong Kong, who spoke Mandarin, Cantonese and English, got stuck translating for the guy from Guandong, who only knew Cantonese and some English, and the guy who only knew Mandarin and English. Also I believe all the early Chinese immigrants to the US were from Guangdong, hence the predominance of Cantonese. Hanja, the original Korean writing system, is also derived from Chinese characters. Hangul, the current writing system, is character based but phonetic, therefore totally different. Each character denotes a syllable and contains symbols for all the sounds within that syllable.

Besides he is an antidote to "all Asians are smart" stereotypes.

Umm, we have our own problems. While it hasn't been a problem for me personally, men assume Asian women are hypersexual, demure and submissive. That can lead to harassment and just an all around bad time.