quoththeraven

I'm rereading it to see if I still love it 40+ years after I last read it. So far so good. I read Jude the Obscure for the first time a couple of years sgo. I have friends, including an English professor who has taught it, who have issues with it, and I agree that the writing isn't as stellar as Tess, but it's still a powerful piece. Now I understand why Hardy got such pushback for it that he abandoned novel writing for poetry. I saw Polanski's adaptation of Tess when it came out. It was extraordinarily good, but not only is it not on Netflix, which is the only streaming service I have, I am not sure I have the stomach to watch it again considering Polanski's history. On the one hand, if seeing that he pay for drugging and raping a thirteen year old girl is important, the government should have done it long ago. And his victim is opposed to dragging him back to serve his sentence. On the other hand, industry defenses of him because of his artistry are disgusting and tone deaf, particularly now that #MeToo, which was created by a Black woman in 2006, has attained traction. For some reason, that he had drugged his victim wasn't part of the narrative I read until recently. No one focused on it back then. Getting back to the movie itself, when I saw it, someone roughly my age or younger (mid-20s) was openly scoffing at the storyline until I shushed him by telling him premarital sex was a big deal back then. While it's clear in the final version of the novel that Tess was raped, if I remember correctly it's not as clear in the film. That would be another reason not to rewatch Polanski's adaptation. Did he make that choice because of his own experiences?

Remember when the so-called princess phones were all the rage? Along those lines, I answered a Twitter poll about useless information I still remember with my childhood phone number. We had a phone very much like that one except it was tan.

It's Beijing, not Peking.

@Avalon, stop feeling sorry for yourself and stop living in the past. My mother died unexpectedly when I was 15. I did not let that keep me from growing up or changing. In addition to taking an online course, you might benefit from therapy via telephone. Being that stuck in the past, and treating it as inevitable, is not healthy.

No, it is broke. Using a better pronunciation is showing respect. Or is it just people who are different from you to whom you don't give respect? I guess that if you had a trans friend you would either insist on using their dead name or would want to, and you'd be reluctant to use correct pronouns. Which means you're not a true friend.

Your reasons for being proud of it are dumb and racist. I challenge you to articulate one drawback to Western culture or the culture of your ethnic forebears. Don't pretend any human group is above critique. Instead of posting here so much, take an online history course from a reputable college. You might learn something. Otherwise your purported love of history is just a cover for your white supremacy. P.S. Here's an example: British foreign policy in the late 19th century amounted to running a drug cartel (Opium Wars). Koreans are comfortable with snap judgment. The Irish have a higher incidence of alcohol dependency than other groups and the IRA is both right in its politics and a terrorist organization. (I would feel differently if they had only targeted British soldiers and police.) Germans value order and efficiency but not always lives. Yes, part of my ethnic heritage is European. It is no skin off my nose to recognize the ways in which that heritage is tainted. Although I am not Chinese, if I believed in the concept of best instead of different, I would say the paradigmatic civilization (not country) is Chinese considering how long their history is and how many firsts they achieved: first civil service, emphasis on scholarship over partisanship and class, love of art and beautiful things, prioritizing strategy over brute force, and early and possibly first restaurants, which requires the existence of a leisure class.

To take this totally off on a tangent, I was once surprised by a Southern flying squirrel (species name) that somehow got into a house with four cats. In fact I shrieked a little when I realized the noises I'd listened to for half an hour thinking one of the cats was hiding in the cupboard was this squirrel. S/he survived the night to be caught and released in a nearby nature reservation the next day. I kept the bedroom door closed because I didn't want a flying squirrel potentially leaping on my head in the middle of the night.

You're welcome.

On that admission alone your ticket to post about history should be revoked. Your idea of history is a contextless method of reliving perceived past glories of European/Western/white civilization. When my daughter visited China in 2011 on a school trip, the churchgoing girl she stayed with over the weekend they spent at students' homes didn't bat an eye at the idea that she was attracted to girls as well as boys. It's just as likely that homophobia is Maoist as anything else. Confucianism would condemn homosexuality, but Buddhism doesn't, or at least not necessarily. (Buddhism condemns sexual misconduct.)

Actually being too thin can be a detriment in bed (euphemism). One partner's ribs poked me in the side to the point of pain.

Here are some pet sugar gliders: I don't know how good they are as pets. One has already passed away; I don't know if that was due to an unusual illness or if they have short lifespans.

Yeah, my problem is that peacocks are no good at being support animals of any kind. They're fun to look at, though.

One of my cats used to answer the phone by knocking it off the hook when it rang.

I'm slowly rereading Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (now there's someone who can say #MeToo) and reading A Girl Like Her by Talia Hibbert.

I love the show, and while Manny Jacinto is indeed fine, I watch mostly for Kristen Bell, whom I've admired since she starred in Veronica Mars, and the actor who plays Chidi. I find the premise refreshing rather than absurd, which is a weird accusation given the absurdity of most sitcoms.

Classical: Dimash, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Kathleen Battle, Grace Bumbry, Lucia Popp, Emma Kirkby and Maria Callas.

I've seen people call this the best cover of Bridge ever. I don't think they're wrong. You're welcome.

Great singer: Aretha Franklin. No one else comes close. My favorite to listen to: Grace Slick Here are some more great singers. Park Hyo Shin He sings cleanly even when he's sobbing, which is a triumph of technique. He and the pianist co-wrote the song, which is about the trajectory of his career and personal life. His best friend committed suicide and at one point he had to declare bankruptcy because of his battles against a music agency with which he was signed. Sohyang singing "Bridge Over Troubled Water" by Simon Paul (love that the credits list his name in Korean rather than international style). Attention @purplekow! Gospel isn't just for Black people, and it's possible to sing it without pretending to be Black (thinking of Adele and Janis Joplin). Seo Moon Tak Koreans love singing competitions like this. Ha Hyun Woo I'm using a reaction video because there is no video on YouTube of the full performance. Btw, Fox is debuting, or has already debuted, a show based on the one shown.

This is a refreshing change from all the threads about escorts who can't get hard.

I'm so sorry. Our pets make their way into our hearts and not even death can change that.

It's a stupid response, but fighting manspreading is more equitable than bitching about the amount of space fat people take up on public transportation. Moreover men think they're entitled to that space, which they're not.

Can we at least nudge and elbow the men who take up more than their fair share of room?

Unless you have some medical abnormality like IBS, in which case it can start passing through your digestive tract in minutes.

You aren't obviously part of a group (women and girls) that is constantly told is inferior to others (men), dependent on others (men), and whose social standing is dependent on ensuring the comfort of others (men and women, in this case). (Contrary to popular belief, gayness isn't necessarily obvious.) My response would be similar to yours, but that's because I have never bought into any of this. I'm willing to be confrontational and disliked. I am not scared of men. Men should be scared of me. I consider this being me, not being courageous. But coming forward after the fact is courageous because as a society we treat survivors of rape, molestation and harassment like crap. If your teacher had been willing to fight you, there's nothing you could have done about it. He decided it was not worth it to him. Furthermore, it can be argued that your parents being satisfied with keeping you away from him was a factor in him being able to victimize others. But doing that would have required courage and the willingness to endure social disapprobation when it wasn't certain whether it would do any good. In other words, the courage required to come forward.

Somehow I suspect the musician didn't put the cat there...