Nostalgia

I've recently discovered a couple of American tv shows from the nineties. I'd seen a lot of pictures of the main character from Daria with quotes from the show circulating on sites like tumblr, but never actually twigged it was a real show. I thought it was just some cartoon that someone had done and put funny quotes over the top.

Turns out Daria is real

And Mystery Science Theatre 3000 is great - I've only managed to watch one episode the whole way through so far, but basically the storyline of being trapped out in space by an woman (awesome evil lady-villain) who wants to see how long it takes for someone to go mad by forcing them to watch awful old B-movies is a thinly veiled premise for the characters to make silly and funny comments all the way through stupid old films that are out of copyright. If you have a spare hour or two, give it a watch. The guys who did this show now do rifftrax, which are commentaries you can download and sync to films which you watch, with the same stupid and funny comments. I've only listened to the one for The Room, that infamous film, and it made me laugh through it all over again.


There's something really nostalgic about both these shows, even though I've never seen them before. Even though they're old and dated, the image quality and the sound quality aren't as good as shows today, there's real warmth and humour in these shows that I feel is missing from a lot of tv today. Sure, tv shows today look flashy, but there's nothing at the heart of them.

The only thing I've found recently that is as fun is Flight of the Conchords. I bought the first series in a charity shop, and me and my sister watched all of them back to back in a whole day in a woozy haze when we were both ill. I love how it's just a show about two friends messing around and being silly.

Flight of the Conchords, doing their thing

Incidentally, I only found out about Daria from watching Nostalgia Chick videos, which I found from a link on Feminist Frequency's twitter page. Nostalgia Chick talks about how there are a lot of great bromances in tv shows (e.g. Scrubs, Flight of the Conchords), but not so many of the female equivalent, and the relationship between Daria and her friend Jane is one of only a few examples. I'd love to see more of that in tv shows today, rather than walking pink stereotypes talking about shoes and shopping. What I think we really need to see is more of people just messing around and having fun, doing stupid things (a la FotC). That sort of thing appeals to everyone with a sense of humour.

Guardian Articles

So many good articles in The Guardian today!

Feminists can be Christians, too

Victoria Coren - it's the Church's job to stand up for the poor

Julie Burchill on moaning women giving feminism a bad name

This last one is particularly interesting... and controversial.

"But moaning about men doesn't make you a feminist – it just makes you a moaner who can't get along with men for reasons that are probably at least as much to do with your failings, flaws and foibles as they are with some imagined horridness on the part of men."

'Why Men Hate Women'

Time to dump another interesting article! This time it's from one of my favourite magazines, the New Internationalist, but from way back in their archives. Slightly inflammatory title but interesting reading.

 Insert inflammatory article name here

Here's a little extract that does a good job of explaining why forcing men into a hyper-masculine role is so damaging for both men and women:

"Why do men express such hatred of women? Psychoanalysts suggest that men's gender identity is very fragile because, within typical child-rearing practices, girls can identify with their primary care-taker while boys have to separate themselves from their mother in order to achieve and assert their masculinity.

'The whole process of becoming masculine is at risk in the little boy from the date of his birth on; his still-to-be-created masculinity is endangered by the primary, profound, primeval oneness with the mother.'⁶ It is only by setting woman apart as Other, by resisting intimacy with her, by treating her with contempt and aggression, that men assert their own independent and fragile masculinity.

And because men have distanced themselves from 'the weaker sex' over the ages, setting themselves up as superior, it must be unbearably humiliating to need and desire women so much. [...] In heterosexual intercourse men risk discovering in women an unsettling power which contradicts and undermines their own more obvious social, political and physical power. No wonder male sexual desire is so desperately tormented and full of conflict"

Adding to my 'to read' list, link from Miss Representation:

Get Over It: Men and Women Are from the Same Planet

"There is something about avidly trying to prove men and women are different, or the same, that makes people lose their mind a bit. No matter how much some want it to be true, it is just not that simple; there are no clear cut and easy answers to why we do what we do, and why men and women sometimes have problems getting along. To ignore the enormous wealth of data on how men and women are similar AND different and to try to tackle this enormously complex reality via one-dimensional approaches is just poor science."

Advice from Harper Lee

"Back in 2006, a young reader named Jeremy who liked To Kill a Mockingbird wrote a letter to Harper Lee asking if he could have a signed photograph of the author. Being Harper Lee, she denied the photo portion of his request, but did send him back a hand-written note offering a piece of solid advice:

"As you grow up, always tell the truth, do no harm to others, and don’t think you are the most important being on earth. Rich or poor, you then can look anyone in the eye and say, 'I’m probably no better than you, but I’m certainly your equal.' ""

Source

Original source with Lee's own handwritten note

Yay for challenging stereotypes!

Jezebel article

This is good news!

Amazon and the book trade

On the subject of books and Amazon, I just wanted to make a copy of a comment on this article ('Don't Support Your Local Bookseller: Buying books on Amazon is better for authors, better for the economy, and better for you') in case I ever need to refer to these arguments again.

By the way, did you know that Amazon made a loss for 11 years after they first started up? They did that so that they could gain domination of the market – i.e., so that people would instantly think of Amazon whenever they wanted to buy a book/laptop/dvd/cat basket. 

And now it's worked. They are so powerful they can negotiate enormous discounts from publishers, and the result has been to discount the value of a book in customers' minds. As this article proves, they think that independent booksellers sell at a marked-up price and Amazon sells at the real one, when in reality Amazon can afford to sell at heavily discounted prices because they are such a large company they can absorb the loss, and independent bookshops sell books at a price that reflects the real price it costs to produce them. Having bought most of my booklist for university from Amazon, now I've found out more about them I'm making a real effort to use them as little as possible. I suppose that's one more thing to add to my list of boycotts – but it would be a lot simpler if companies could just be ethical. Too much to ask?

Also, can you imagine how much money they must have had when they first started up if they could afford to make a loss for 11 years? Part of my indignation here comes from jealousy. Anyway, here's the comment:

"MiraF

If you want to know why “Russo and his novelist friends” support independent bookstores, it’s because those tiny shops with their passionate booksellers are the only places no longer devaluing the book. Any author who spends months and years to create a book is going to avidly support a place that treats their work like a treasure instead of a commodity.  
 
Your post shows SUCH a lack of understanding of the realities of publishing and the market, it’s seriously horrifying. That so many people in the comments accept what you say and argue FOR it is heartbreaking.  
 
“no company in recent years has done more than Amazon to ignite a national passion for buying, reading, and even writing new books.” 
That is SO COMPLETELY UNTRUE. Amazon has devalued to the book to such a place that some people now expect a $2.99 MAXIMUM price point for their literature. You said yourself that paying $9 for a paperback is outrageous. But people pay that and more to go sit in a dark room and watch a movie for two hours. If, suddenly, the public consciousness shifted, and people were no longer willing to pay even $3 to go see a movie at the theater, how many movies do you think would be made then? How many theaters could survive it? By devaluing the book, Amazon has done more to limit publishers’ lists than any other company on the planet.  
 
“But ebooks!”  
I am a HUGE proponent of ebooks. But the fact of the matter is that the Kindle isn’t the holy grail of ebook readers. I think ebooks has done an amazing thing for the industry. I agree that most people who own readers buy a crazy number of titles each year—far more than they would physical books most times. But that’s not solely because of Amazon. In fact, a true book lover would never buy a Kindle, as it limits you to only being able to purchase ebooks from Amazon. Every other reader allows you to upload books from any ebook retailer online. Kindle is the ONLY reader that is exclusive to a single store. That is short-sighted and ridiculous in our global economy. 
 
“But they support self-publishing!!”  
Yes. They do. And how many people do you know who are willing to wade through that minefield of unedited, untested books to hopefully find a gem? And do we really want to become a society who cares so little for the quality of our lit that anyone with a computer can write the story of their life, put a price tag on it, and shove it up on the shelves? Even if you are one of those who care little for the quality of the books you read, you can never claim that Amazon actually SUPPORTS the author. Their latest offerings include giving self-pubbed authors a bite at a large pool of cash, if they agree to pull their books from all distributors who are not Amazon. In case you missed that, Amazon is requiring exclusivity of their self-pub authors who want to become part of their lending library.  
 
What you have to say about bookstores would be laughable if it weren’t so sad that you actually believe it. You say that Amazon has reviews and suggests books based on others you’ve read and the local store recommends what the employees like. Amazon’s customer purchasing based algorithm is no match for an actual conversation with someone who loves and is passionate about books. Independent bookstore employees are specialists. They read all the time so that they can understand genre and help hand sell. Amazon’s algorithm relies on sales data from other customers. How is that a better recommendation? 
 
“If you don’t choose your movies based on what the guy at the box office recommends, why would you choose your books that way?” 
Um… but random internet strangers writing reviews should be our guides? We all know how the Amazon review system can be used to game the system to support or destroy an author’s rating. We’ve all, by now, accepted that any forum open to the public invites trolls, false marketing, and other deceits. When having to choose between the guy at the box office and an anonymous internet stranger? I will always go with the recommendation of an ACTUAL PERSON.  
 
Put any number of authors in a room together and all will start talking about the amazing independent bookstores that helped to launch their careers. Yes, Amazon sells books. Yes, authors like places that sell their books. But most of all, we love people who match the hard work and passion we put onto every page with hard work and passion to put our work into the hands of people who will love the story. That is something we will lose forever if people like you allow words like “inefficiency” “cost comparison” and “more for less” to take over the literary landscape.  
 
Amazon truly is the WalMart of the internet. They are lowering our expectations and doing just as much damage to small business and local communities. I just hope that our society starts to fight back a bit before it’s too late."