Dagon, getting lost, Dawkins, fish, fail.

1. YES I CAN HAS THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH FINALLY.

My book-sniffing skills turned out to be awesome after all(1)! I haven’t got the time today, so I’ve only read about 60 pages so far, but! Awesome!

I liked: the stuff about ultra-violet and primroses, and how Dawkins emphasises that creationism has a lot to do with complete and utter ignorance.

2. The “poor expats who can’t get used to live in their cruelly culturally different host country” meme is as robust as ever, but what about the ex-expats? I’m concerned!

This is because I spent 30 minutes being lost, because I forgot that “the first floor” means actually “second floor”. Or at least it would, if I were still in Japan.

Note to self: first floor is second, the real first floor is zero. Must concentrate moar.

Fail!

3. I have discovered the most ridiculous meme ever. How could I miss it before, I asked myself today, looking stupidly at pictures that will remain undisclosed for a couple of days, as I will be collecting evidence in the library.

Hint: fish and funny hats are involved.

Also, chariots.

(Well, a bit(2))

4. Apparently Claude Levi-Strauss died.

I… I have to say, I can’t really be upset, because until today I was sure he had died already.

So, in a way, when I went online, my worst fears were confirmed :( Thank you for fun times with Tristes Tropiques, Claude, and inspiring one of my favourite profs when he was young.

5. I have to confess: I’ve been having the urge to look for moar vaccine-deniers on the intertubes all the time lately(3). I’ll start posting when my hands will stop obeying me and continue typing on their own even when I sleep. SLEEEEP!

6. For all internet troll aficionados, a tragic news indeed: Tom Estes, the voluble pastor of the Hard Truth fame (?), seems to have deleted himself from the interwebs. I, for one, will be inconsolable for weeks to come, and I haven’t even broken the news to Dan yet :\ The last googlable post (a bit stale).  Google Cache to the rescue: he flounced ’cause “I’m no longer all that intrigued by Pharytales, or Helga’s Battle-ax, or the NotSoFreeThinker, and I think the reason for the that is because they are so repetitive in nature.  Basically what they do everyday is criticize rational Christians, and for a while it made me angry, then I found it amusing, but now it’s just tired.”

Tom also warns his faithful readers that he’s got two other blogs here and here. Stay tuned! Once an attention whore, always an attention whore.

(You can also follow his rants on Twitter:

NY Times’ Dowd is a super feminist, UNLESS it’s Obama is the one excluding women, than it’s okay. #tcot http://s.nyt.com/u/Waf

I laughed!)

Anyway, RIP, Hard Truth!

 

(1) Throw some ink at me. I could probably tell which genre it came from.

(2) The other bit is that I like the word “chariot”. Chariot!

(3) Shooting fish in a barrel much? And yet!

My new project: Fail For Posterity! (Polanski, Stalinska, Zanussi)

Dorota Stalinska says what she thinks about those pesky 13-year-old whores. Translation by Google, cleaned up by me so it’s at least marginally comprehensible.

(Sane commentary in Polish here. The following article was published by a completely mainstream Polish newspaper.  The interview was conducted on a completely mainstream Polish news station. Stalinska is a famous actress and often appears on TV)

Stalinska defends Polanski: 13-year olds are throwing themselves at men.
2009-09-29, last updated 2009-09-29 23:44
An emotional exchange took place today in the studio during the interview on TVN 24 about the Roman Polanski case. The director was defended by the actress Dorothy Stalinska, while PiS MEP Marek Migalski reiterated his view that he is surprised by the defense of Polanski.

Migalski on his blog attacked the defenders of Roman Polanski’s “There is no shame and logic in the desperate struggle of the artistic guilds for the freedom of their colleague, but I would like to ask our artists:  Would you use the same arguments, if your pal Romek (Polish diminutive for “Roman” <–Sendai A) first got drunk, and then had some rectal fun with your daughter? Are you fucked in the head*? “

Dorota Stalinska, who also signed a petition in support of Polanski,  said on  TVN 24 that she is “shocked” by the language Mark Migalski uses**. – First, it was not rape, but an intercourse with a minor with her permission – said Stalinska. She added that after all, this lady denied that she was  raped, and the evidence was manipulated. – “We know that the 13-year-old girl may look like a 20-year-old – actress explained***”. According to her it is not that the girl who was raped, but Roman Polanski was seduced and provoked****.

Stalinska: 13-year olds are throwing themselves at men.

Dorota Stalinska puts the blame for the events 30 years ago on the then 13-year-old Samantha Geiner. – I’ve  a 20-year-old son. He could tell you what the 13-year-old girls behave like, and what provocations they’re capable of, and how they throw themselves not at 20, but 40-year-olds – Stalinska said.

She added that supports the words of Krzysztof Zanussi, who the day before in the “Kropka nad I” (A TV programme with five-minute interviews <– Sendai A)  called Geimer “an underage prostitute”. – 13-year-old girls alone provoke adult men. In Poland, and in the entire world. Zanussi’s right – said Stalinska in outrage*****.

Migalski: Defending Polanski is shameful

Mark Migalski did not try to hide his outrage at Dorothy Staliński’s statement. He repeated what he said in his blog, that any defense of Polanski is outrageous.

He stressed that even if  sexual relations of underaged girls with their “sponsors”  take place, we do not accept that.

He explained that the use of profanity is inappropriate to what Roman Polanski did, and how shameful it is that everybody’s defending him in Poland******.

*This are actual words of an actual Polish MEP. Really.

** YES. Because clearly the language is what was the problem here, all along. Typical denialist strategy: know that you’re losing, apply the MIND YOUR MANNERS pseudargument.

*** YES A WOMAN SAID THAT IN PULBIC. NO SHE DOESN’T RAPE CHILDREN AS FAR AS I KNOW.

**** Stalinska, Zanussi, Polanski choked with their penises and mauled by bears, mmmm. An especially gigantic dildo for Stalinska.

***** I’m not making this up, I swear.

***** In the original Google translation the end of this sentence was “today, arms in Poland”. Like a haiku.

Also, for the first time in my life, I agree with a wingnut.

trapped in Sendai *facepalm*

It’s been raining since yesterday.

You can see wee little droplets of water, but when you look closer, the itty wee droplets are actually  the small small spaces where it’s not pouring with rain, 1mmx1mmx1mm on average.

They started selling autumn bento sets in the supermarket, too.

秋風に
たなびく雲の
絶え間より
漏れ出づる月
の影のさやけさ

（左京大夫顕輔、新古今和歌集）

(Modern translation)

秋風に吹かれてたなびいている雲の切れ目から

漏れ出る月の光の明るく見えることよ

(MacCauley’s English translation – poem number 79)

See, how clear and bright
Is the moon-light finding ways
‘Mong the riven clouds
That, with drifting autumn-wind,
Gracefully float o’er the sky!

My snarls, they’re sleepy today.

Anatomical models, sexist ads, creepy ads, creepy sexist spanking ads (LINKSPAM YAY)

creepy enough?

This is what I’ve got today!

1. This is why one has to read Dr. Isis from time to time, even when one can’t really read her everyday. By far, it’s been the sexiest spanking I’ve ever seen (what is even sexier: Dr. Isis’ smart braaains). Warning for fuckwitted sexist trolls in the comments.

2. Apparently, there are more creepy sexist ads on the BioEphemera (a cool blog, by the way, but, again, no time). There’s not enough DDD: in the world to express how utterly DDDDDD: I am.

3. Which leads us to  even more creepy, creepy ads, or, welcome to the fifties (well, mostly): 15 creepiest ads of all time at Retrocomedy, creepy ads at Weirdomatic (includes such gems as “Smoking is Believing”, and a manic boy eating worms tubifex worms spaghetti), the disturbing nipple-bra (EW), and Plan59, which has hundreds and hundreds of creepy vintage ads, which I don’t have the energy to rec one by one anymore.

4. And finally, to the point of the entry! BioEphemera has also an intriguing, but disturbing, and fascinating, but disturbing, and sort of awesome, but disturbing post about rather, well, artsy anatomic models of women, and pregnant women. This one has a removable foetus, apparently:

Removable foetuses! Yay!

Actually, I secretly think they are rather pretty.

Why the modern art was great after all.

Today, my German teacher said, remarking on my two-week long absence:

“Oh, Frau Sendaianonymous, Sie wurden vermisst!”

To which I thought:

“Yes, ’cause there was nobody to do the awful interpreter work to facilitate, or in fact make possible the communication between you and the poor Japanese students, who can’t even say ‘ich weiss nicht’ without making two separate grammatical mistakes.”

But I didn’t say it out loud, because:

1. I genuinely like the German teacher a lot,

2. She brought us an absolutely fab fab fab vid from Goethe Institut Tokyo, which apparently was insanely difficult to procure, and apparently we got lucky lucky lucky, ’cause you normally can’t watch it anywhere or something.

The vid, it was about Guenther Uecker’s performances!