Yesterday I backed up my journal here using the excellent instructions here. Mostly because I don't trust foreigners and I want all my valuable Starbuck picspams preserved for posterity.

Speaking of which, I haven't heard much around the Internet about Caprica. I know the last two seasons of BSG kind of sucked, but is it really that bad? I am kind of getting fed up with the last TV show I actually watch regularly, and they will kick me off LJ if I am not watching at least one.

I realized I was making negative remarks about this movie in the comments a while back, without actually having seen it. So I obtained it in a totally legal manner and watched it.


( Actually Worse Than Pearl Harbor )

(This Post Is Possibly Offensive To People Who Like Children Or The Military Or Pearl Harbor)

Foreigners love to complain about the geographical ignorance of Americans, but really, most foreigners don't know much about American geography outside of the two places where movies are usually set. They all think they do, though. So when I am talking to Australians back home and say where I live, they say “Oh, the capital." And I’ll say, “No, Washington State. It’s a different place.” And ALMOST WITHOUT EXCEPTION they’ll assume I mean that I live outside of Washington, DC. Like, in the countryside. (The only exceptions to this rule are grunge fans and Twihards. But really, who wants to talk to them?)

Although I must admit that when I first knew that I might be moving here, I only really knew about the state because of this exchange in Daria:

Quinn: Before grunge, Seattle was just another city in our nation's capital!
Daria: Wrong Washington.
Quinn: Yes, grunge was wrong, but you can't blame the whole state!

One thing that DOES bug me about supposed American arrogance is what I call the ‘American Immigration Assumption.’ This occurs when an American person declares, usually online: “If X wins this election, I’ll move to Y!” Where Y is another first-world country. Or “I think I’ll move to Australia/Canada/etc, they have good health care!”

Which, fine! It's perfectly understandable. But often there's this assumption that these fellow Anglosphere countries are just going to bow down and let them in when they see their US passport. Um, good luck with that. Seriously, so many people seem to have no idea that immigration rules exist anywhere.

I would almost kind of like to see an episode of Border Security that deals entirely with fed-up-with-America-Americans waltzing into Australian immigration and customs, and then being detained and escorted back onto the next plane by armed guards.

I've been contemplating my upcoming six months alone in a foreign country and figure I'll feel better if I look at this upcoming summer as 'hey, maybe the last chance I get to do young irresponsible stuff!!' rather than 'I am all alone in the middle of nowhere and they won't let me go home and the military will shun me because I am not even pregnant!' So, I thought maybe I should try going to Comic-Con in San Diego in July. So many Americans always talk about it, and I've never been to a convention! We don't even really have them in Australia!

If anyone reading this has ever gone: Is it scary, or just fun? Would you recommend it? What do people mostly do there? Do you have any advice? Are there any tourism things to do around San Diego? (California is BIG.) Is anyone planning on going THIS YEAR?!

Thanks!!

Please please please

1. Give me the first sentence of a new novel for me to write

2. Give me a new first name without a medial 'R' in it, so that I can introduce myself to Americans without them getting confused.

I have been rewatching late Season One/early Season Two Supernatural due to a sofa-bound sick family member, and...
 

( I am seriously impressed with how little sense the text below this cut will make to anyone who does not watch the show )

 Okay! THERE IS MY SHOW BACK!

( More )

It occurred to me after finally finishing Stolen Valor  yesterday tthat the author, B G Burkett, doesn’t really go too deeply into the motives of the men he writes about, about what prompted so many of them to pretend to be combat vets. I mean, he lets some of his subjects give their explanation a few times, but it’s usually just a lame excuse like "I wanted attention." And the reasons Burkett himself offers are pretty shallow – either fake vets are losers with inferiority complexes, or they’re commies. Considering what the dude went through himself, I don’t blame him. But I’d have been interested if he looked into it more. Why do fakers choose this particular route? Why were they so widely accepted, even in some cases by their wives after they abused them?

Which made me think about when I was complaining a long time ago about the 'Every Veteran Has PTSD' TV trope. Reading back, I see that I was giving similarly shallow excuses as Burkett was (the TV writers can’t think of any other plots, or they are commies). I also brought up Vietnam in the entry, which is kind of ironic considering how much of the the fictional portrayal of Vietnam vets was based on bullshit, too.

So here is another tentative, more charitable explanation for the TV trope, which I thought of while I was ironing:

1) Scripted TV shows these days are mostly aimed at ladies

2) Combat trauma is one of the only acceptable ways you can portray a man as being vulnerable while still seeming MANLY AND DANGEROUS*

3) Many ladies like their male TV characters to be MANLY AND DANGEROUS

4) This then allows a man to talk about his feelings in a way that a) makes it easier for writers to provide exposition and b) ladies wish more men would do. All without the man losing his perceived virility.

That’s TV, anyway. I’m not sure about real life. But then if I was, I wouldn’t be on LJ, amirite.

(Standard disclaimer: this is not me saying that PTSD and combat trauma aren’t real because holy crap of course they are. But as soon as you see any kind of veteran character on a TV show that is not specifically about the military, you can start playing drinking games because there is at least an 80% chance that he or she is going to FREAK OUT AND ADVANCE THE PLOT WITH THEIR EXTREME PTSD. Which is silly.)

*This is not nearly as much a problem with shows with fantasy elements because you can get the same effect by simply sending a man to a literal hell, not a figurative one! Buffy did this about eight times with like every one of their male characters, and Supernatural has a great exchange about it when a character tells a veteran he's been to hell, and the vet assumes he's being metaphorical.

But I missed it because I was busy.

So here in late celebration is the pinnacle of Australian achievement (I am not even being sarcastic!):



( And an Australian-themed blingee! )

Two smaller pictures today:

 

NOOO!! Look what happened to Buffy!!

First I'll be all depressed, and then my life will gradually dissolve into mediocre dialog and enacting the writers' weird sexual fantasies onscreen!

 Poll #xxxx Important poll #2

 Look at this wrapped-up bacon! Do you notice what is special about it?


That's right, it's made of BUFFALO.

( Read more... )

Wait, judging people based on their looks and financial situation is superficial? Now they tell me.

Hopefully, the Internet will teach us to judge people based on more valuable things, like their high scores in games about fictional cafes, and their ability to correct other people's grammar mistakes.

Anyway:

                                             

(stolen from Ace of Spades. The content becomes relevant to this LJ around the 3:15 mark)



(Here in case embed doesn't work)

My favorite bit:

"What would Jesus do? Would he carry a gun?"

"No, they didn't have them back then."

STOP WITH THE SHOOTING ALREADY. IT IS 7:30 FOR GOD'S SAKE. GO HOME.