Friday, May 30, 2008

In 1977, 33% of rapes ended in a conviction.

In 2005, it was 5.4%.


I just LOVE living in a post-feminist society, don't you?
I really need to get out of this country.

Like, sooner than August.


Hell, I need to get out of this room.

Wednesday, May 28, 2008

Setting aside the fact that I am COMPLETELY FUCKED at the moment, I'm reading about the Eliot Carter string quartets for the paper (on which I'm COMPLETELY FUCKED) that I have to write, and this is the coolest shit ever.

Seriously, I actually forget occasionally how fucked I am because this is so damn AWESOME.


But yeah, screwed. Deeply and lovingly.

EDIT: Just wanted to add that there's something profoundly American about this music. It's been compared to a movie soundtrack (it's not), and I agree with that characterization. It's always a Hitchcock movie I think of, though. (Probably also worth noting that it was composed in the early fifties, which I would in fact have guessed from listening. How fascinating is it that I could listen to this and tell you it was composed by an American in the fifties, even though it's post-tonal and amelodic?)

Thursday, May 1, 2008

Wow.

So I was reading a post on Sadly, No! about how Thomas Friedman got pied in the face while speaking at Brown.

At first, I was all, "Hahaha! Thomas Friedman sucks! I can't believe someone actually did that! Coolio!"

Then I watched it, and I honestly just felt bad for him. He was obviously so shocked. He just sort of wandered around the stage, dripping pie, not knowing what to do, until he finally just left.


The guy was instrumental in getting us into Iraq and has some ridiculously bullshit simplistic views about globalization (i.e. that all the benefits of it occur all by themselves, automatically, and nobody gets hurt in the process more seriously than can be described by clauses like, "of course, some will lose work, but"), but it was just really sad to watch. I can think of other ways of punishing/humiliating him, or expressing your ire, that are possessed of greater decency and greater civility.

I don't know. I'm just talking at this point.