Roast Busters: Two thoughts

Two small thoughts on this whole awful business, to clear my head:

* Because of our cultural distaste for direct expressions of what we want and don’t want, NZ youth find it very difficult to seek or express sexual consent. In consequence, NZ youth are predisposed to see hazy consent as commonplace and normal

* Because of our national reliance on alcohol in social situations, NZ youth are predisposed to see gross intoxication as commonplace and normal; even desirable.

* (The above two interact in a dangerous way – I would wager a fair percentage of Kiwi youth have at least once deliberately intoxicated themselves beyond the point where they could meaningfully consent, and done so to make a sexual experience more likely.)

* This means many of the sexual interactions of NZ youth float around in a murky fog of assumption, expectation, and impaired judgment.

* In sum: certain pervasive features of NZ youth culture mean that rape is easy here.

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And – this is definitely a minor point, but:

* Among the comments and outrage, I’ve seen several commenters refuse to accept that a young woman would freely choose to participate in this kind of sexual activity, particularly if she knows she is likely to be subjected to online bullying afterwards.

* They’re quite wrong, as they would know if they honestly interrogated their memories of teenage life. Sometimes, young women can and do freely choose things that seem appalling to adults. (Often that’s part of the point.)

* Of course, it’s very clear that some (perhaps a majority?) of the Roast Busters’ sexual partners are correctly seen as victims. They did not, or could not, give consent; or they were unable or afraid to withdraw consent when the reality of what they had agreed to became clear; or they decided afterwards that they had given consent to resolve cognitive dissonance.

* But not all of them were victims. This overstatement is a minor point – but it does irritate me, and I think it’s important in the long run, because if you want to change things in our society you have to start by respecting the full range of behaviours and choices made by young women (and young men, but it’s young women whose volition is typically challenged).

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And now that I’ve typed that out hopefully I can get back to work without thoughts buzzing circles in my head.

Fermat’s Last Linky

Yeah, busy busy, etc etc. [EDIT: so busy I wrote and published this on the wrong day. Genuinely confused that Friday didn’t follow Wednesday. Buh.]

That one time Homer solved Fermat’s Last Theorem – math geekery hidden in the Simpsons

BABY TEETH short story collection out now. Scary stories about scary children for scary charity. (Charity not actually scary.)

William Shakespeare’s Star Wars (thanks Billy & Jamie; delightfully, Ruth has scheduled reading this as a game session at Kapcon in January!)

Scroll down to Riker

Horror films reimagined as entries in the R.L.Stine horror-for-kids book series Goosebumps. Suspiria becomes “Attack of the Ballet Witches“.

The Thing on the Fourble Board – a lost classic of terror from the age of radio.

Necropants – surely this isn’t a real historical artifact?

My friend Ron has been conducting research into communal religious rituals. His reflections on some physically extreme ritual activity are interesting – warning, contains some unnerving photos.

The decline of wikipedia? For more insights into how the info-sausage is made, read Phil Sandifer’s examination of wikipedia’s awkward embrace of transphobia.

Amazing photography of miniature buildings and vehicles.

The DSM reviewed as a work of dystopian literature.

And finally, superheroes as manatees

To The Lighthouse – Virginia Woolf, 1927

Micro-review. We’ve had Woolf’s classic on the shelves in a 60s Penguin edition for years, and finally the time was right to pick it up. I knew virtually nothing about it, only that it’s often talked about as a partner to Joyce’s Ulysses as one of the milestones of early-20th-century modernism. (It’s also a fraction of the length.) Given how much I enjoyed Ulysses, I was looking forward to this.

But I nearly put it down and didn’t pick it up again.

I was enjoying the read, Woolf uses language beautifully of course, but I hit the half-way point and I just wasn’t *grabbed* by it. It seemed like one of those art milestones that you can’t read properly any more because all of its innovations have since become cliches. The stream of consciousness shifting perspective Woolf offers has become a commonplace stylistic trick. Heck, I’ve done it myself. Combine that with a busy run that saw days go by between chances to knock off a few pages, and I almost lost momentum entirely.

Then I hit the second phase of the book. I had no idea it was coming; a sudden change in tone and style and scope, crossing decades after spending dozens of pages in the minutia of a single day. Then the narrative eased into a third and final phase, another intense dive into character POV across the moments of a single day, a decade on from the first section.

And I *loved* it.

I can’t think of another time my reaction to a book changed so completely in the span of a few pages. The structural moves Woolf made completely won me over. Simple and powerful, retroactively making the first section seem fresh by the unexpected (to me) contrast with the final section. I think I’ll be going back to this one in a few years.

(Also: I imagine this book would be frequently studied in english lit courses. I am glad I never had to apply the scalpel of analysis to this – I doubt it could survive the experience. This seems to me a book to be felt rather than understood, even though there is so much in it to be understood. That’s a definite contrast to the cheeky gamesmanship of Joyce, who seems to be clearly writing with such analysis in mind.)

Fracture Linky

Typing carefully on account of the bright green cast on my left forearm. Scaphoid fracture, sport-caused. My first ever cast! But this linky will be brief as a result.

Beautiful Lego creations

Epic takedown of Columbus Day – complete with suggested alternative, Bartolomé Day

Don’t dress as a Pocahottie this Halloween – annotated!

Excellent – L.A. Times says it won’t publish climate denial letters. “Saying “there’s no sign humans have caused climate change” is not stating an opinion, it’s asserting a factual inaccuracy.” The denial industry (like the tobacco equivalent that preceded it) has found an exploit in public discourse, and this kind of initiative is one of the only ways to counter it.

Freaks & Geeks – the online choose-your-story game!

Government shutdown bug report

And finally, Funky Imperial March. This really needs a video – get on it, internet:

Fortnightly Linky

It seems I’ve ended up on an every-two-weeks schedule for the linky. But stubbornly I refuse to stop blogging! I know my enormous* fandom needs me! That’s why they never comment, the emotional stakes are too high!

*I haven’t had any visitor numbers for this blog for several years, so I think it’s reasonable to presume that over that time my audience has grown ten-thousand-fold.

Huge numbers of us are now writing for an audience – thinking in public. And this is changing how we think. Svend sent me this noting it was part of why he writes up reviews of every film he sees at the film fest each year (he sees LOTS of films) – and it’s the same reason I [used to] use this blog to talk about things that bugged me or were on my mind. Writing for an audience here helps me think things through, to assemble a mess of thoughts into a structure and take it a few more steps than I can manage otherwise.

Oh man. A project set up so prisoners in long-term solitary confinement (in the US, of course) get to request a photo be taken just for them, of any subject they want.

Methods for fighting internet trolls (instead of just trying to starve them) (via Hugh Dingwall)

Lucha Libro! Competitive short-story writing, wearing wrestling masks, in Peru. (Harlan Ellison would destroy at this…)

In the buildup to the Breaking Bad finale, Dangerous Minds linked to “the best ever analysis of a scene in a TV show”. I only watched the first two seasons of BB so haven’t watched this, but I figure someone out there will be interested…

I am 90% sure that these dinosaur-human erotica books are a prank, and not a genuine expression of someone’s weird fetishes. They just seem a little too contrived. But still. [EDITED TO ADD: ayup]

Archive of classic comedy monologues, particularly lots of Vaudeville standards.

The great American novel has already been written, and it was the first 27 years of the Fantastic Four comic.

A plausible explanation for the origin of the Tarot? (via Allen Varney)

EW’s lengthy Joss Whedon interview

Bitcoin: super convenient if you’re homeless, apparently.

*sigh* The cast of Twin Peaks at the 1990s Emmys

The gender advertising remixer, Lego edition

Sugar association advertising madness.

And finally, via d3vo… the sea pig

Suffrage Linky

Yesterday marked 120 years of women’s suffrage in NZ – infographic showing some significant changes in that span

Non-white guy in turban dresses as Captain America, wins.

Medieval jokes (you have to provide your own comedic timing)

Complete version of The Wicker Man being released to cinemas! I watched a version with Malc once that had a bunch of lost footage restored but the quality of the restorations was incredibly poor so it was hard to even see what was going on – but this material is apparently pristine. Exciting!

Deceit and success in the contemporary art game (via Allen Varney)

Skeletons with abundant treasure

via John Fouhy – incredible cover of Bohemian Rhapsody on the subject of string theory! It all went way over my head, the closest I came to grokking this stuff is reading a few John Gribbin books in the mid-90s, but this is compulsively watchable.

Yahoo redesigned its logo. Graphic designers everywhere have had plenty to say about the process and the outcome, none of it good. Here’s a good example of the kind of responses Yahoo’s had.

25 animal-shaped buildings from around the world – somehow embarrassed that NZ only has two animal-shaped buildings in this list

How many NZers served on Gallipoli? Te Ara spreads a correction to the historical record.

Peter Sellers doing a range of British accents in one phone call – breathtakingly smooth.

No Names, No Jackets – each post gives you the opening chapter of an unidentified novel; at the end you can click through to the actual book on Amazon if you want to read more. Interesting.

This has been in the linky file since Jan – I have a big backlog – and it seems to me this hasn’t been nearly as viral as I expected. So, in case you missed it: someone made a live-action version of Toy Story (the entire film).

And finally, for mature readers only, Ukrainian breast dance to the Star Wars Imperial March theme. I haven’t watched this, you’re on your own if you click.

Red Barn Linky

(I am getting absolutely hammered by spam comments these days – 200 or so a day and I only have one post open for comments. I try and get all legit comments approved ASAP, but if I’m slow, that’s why.)

Why are barns red? The answer is fascinating. (via Svend)

Via Stephanie, the PBS Idea channel on Youtube. I’ve seen a couple of these before, there’s a good chance you have too, but man – there are waaaaaay more of them than I expected and they all sound super interesting.

Angry, lengthy (I didn’t read it all) account of wikipedia’s decision on whether to name the article Chelsea or Bradley Manning. Lots of wikipedia inside-baseball here.

Art collaborations with a 4-year-old

Teju Cole throws the right glass of icewater about Syria: 9 questions about Britain you were too embarrassed to ask

Freestyle Bane. (I must watch this movie sometime.)

Adding colour to b+w photos – to me, this has interesting emotional effects. (via Fraser)

Zombies vs Parkour (needless to say, these are running zombies)

The Imperial March vs Beethoven

“Wired Love”, an 1880s novel about internet dating (really)

Achewood mashups (don’t bother if you don’t know what “achewood” means) (via Pearce)

Sad Youtube – moments of melancholy sifted out of the huge mess that is Youtube comments

And finally, the Domino’s Pizza app

Dream Linky

The only Martin Luther King link I want to offer is from the Onion.

Star Drunk: a film written by drunk people, then acted by drunk people. It is… very watchable.

Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in compelling fashion of his ongoing mission learning French in Paris. Speaking as someone who is 95% monolingual, this feels very truthful to me. (The whole series of Paris dispatches is worth a read.)

What happened to those new words added to the dictionary in the 90s? Here’s a great antidote to the news coverage about “twerking” and “selfie” going in the dictionary – a smart, funny, generous look at the fate of some 90s additions like “e-tailing” and “netizen”.

An oral history of Attack of the Killer Tomatoes. I remember the stage of childhood when you learned about horror movies only through playground rumour; the Killer Tomatoes sounded exactly as terrifying and serious a proposition as the killer shark in Jaws. We knew there was a joke in the very idea of killer tomatoes – but it sounded like a pretty scary joke.

40 maps that will help you make sense of the world

Marvellous article by Charlie Stross on how Generation Y have been molded by Western capitalist culture in such a way that they will readily betray the secrets of Western capitalist culture. [I skipped the Linky last week (still busy) and since then this essay has been reworked into an article in Foreign Policy.]

Detailed account (from 1898) of Robert Louis Stevenson’s development of a wargaming system and the battles fought thereby.

8 epic photographs of the same house

What 200 calories looks like in different foods (via Damon) (no of course I don’t give a hoot about calorie counting but this still interested me enormously)

Star Wars Propaganda Posters

A 1-minute horror movie – this worked on me, that’s for sure. (via Frank N)

Scooby-Doo reimagined (via Pearce)

And finally, via Nick Tipping, sheep protest:

Wotty Linky

Sick child has borrowed DVD of “The WotWots” from the library. As kids DVDs go, this is very pleasant background as I type up a linky.

Animated GIFs of The Wire – a new one is generated automatically every hour.

You’ve heard about the Google Maps easter egg that lets you step inside the TARDIS? Well Craig Oxbrow let me know about another one – you can get inside a Dalek, too.

Three-point landing.

Advice from the ’30s about undressing and kissing.

Dan Harmon, writer of Monster House, is so identified with his own cult status these days that it’s easy to forget it all came about because he has some serious writing chops. I was fascinated by his two-part discussion of his process of breaking a story – it’s very simple and not something I’ve seen before (although obviously it has been influenced by all kinds of other approaches). Well worth a look for writing types, even if just to reflect on what a process like that means. Part one: explaining the process and part two: examples.

And finally, He Touched Me.

Right, back into it with poor Wee Beastie. Enjoy!

Much Ado Linky

Saw the Whedon Much Ado About Nothing [2013, USA] today – it did what it promised. The plot is ridiculous and the wheezing contrivances weigh it down in its back half, but despite this it absolutely sings when blessed with committed performances thanks to the sheer delightful energy of the Beatrice/Benedick relationship. Whedon finds a darker kernel to the business than Branagh did in his lush ’93 film, and his presentation is nearly claustrophobic compared with Branagh’s expansive staging, but the two films share a gleeful, inclusive energy that makes for good moods all ’round. Like everyone’s been saying, Amy Acker is just phenomenal. Everyone else is at least good (which trumps Branagh’s version!), special mention to Nathan Fillion who deftly finds the laughs in a particularly difficult Shakespearean clown. It’s a good watch, and if there’s any sanity in the world it’ll be back on general release soon.

Anyway, some linky.

Explore Afrika Bambaata’s record collection

Japan’s giant Godzilla crotch entrance (via Pearce)

What would a nuke do to your home town? 70s/80s kids can revisit their childhood nightmares and find out here. (via Nate)

10 years since The O.C. debuted. Interesting interview with the showrunner – I enjoyed watching this for a season or so, mostly because of its good gags and dementedly overcranked pacing. There’s some real insight into what made this show what it was in this chat, well worth a look for TV writing peeps.

How advertisers convinced Americans they smelled bad

How Pacific Rim got kaiju wrong (written by someone who loved Pacific Rim)

Blimey, I knew there were four writers in Stephen King’s family; but turns out there’s actually five. Lovely interview with the whole clan.

xkcd’s updating comic “Time” finally finished. It’s kind of an amazing project. Get the scoop here. (via fraser)

Sweden runs out of garbage (via Sarah E)

Cookie Monster recreates a famous poem on Twitter. Yeah, you’ve guessed the poem correctly.

Jedi Parkour

Those who were around for the discussion about Richmastery on this blog will perhaps appreciate this, but probably not as much as I did. (News report spotted by David R, former Pope of this parish.)

Also via David R: the sublime cluelessness of throwing lavish Gatsby parties. (Reminds me a little of all the veneration of the space marines in my favourite film, Aliens.)

Scans of a 1956 Martin Luther King comic book that was widely distributed through the south in protest at segregation.

1880s fashion catalogue (via Giffy)

And finally, Benedict Cumberbatch hates liquid