Assorted Bits and Pieces

Just for the record, when I posted the pumpkin dance video yesterday, I in no way wanted to support the cultural imperialism. In Austria, we don’t traditionally celebrate Halloween, though it’s happening more and more these days. We have November 1st as the catholic holiday to mourn the dead, which – to my heathen, atheist knowledge – includes going to cemetaries, probably while carrying huge wooden crosses and pourring hot ashes everywhere. I could be mistaken though.

[The same thing is happening with Santa Claus. We have Saint Nikolaus (aka. Santa Claus) who comes on December 6th and on Christmas proper, Baby Jesus brings us the presents. Nowadays, we have Saint Nikolaus and in more and more families Santa Claus comes to bring the presents on Christmas Day, too.]

Happy Halloween!

Top 10: Desserts

And now for something completely different. Moving away from the customary pop culture item of the week, let’s turn to food.

Food… isn’t it awesome? All life-sustaining and stuff? And so damn tasty… :P

Though I love all kinds of food (with the exception of intestines [with the exception of liver] which are, arguably, not food after all), there’s something special about the sweet stuff.

Imagine you’ve just eaten dinner and you’re full to the brim. The meal was excellent and you’ve overindulged yourself. Then somebody comes up and says, “Would you like a piece of meat?”

Your reaction would most likely be to explode on the spot.

But now replace the word “meat” with the word “cake” and suddenly some secret department in your stomach opens up and you notice, that, in fact, you’d love to have a piece of cake. But only a small one. No, a little bigger than that. A little bigger than that. A liiittle bigger. Perfect.

And then you eat like half a cake and are perfectly happy.

Or is that just me?

Anyway, here’s my Top 10 Desserts which, surprisingly, are not all sweet!

Michael Jackson was buried yesterday, can we – collectively – please talk about something else now?

I swear, if I have to read another 3-5 page coverage in the newspaper about his death, I’m going to scream.

Beauty in Advertisement

Darbo is an Austrian company. They make stuff from fruits – jams, syrup, etc – and beautiful ad campaigns.

Like this one:

Or this one (which of course wins by including the Dresden Dolls anyway):

Or this one:

But it’s their newest one that really makes me love them:

Why can’t all advertisement be like this?

Austria has this internet page, where you answer a few questions (and rate their importance for you) and it tells you, which party in a certain election you have the most in common with. Here are my results for the EU parliament election:

Translation:

You have answered 25 questions about current political topics in the EU.
The comparison showed that you have the most in common with the following party:

Green

In the diagram below you can see, how much you have in common with each party.

Green +205
Young Liberals +147
Communist Party +143
-5 Liste Martin
-55 Conservative Party
-69 Social Democrat Party
-78 Rightwing Neonazis* (FPÖ)
-125 More Rightwing Neonazis* (BZÖ)

*Not the actual translation.

Now, the big results didn’t surprise me one bit. I know that I’m on the left side of the political spectrum and I usually vote for the Green Party, so, fine, I guess. But what did surprise me was the ranking in the middle there. That I seemingly have more in common with the Conservative Party than with the Social Democrats. That the Liste Martin is almost on the plus side. And that there’s this huge gape between the FPÖ and the BZÖ. [And I personally consider the FPÖ the bigger evil of the two, so that I have even less in common with the BZÖ should probably make me reconsider that.]

I just wanted to share that. You’re very welcome to start a discussion with me in the comments.

RIP David Carradine

Here’s the story.

Important Announcement

Please spread this news!

I am attending a meeting in Geneva of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO). This evening the United States government, in combination with other high income countries in “Group B” is seeking to block an agreement to discuss a treaty for persons who are blind or have other reading disabilities.

The proposal for a treaty is supported by a large number of civil society NGOs, the World Blind Union, the National Federation of the Blind in the US, the International DAISY Consortium, Recording for the Blind & Dyslexic (RFB&D), Bookshare.Org, and groups representing persons with reading disabilities all around the world.

The main aim of the treaty is to allow the cross-border import and export of digital copies of books and other copyrighted works in formats that are accessible to persons who are blind, visually impaired, dyslexic or have other reading disabilities, using special devices that present text as refreshable braille, computer generated text to speech, or large type. These works, which are expensive to make, are typically created under national exceptions to copyright law that are specifically written to benefit persons with disabilities…

The opposition from the United States and other high income countries is due to intense lobbying from a large group of publishers that oppose a “paradigm shift,” where treaties would protect consumer interests, rather than expand rights for copyright owners.

The Obama Administration was lobbied heavily on this issue, including meetings with high level White House officials. Assurances coming into the negotiations this week that things were going in the right direction have turned out to be false, as the United States delegation has basically read from a script written by lobbyists for publishers, extolling the virtues of market based solutions, ignoring mountains of evidence of a “book famine” and the insane legal barriers to share works.

*grumbles*

So, the Guardian portrays six female directors – which is pretty cool and yay! go, Guardian!

But in the same article where they say how sad it is that there’s only 6% female directors, they go on two spew some sexist shit.

First, there’s this:

Becoming a film-maker means developing a thick skin, [Jane Campion] added. “My suspicion is that women aren’t used to that. They must put on their coats of armour and get going.”

So, women are too wimpy and emotional to make movies? So, they are pussies, are they?

Look, maybe women actually are more emotional than men (for a variety of reasons like adaption to social environments, education, gender politics etc etc etc). But where is the fucking harm in that? As long as we can’t embrace that which is supposedly feminine, we’ll always run into these things.

Imagine the women actually put on their coats of armour – wouldn’t they suddenly all become “viragos” and looked down upon again?

Plus, as they say in the article: the female view is missing from the world of cinema. Making women more male* to be able to include their view into the world – that doesn’t make any sense.

The the article goes on.

In Cannes last weekend, Birds Eye View founder, Rachel Millward, hosted a forum for female film-makers, where documentary maker Anne Aghion noted it would not have been possible to combine her career “and the accompanying 16-hour days” with any kind of family life.

I’m sorry, but when do men have to ask themselves that question? Are all the male filmmakers childless and partnerless? How do they make it work? Ahhh… that’s right… they have women in their lives who take care of that stuff.

It is just so unfair that women have to decide between career and family and men don’t, ever. And even in a (supposedly) feminist article, this things are just taken as a given, quoted as a universal truth that’s never going to change.

And then there’s the cherry on top the whole thing: before they start with the portraits, the article ends with a resounding “YAY! 3 OUT OF 20 MOVIES IN CANNES ARE BY FEMALE DIRECTORS! WAHOOO!!!”

I’m gonna go cry for a bit.

—

*Short for “that what is generally perceived as male in the Western culture”

On Race and Genre Fiction

Fen of Color United is a project created in the aftermath of RaceFail 09 [I'll point you again to Ramblingperfectionist's post as a starting point if you missed it.] It’s there to show that there are actually readers of colour and that they’re not only some freakish occurrence every 7th year, when the 7th daughter of a 7th son is born with 7 fingers. Or something.

Anyway, I usually miss these kinds of things, but this time I promised myself I’d make it. So, here I am.

Full disclosure: I’m not a POC. I’m a white European woman who wholeheartedly supports this project. But this also means that I might stumble over my own privileged blindness. If RaceFail 09 has taught us anything, then that nobody’s safe from that, even (or maybe especially) if the intentions are good. In any case, if that happens, please let me know in the comments. I welcome the opportunity to learn. I just ask that you tell me friendly and not rip my head off. :)

If you’re scratching your head and wondering about why I post this post like this, with no actual argument that starts at the beginning and stops at the end, with no coherent story or anything coherent, actually, it’s because I’m trying to show my support, but I don’t experience racism geared towards me, usually. So I can only draw analogies and hope that the point I’m trying to make is getting across. And I wanted you to be part of my thought process because I do think that this helps understand no matter what.