(no subject)

[shadowkat]

Mothers, tell your children: be quick, you must be strong. Life is full of wonder, love is never wrong. Remember how they taught you, how much of it was fear. Refuse to hand it down - the legacy stops here. ~Melissa Etheridge, "Silent Legacy," Yes I Am, 1993

We have to find and put an endquote at the end of the church newsletter - that I've volunteered to edit. And after much hunting for an appropriate quote on the topic of Gay Pride Sunday, and a sermon entitled "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" - I chose the above. Mostly because it made me cry. I heart Melissa Etheridge, she's my hero.

Also heart Farscape - partly because I don't remember most of it. Oh I remember the main plot thread and structure, but not the smaller details, or when certain things happened. It's blurred together. That said, there are weak episodes. Sigh. Are there any tv shows, or anything out there without weak episodes? Nope. We fallible beings. Imperfect. Which is actually sort of cool. Did you know that certain Native American or American Indian tribes will deliberately insert a mistake in their artwork? Their belief is that it keeps the artwork from becoming cursed or prevents bad luck. It also to them makes it valuable. Also in the artworld - the mistake is often considered beautiful.

Scanned flist at lunch, lots of speculation on the latest reveal of the upcoming Buffy comics due to debut in September or October, they are always pushed back a month. I swear the distributor has the comics about two full months before they release them and just tease people with small spoilers up until that date - not unlike television network distributors or movie theaters in that regard. What amuses me is the discussion about Angel. First of all, I always saw Angel as an anti-hero. The interesting thing about the character was his desire to be worthy. Worthy of whom...I was never quite sure. Depended on the day of the week -- in most cases? I'd say a higher power. Angel was old school religion and a man of his times, 1700s.
Back in those days, women were property or something to be protected and owned literally,
and God, the Father, ruled. Not a nice period of history for the ladies. The only difference between Angelus and Angel was which God the Father they wanted approval from and well, the guilt thing. In other words, could Angel be manipulated by a higher power? Well, when wasn't he? Plus a huge theme of Angel the Series (especially S4 and S5 when Greenwalt got booted and Whedon/Minear took over)- was being a puppet of a quasi-religious higher power or the belief/need to believe in one. So Angel going batshit after a higher power gives him the coveted shanshu (or what he thinks it is) and turning him into the vamp equivalent of superman, is not a stretch. Actually, when one thinks about it - it was sort of foreshadowed in S3-S4 with Cordelia. Finding Aeryn and Crichton's counter character trajectories far more interesting at the moment. But did find the random posts and discussion of Angel sort of interesting. That and the fact that Buffy is outselling the Angel comics, although no surprise there - Buffy outdid Angel in the tv ratings, critical reviews, scholary reviews, and DVD sales as well, not to mention best of lists. (And yes, I saw the bits on Spike - which, did not surprise me all that much when I think about it. Spike's always been the counter-point to Angel in the series. He's Mr. 19th century/turn of the century/industrial age vs. Mr. 17th Century,Traditional Values/Old School Religion. Or Mother's Approval vs. Father's Approval. And hello, it's a series based on girl power. )

In other news? Wimbeldon had the longest tennis match in history - one for the record books. An 11 hour match. Whoa. The guy who won? 6'9. American. From Georgia. Also, whoa, and cool!

US made it to the second round of the World Cup, no clue how England did, no one on the news has said anything. But the US got it's win. YAY.

McChrystal is out and Petrakis is in. I'm ambivalent to be honest. Just as long as they end the dang thing...and soon. This has been going on for nearly 9 years and counting. Soon we'll pass Vietnam, assuming we haven't already? (I don't know, how long was the Vietnam War? )

Comments

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

Officially the American Vietnam War went from 1965 to 1973 but technically it really started in 1961 when Kennedy sent 15 000 Ammerican soldiers in South Vietnam to support dictator Diem's army.

[embers-log.livejournal.com]

Well the French left in 1954, but the USA was already (starting in 1950) sending advisors and military equipment to Vietnam, so we were pretty deeply involved long before Kennedy sent an additional 15,000 over and above the advisors who were already there. The comparison with Afghanistan is a good one since the past involvement seems to make the current involvement inevitable, but everyone knows there is no 'winning' here.

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

Not only advisors and military equipments but also a lot of money was spent during the Guerre d'Indochine that France fought (and lost)against the Vietminh, so yes the USA was actually involved in there since the beginning of the Cold War but I don't think there were actual troops before Kennedy sent them over, even though the official term used in 1961 was still "advisors". I guess it was a turning point.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Interestingly enough, I got a bit of an inside scoop from a French man who actually served in the French Vietnam conflict/war way back in 1984 I spent two months with a French family in Bretagne one summer during high school - on a foreign exchange program - this program was only with France and the US, it was called NASAQAL or something to that effect. Two-three years prior my own family hosted a French student, from Paris. Natalie Regis was her name - who aspired to be Judge, last I heard she was well on her way - but that was back in 1985, I lost contact with her shortly after 1985. On my visit - I stayed with a different family - whose names I forget, unfortunately, on the coast of Bretagne. The French Father - told me in French (he didn't know any English) and my French was close to horrid not helped by the fact that I knew Parisian French not Bretagne, but somehow I figured it out - and he told me about
being under gunfire. How France had tried to convey to the Americans that it was a mistake. And the stupidity of the conflict. Rather fascinating - particularly since I did not know about France's role in the conflict.

Afghanistan has a similar history, except the players are Russia and the US. The film Charlie Wilson's War is about the US getting Russia out of Afghanistan - which brought in the Taliban. Like France, Russia told the US to keep their noses out of it, did we listen? No. The idiot who doesn't read or learn from their own history, is doomed to repeat it, ad naseum. Of course it wasn't that simple. There's a rather good book entitled The Kite Runner - which was also made into a film, about
Afghanistan. It takes place in the 1970s-1980s. Depicts how Russia's rule and the US's involvement, eventually opened things up for the Taliban.

[frenchani.livejournal.com]

How France had tried to convey to the Americans that it was a mistake. And the stupidity of the conflict. Rather fascinating - particularly since I did not know about France's role in the conflict.

Well, it's complicated. French leaders/military knew the field because of the decolonization war in Indochine, so they had insight for sure and knew American couldn't win that war, but there's also the fact that De Gaulle at the time was trying to show France's independence by criticizing the USA's actions (don't forget that "we" left the NATO structure in 1966 while remaining allies).