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Jan. 28th, 2014 10:02 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkat1. The weather is wonky in the US.
* CJ Cherryh on Good Reads is complaining that it's not snowing where she is. I love her quote:
Such a sleepy, disgusting winter…WE want the snow. The East Coast and South…
…generally don’t.
We have snowplows. We have coats. We’re ready for this stuff.
Our sky is grey and the trees are leafless and the place is constantly sodden with condensation that should be frozen.
* Alaska is warmer than Minnesota.[ETA: apparently it's supposed to be...although -50 in Minnesota is pushing it.] So too is Sweden and Austria apparently.
* Antartica is warmer than Detroit and Chicago.[ETA: supposed to be, but again...negative temps are pushing it.]
* Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina are cancelling school and got in grid-lock due to a freak snow-storm, which they never get, while upstate NY hasn't gotten enough snow to ski.
Beacon's got hardly any this year.
Here? It's approximately 14 degrees. Tomorrow high of 18, with snow. Then on Sat, we'll get up to 40 degrees and it will be practically balmy.
2. Hee, watching the State of the Union address, and the President is telling businesses across the country to give America a raise. (He already told the MTA to do it.) And to grant equal pay for women (not a problem for me, I work for the government - we get equal pay.)
Will state - he's a decent speaker and rather upbeat.
3. Saw Downton Abbey - which in some respects I prefer to last season (no Matthew and not as grim or confusing). But the Anna/Bates storyline is beyond cliche, offensive as all get out, and has to go.
* Once again the gal gets raped, and it becomes all about the guy's need to seek revenge on her behalf, which in this case would end with him in prison facing the executioner. Poor Anna, because been there, done that. That's why I hate these storylines.
Actually - Kristin Kashore - states it better here: I am sick to death of the frequency with which rape is portrayed shallowly in entertainment media. I also feel that this particular case -- the rape of Anna, whose husband will certainly retaliate if he finds out -- should be an opportunity for people to talk about what a serious problem it is in our society that there are too many women and children who suffer rape and other violence but are then unable to tell the men in their lives -- fathers, brothers, husbands, partners -- the truth of what's happened, out of fear that those men, rather than giving them the real support they need in that moment, will retaliate in a fit of violence that is understandable but in fact selfishly makes the woman's or child's situation worse.
And what Bidisha states in the UK Guardian:
Downton employed several rape clichés: the ideal victim should be sweet, good and naive; the perpetrator must be creepy from the start; the attack should involve a thorough beating, so the threat to the victim is obvious. Then the rapist, like a ghost, simply disappears, and the real telly fun can begin. The victim's emotional state is grabbed and ripped open. Her trauma is exposed, exploited, fetishised. The audience watch her trembling with pain and shame, crying in corners, torn up inside. They watch her life crumble as she's subjected to further turmoil through pregnancy or marital crisis.
[Say what you will about Buffy the Vampire Slayers Seeing Red Episode - but they didn't play to those cliches. In some respects they deconstructed them. Spike disappeared - but to get a soul and redeem himself for the rape, to realize it was an act that could not be easily redeemed nor changed with a soul. And Buffy isn't victimized. She kicks him off. And Xander isn't permitted to seek revenge. Nor is her trauma exposed. The only individual beaten down is the rapist. It's a lot of things, perhaps, but not cliche. Downton the more lauded drama by the mainstream media, unfortunately can't say that.]
* Tom - please move to America. You have no storyline. I was hoping he'd be more involved with running the estates...instead it's Lord Gratham. Although I liked him in this episode, he was actually nice for once.
* Lady Mary is a spoiled brat. And cold. Don't get the appeal.
* More time on Edith and the Dowager please?
* Not sure what Thomas is up to. Is he still angling for Carson's job?
* Love the Cook, Daisy, and Alfred storyline. Wanted more of that.
* CJ Cherryh on Good Reads is complaining that it's not snowing where she is. I love her quote:
Such a sleepy, disgusting winter…WE want the snow. The East Coast and South…
…generally don’t.
We have snowplows. We have coats. We’re ready for this stuff.
Our sky is grey and the trees are leafless and the place is constantly sodden with condensation that should be frozen.
* Alaska is warmer than Minnesota.[ETA: apparently it's supposed to be...although -50 in Minnesota is pushing it.] So too is Sweden and Austria apparently.
* Antartica is warmer than Detroit and Chicago.[ETA: supposed to be, but again...negative temps are pushing it.]
* Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina are cancelling school and got in grid-lock due to a freak snow-storm, which they never get, while upstate NY hasn't gotten enough snow to ski.
Beacon's got hardly any this year.
Here? It's approximately 14 degrees. Tomorrow high of 18, with snow. Then on Sat, we'll get up to 40 degrees and it will be practically balmy.
2. Hee, watching the State of the Union address, and the President is telling businesses across the country to give America a raise. (He already told the MTA to do it.) And to grant equal pay for women (not a problem for me, I work for the government - we get equal pay.)
Will state - he's a decent speaker and rather upbeat.
3. Saw Downton Abbey - which in some respects I prefer to last season (no Matthew and not as grim or confusing). But the Anna/Bates storyline is beyond cliche, offensive as all get out, and has to go.
* Once again the gal gets raped, and it becomes all about the guy's need to seek revenge on her behalf, which in this case would end with him in prison facing the executioner. Poor Anna, because been there, done that. That's why I hate these storylines.
Actually - Kristin Kashore - states it better here: I am sick to death of the frequency with which rape is portrayed shallowly in entertainment media. I also feel that this particular case -- the rape of Anna, whose husband will certainly retaliate if he finds out -- should be an opportunity for people to talk about what a serious problem it is in our society that there are too many women and children who suffer rape and other violence but are then unable to tell the men in their lives -- fathers, brothers, husbands, partners -- the truth of what's happened, out of fear that those men, rather than giving them the real support they need in that moment, will retaliate in a fit of violence that is understandable but in fact selfishly makes the woman's or child's situation worse.
And what Bidisha states in the UK Guardian:
Downton employed several rape clichés: the ideal victim should be sweet, good and naive; the perpetrator must be creepy from the start; the attack should involve a thorough beating, so the threat to the victim is obvious. Then the rapist, like a ghost, simply disappears, and the real telly fun can begin. The victim's emotional state is grabbed and ripped open. Her trauma is exposed, exploited, fetishised. The audience watch her trembling with pain and shame, crying in corners, torn up inside. They watch her life crumble as she's subjected to further turmoil through pregnancy or marital crisis.
[Say what you will about Buffy the Vampire Slayers Seeing Red Episode - but they didn't play to those cliches. In some respects they deconstructed them. Spike disappeared - but to get a soul and redeem himself for the rape, to realize it was an act that could not be easily redeemed nor changed with a soul. And Buffy isn't victimized. She kicks him off. And Xander isn't permitted to seek revenge. Nor is her trauma exposed. The only individual beaten down is the rapist. It's a lot of things, perhaps, but not cliche. Downton the more lauded drama by the mainstream media, unfortunately can't say that.]
* Tom - please move to America. You have no storyline. I was hoping he'd be more involved with running the estates...instead it's Lord Gratham. Although I liked him in this episode, he was actually nice for once.
* Lady Mary is a spoiled brat. And cold. Don't get the appeal.
* More time on Edith and the Dowager please?
* Not sure what Thomas is up to. Is he still angling for Carson's job?
* Love the Cook, Daisy, and Alfred storyline. Wanted more of that.
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no subject
Date: 2014-01-29 09:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-29 11:16 pm (UTC)I remember Xander fans making it about Xander - which annoyed me at the time.
And how Xander should be permitted to stake Spike. (Seriously? It's called Buffy the Vampire Slayer folks, not Xander the Vampire Slayer. Get a clue.)
no subject
Date: 2014-01-29 09:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-29 11:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-01-29 10:34 am (UTC)* Alaska is warmer than Minnesota. So too is Sweden and Austria apparently.
* Antartica is warmer than Detroit and Chicago.
Alaska, the populated part of Alaska, is located on the coast in the way of the warm current circulating up around Japan and back south. Wikipedia shows the average high in January in Minneapolis as 23.7 F and in Sitka as 40.5 F with relatively cold for Alaska Juneau at 32.8 F. It's actually a pretty big difference there with Alaska much, much warmer than Minnesota on average, almost twenty degrees.
Antarctica's most populated area is the Antarctic Peninsula, widely considered the most convenient point for research stations. The average January high is 35 F. That's summer, of course, in Antarctica. So it's normal for it to be warmer than Chicago or Detroit. Even McMurdo Station, the very closest you can get to the South Pole and still get a supply ship (an ice breaker?) into your settlement part of the year, has a January average high of 31.6 F. Chicago has 31.5 F.
At my balmy home base here in the mountains, it's pretty much 40 F and sunny every day in an average January. Last year we averaged twenty degrees colder and I complained loudly and sent nasty complaint letters to the National Weather Service. This year, we're tracking the average closely almost every day. It makes me much happier. (But do I -- ungrateful wretch that I am -- thank the government for that?)
I've been going on long bike rides in the mountains. It's supposed to snow tomorrow and the temperature is supposed to be almost 50 F. I hope the warm comes before the snow so that I can ride again. Once I cut it too close and the storm front arrived with its heavy snow while I was at the end of a twisty twenty five mile road up in the mountains. It wasn't fun getting back down.
There's still plenty of snow on the ground and we'll get more as it warms up in February and March.
no subject
Date: 2014-01-29 11:12 pm (UTC)Didn't know it had warmer temps in the summer - I honestly thought Antartica was below 0 year round. (I need to learn to Google/Fact Check prior to posting. Lazy, I know.) Although this does explain how they can have research bases down there and people go on cruises to visit.
Minneapolis has been having temps at -30 and -50 with wind chill, which is cold for Minneapolis (or so I've been told, personally I remember winters in Kansas being like that). Chicago more or less the same. They've dipped way below the 20 degree mark the past few weeks. Schools are cancelled. Everyone is getting cabin fever. Lots of weather related deaths.
Meanwhile, the deep south, Alabama, South Carolina, Georgia and Missippi are freaking out over a snowstorm that left 3 inches, and icy roads. (Although Georgia and South Carolina don't have a great excuse, since both have had snow before - I know I've been down there when they had it.)
So, it's wonky...just not quite as wonky as I thought apparently.