weird words

I've accomplished quite a lot this weekend: finished marking one pile of Year 8 tests and am now drawing lots of red doodles on the Year 12 essays. I've done five and now I've earned myself a break.

The school drama has died down a bit and on Friday we entertained my brother who came up for a haircut, food and some cd-burning. I've got a very long weekend coming up and as I've got some of the marking out of the way, I'm wondering what to do with my time. Any suggestions?

The television I watched this week has been fairly mediocre - Lost and Veronica Mars were so-so and the plot twists in 24 were far too obvious and no, there wasn't anything particularly rant-worthy.

There was some snow, but it disappeared after a couple of hours.

( Proof )

Amuse me with a witty comment.

Edited to add a picture.

I think I need a new lay-out, because the very basic one I'm currently using doesn't give easy access to all my tags. Something to sort out over the weekend - any tips or hints are welcome.

Against my better judgement and due to a weird mix of masochism and the desire to 'know thine enemy' I've started with the new season of 24 which somehow found its way to me. If you follow the brandnew 24 tag, you'll find two earlier ranty posts about Day 4. I knew that watching this would get my blood pressure rising, but there's also the joy in making sarcastic comments about this mix of car commercial and blatant, yet entertaining and thus probably effective propaganda. To keep myself from throwing my glass of wine at the tv, I scribbled down my thoughts and voiced quite a lot of them. Believe me - we're usually fairly silent watchers and don't like the people who comment on everything, but with 24 the rule is different. Snarky remarks are necessary and encouraged. I filled about 14 pages in my notebook even though I abandoned writing down things midway through the fourth episode.

The worst thing is that while 24 is clearly fictional - what with a different president and no mention of Iraq or Osama Bin Laden - it is still grounded in reality and I'm scared that a huge part of the audience believes that what they're seeing on the screen is not just a possible scenario, but also a probable one. No, scratch that, the fact that it is quite entertaining and has now even managed to add some real vulnerability to its hero is much worse.

( Spoilers plus comments )

Morals to be gleaned from this story:

Don't trust your Arab neighbours - ever.
Presidents who negotiate with terrorist allow themselves to be blackmailed.
Torture has results, unless it's Jack Bauer who will remain completely silent for 18 months.
If the Americans release a bunch of enemy combattants, something terrible will happen.

What angers me most is that this is never about the reasons behind terrorism, it's just a case of them against us. There are some hints that some people are against torture and the further erosion of human rights, but I fear they may turn out to be wrong in the end. Having someone propose detention camps for American Muslims and having people voice criticism of that, but not commenting on the use of torture or the detention of enemy combattants makes these things look completely acceptable and normal by comparison. And that's exactly where the evil of propaganda lies - the audience is clever enough to know that Jack Bauer doesn't exist, but these are real issues and the moral judgements made or implied by the series will affect the viewers. Either they believe that yes, it's right to use torture or to lock up people for five long years without charge OR their belief is confirmed that the United States is about to protect its constitution by destroying it.

Back from the UK, here's a post about something American.
This is a post about a tv show. And it will need my first cut but it won't be very deep...

( 24 )

Announcement: I've got a post planned about Alfred Kinsey from a different perspective via T.C. Boyle's The Inner Circle.