International Women’s Day

Today is International Women’s Day (Updated link):

International Women’s Day (8 March) is an occasion marked by women’s groups around the world. This date is also commemorated at the United Nations and is designated in many countries as a national holiday. When women on all continents, often divided by national boundaries and by ethnic, linguistic, cultural, economic and political differences, come together to celebrate their Day, they can look back to a tradition that represents at least nine decades of struggle for equality, justice, peace and development.

International Women’s Day is the story of ordinary women as makers of history; it is rooted in the centuries-old struggle of women to participate in society on an equal footing with men. In ancient Greece, Lysistrata initiated a sexual strike against men in order to end war; during the French Revolution, Parisian women calling for “liberty, equality, fraternity” marched on Versailles to demand women’s suffrage.

Few causes promoted by the United Nations have generated more intense and widespread support than the campaign to promote and protect the equal rights of women. The Charter of the United Nations, signed in San Francisco in 1945, was the first international agreement to proclaim gender equality as a fundamental human right. Since then, the Organization has helped create a historic legacy of internationally agreed strategies, standards, programmes and goals to advance the status of women worldwide.

Over the years, United Nations action for the advancement of women has taken four clear directions: promotion of legal measures; mobilization of public opinion and international action; training and research, including the compilation of gender desegregated statistics; and direct assistance to disadvantaged groups. Today a central organizing principle of the work of the United Nations is that no enduring solution to society’s most threatening social, economic and political problems can be found without the full participation, and the full empowerment, of the world’s women.

So, happy Day to all of you International Women out there. :)

(And, incidentally, this might be a good time to mention that here in the United States, the Equal Rights Amendment still hasn’t been passed. Isn’t it long past time that something was done about this? If we’re going to go amending the constitution, shouldn’t it be for something positive like banning discrimination, rather than institutionalizing it?)

(via Blankbaby)

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are…on DVD!

Finally!

Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead is coming to DVD!

I’ve been waiting for this one to come out for years, after having owned two copies of the videocassette in the past and losing them both to friends that I loaned them out to.

March 22nd, this one is mine.

(via Josh)

iTunesBusy Child” by Crystal Method, The from the album Vegas (1997, 7:24).

Hitchcock

A few weeks ago, Prairie and I watched Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window, and tonight I watched North by Northwest.

Man I’m bummed I didn’t discover Hitchcock earlier.

That’s not to say I’m a complete neophyte — I’ve seen Psycho, Vertigo and The Birds in the past, and some time ago a reader was kind enough to send me a copy of a recent (and very good) Hitchcock biography, but really, I hadn’t seen much of anything of his oeuvre. After reading the biography, though, I went through and added every Hitchcock film that Netflix had available to my queue, and now they’re starting to filter in. This is going to be fun.

iTunesShake the Disease (Extended)” by Depeche Mode from the album Shake the Disease (1985, 8:46).

Marriage Equality rally

Marriage Equality march and rally, Seattle, WA

(Click through for the full Flickr photoset.)

Update: Seattle P-I: Seattle marchers back gay marriage

Hundreds of gay-marriage supporters took to the streets yesterday, marching from Capitol Hill to downtown Seattle in a show of solidarity two days before the state Supreme Court hears arguments on whether same-sex couples should be able to marry.

[…]

Last spring, eight couples sued King County after they were turned down in trying to get marriage licenses. Eleven more couples sued the state in Thurston County, also seeking to wed.
The gay and lesbian couples prevailed in both counties. Tomorrow, the state Supreme Court will hear arguments on whether to uphold the rulings in their favor.
The key question is whether the state’s Defense of Marriage Act, passed by the Legislature in 1998 over Gov. Gary Locke’s veto, is unconstitutional. The law defines marriage as a union between a man and a woman.

iTunesMaster and Servant” by Depeche Mode from the album Master and Servant (1984, 3:48).

Good night tonight

No particular reason for that, just a good night. Evan (the DJ at the Vogue) was doing quite well, and the club was just crowded enough to be definitely crowded, without being so bad that I couldn’t get on the floor and bounce around.

I’d brought in a CD of requests, but apparently the CD player at the club is picky and wouldn’t read the burned disc. Evan’s got the CD now, though, and he’ll re-burn it to a CD brand that he knows works, and then I might get some of my requests in. Here’s the playlist for the cd:

  1. Depeche Mode: Flexible/Just Can’t Get Enough — a mix of two of my favorite DM tracks from a bootleg CD called the Twelfth Strike.
  2. Psychic TV: I.C. Water
  3. LaTour: Allen’s Got a New Hi-Fi
  4. Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark: Pandora’s Box (It’s a Long, Long Way) (Constant Pressure 12″)
  5. Drum Club: Sound System (Underworld)
  6. MC 900 Ft. Jesus: If I Only Had a Brain
  7. Devo: Head Like a Hole — Yup, Devo covering Nine Inch Nails. From, of all things, the Supercop soundtrack.
  8. 12 Rounds: Pleasant Smell (Rethought by Clint Mansell and Keith Hillebrandt for the Nothing Collective)
  9. Information Society: Going, Going, Gone (Razed in Black)
  10. Propellerheads featuring the Jungle Brothers: Take California (and Party)
  11. Public Enemy vs. Winx: Bring the Higher State of Noise — A mash-up of ‘Bring the Noise‘ and ‘Higher State of Consciousness‘.
  12. :Wumpscut:: Wreath of Barbs (Gray/Scale)
  13. Billy Idol: Don’t You Forget About Me — Billy Idol covering the Simple Minds track from the soundtrack to The Breakfast Club.
  14. Pigface: Mind Your Own Business
  15. The Kleptones: Listen — A mash-up of Queen‘s ‘Radio Ga-Ga‘ and a few different Beastie Boys tracks.

On the way home I happened to bump in to Janice, who I’d met last month sometime at the Vogue. She was on her way home from the Noc Noc with a friend (Tom…I think), so I stopped to chat with them for a few minutes. Last time I’d seen her I’d given her my LiveJournal name on a matchbook (which she got quite excited about…in a world of cell phones and PDA’s, the matchbook technique was very “old school”), so I harassed her about not having tracked me down yet to say hi. Nothing like a little friendly teasing to round out the night!

Earlier today I bussed out to the University Village to stop by the Apple Store and picked up iLife ’05. I haven’t done a ton of playing around with it yet, but so far, I’m liking the changes in iPhoto 5. Poked around for a few moments with the other programs in the suite, but iPhoto’s the only one that I spent any real time with.

New toys, yay!

Tomorrow…well, later today, I suppose (I’m up way too late tonight) there’s a march and rally in support of equal rights in marriage being put on by Equality Now that I’m planning on hitting. It starts just up the hill from my place at Broadway and Pine at 1pm, then goes down the hill to Westlake Plaza. Should be interesting, and hopefully get me some good pictures, too. We’ll see…

iTunesGoing Going Gone (Razed in Black)” by Information Society from the album InSoc Recombinant (1999, 4:56).

Commonly Confused Words answer key

Given the amount of interest that the Commonly Confused Words test prompted, and after prompting by Royce, I’m going to go back through and re-take it, recording my answers as I go through. At the time I originally took it there was only one answer key (for the “Beginner” section), though now there are answers for section two (“Intermediate”) also, so I’ll take a look at those too once I’m done.

Maybe among all of us, we can suss out where we’re stumbling!

Read more

Enterprise

Over the past couple weeks, I noticed something interesting during my wanderings through the ‘net. During my near-obsessive investigation into Battlestar Galactica, discussion threads would often end up contrasting the new series to Enterprise, and I kept seeing people openly admitting that the first few seasons of Enterprise were dreck, but then going on to claim that their current season was actually quite watchable.

While reading some of the reports about the current fan-driven campaign to rescue Enterprise from cancellation, the same general comments kept popping up. Then I got into a conversation with a customer at work, and he ended up saying much the same thing.

Unconvinced but intrigued, I decided to see what I could find, and ended up downloading all of the episodes to date of Season Four of Enterprise and watching them over the past few days.

While I wouldn’t exactly say that I’m impressed, I do have to admit that I found this season to be far more bearable than what I had seen during the first season. It’s still by far my least favorite incarnation of Trek (out of TOS, TNG and DS9, at least, I’ve yet to see more than a few random episodes of VOY), but the overall feeling I got was that someone on the Enterprise team got their head out of their ass started actually listening to the fans and tried to turn the show around.

First step in the right direction was spending the first two episodes wrapping up the “temporal cold war” storyline. I thought that was a bad idea when it first popped up, and nothing I’d seen or read since then had convinced me any differently. Now that that’s over and done with, things seem to be improving.

They’ve also spent a few episodes working on the Vulcan culture, trying to explain why they’re presented so differently in this series than they ever have been before. It all came off as a little far-fetched, but at least they’re trying.

The storyline touching on the Eugenics Wars and augmented humans wasn’t bad (though I do wish that they’d used some other scientist as the antagonist — as much as I like Brent Spiner, how old must Soong have been by the time he died?), and it allowed them to finally create an explanation for the differences in appearance between the Klingons of the original series and those we’ve seen ever since The Motion Picture. A pity the second half of that two-part story became so muddled, as the first part was fairly strong, and the general premise is at least bearable (and no worse than some of the other convoluted explanations that have had to be created over the years to explain away various goofs).

So, I’ll admit that they’ve gotten better, and the current season of Enterprise is at least watchable. I still don’t think that there’s any great need for it to continue, though — let it die, and let the Trek universe have a few years to settle and regroup before trying to fire up the Paramount marketing machine yet again.

And please, please, please — no more bad ballads over the opening credits in any future incarnations of Trek. Someone (other than the people sitting through it week after week) really needs to suffer for that.

Saw

Rick brought over Saw last night for me to watch. It’s a film that aspires to be a psychological/horror film along the lines of Seven…and fails miserably.

The premise starts interestingly enough: two men wake up chained on opposite sides of a room, prisoners of a psychopath who manages never to actually kill his victims. Instead, he puts them into situations where they have to kill themselves or others in their attempts to stay alive.

Unfortunately, Saw is burdened by two major flaws: a script that has a number of goofs, from plot holes to unrealistically stupid actions by the characters; and Cary Elwes, who continues to completely unimpress me as an actor. By the end of the film, the violence had gotten to the point where I nearly turned it off, and neither of the final two surprises surrounding the identity of the psychopath were surprising in the least.

I think the premise had promise, but the execution was so flawed that I ended up finding the entire film a waste of my time.

iTunesTwo Telephone Calls and an Air Raid” by Imrei, Shaun from the album Mortal Kombat: Annihilation (1997, 4:43).

Reconsidering

I did something this morning that I’ve only done a couple times in the past, and have removed a post that had been published a few hours before. The conversation is still progressing (or, that is, it will be when I get home to check my e-mail again), I just came to think that it was a conversation better held less publicly.

So if you saw a post pop up and then disappear on this page or in your newsreader, that’s why. No glitch, just a reconsideration.

That’s it?!?

John pointed out The Commonly Confused Words Test, so I gave it a shot. My results:

Advanced
You scored 100% Beginner, 93% Intermediate, 93% Advanced, and 61% Expert!

You have an extremely good understanding of beginner, intermediate, and advanced level commonly confused English words, getting at least 75% of each of these three levels’ questions correct. This is an exceptional score. Remember, these are commonly confused English words, which means most people don’t use them properly. You got an extremely respectable score.

Exceptional or not, I have to admit, I’m a little chagrined by that 61% on the Expert section. I’m generally rather proud of my command of the language, so getting a ‘D’ on that section of the test really makes me curious as to where I goofed up. Unfortunately, the only answer key available is for the Beginner section, which I scored 100% on.

iTunesToday” by Ride from the album Just Say Anything (1991, 6:27).