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Romance in the age of #METOO

Almost everyone who knows me post my relationship with my husband knows the story of how we met: I stalked him at his place of work for a month, and then finally got up the nerve to say, "Um, I saw you like Doctor Who, and I like Doctor Who, and do you want to grab a soda and talk about Doctor Who?" And we hit it off, and have been fairly inseparable ever since, nearly thirty years. And we all say, "Aw, what a sweet, romantic story," right? But in the age of # METOO , I keep t hinking, what if the situation were reversed? If I were a man who stood in the paperbacks every day staring a female worker? That woman would have had security walk her to her car every night. Or what if I were a man who had stalked Nick (Nick's bi-sexuality not-withstanding)? I was eighteen and weighed 105 pounds. Nick's age was unknown to me, and my college roommate pointed out that he might actually have been in high school making me the pedophile (he was actually t
Recent posts

On voting - I love Bernie (but I'm prepared to vote Hillary because Bernie might not make it)

Sadly, although I think Bernie’s ideas are exactly what the country needs, and a long time coming, there is a piece of me that cannot see him in winning the White House. 1) He’s a democratic socialist. For a large portion of the population over 60 the word ‘socialist’ disqualifies him from the office of the president no matter what words precede it. My father would have been one of them. Of course, for my father and many others, the fact he protested the VietNam war would have been enough to dismiss him. To argue that socialism, as described in the works of Marx and Engel and many earlier social philosophies, has never been practiced by any major government on the planet—the classic ‘well, it works on paper’ argument—falls on deaf ears. Or to point out that a democratic system of governance is as vital to a socialist system as it is to a capitalistic one—if not more so—will not be believed. There are those who still think that FDR’s socialistic policies led the United States do

Two new podcasts from Art and me.

Episode 8 - Young Adult Lit and Conservative Comedy Episode 8 - Young Adult Lit and Conservative Comedy Loann and Art, in true young boy and girl detective spirit, track down the arguments for and against grown-ups reading Young Adult literature. And, where are all the conservative comedians? Is the comedy industry a liberal stronghold? We also discuss our cultural consumption over the past few weeks. ( Now available on iTunes ) 009 - Tom Cruise & Dragons Underperform and 70's Political Paranoia Today How to Train Your Dragon 2 and Edge of Tomorrow are getting great reviews, (and Loann and Art have each seen one of them.) However, they are not meeting box office projections, so what does that mean for the studios and the stars.   And, 70's movies like The Conversation made audiences feel creeped out about the surveillance state, but where are those stories being told today?

Yay! Dystopia!

So, I've been having a dystopia fest (this is not rare for me--I am fascinated by dystopian literature). I read Margaret Atwood's "Madadam," another book in the series that began with "Oryx & Crake." If you haven't read "Oryx & Crake," I can't recommend it highly enough. It just blew my mind when I read it several years ago. It is both dystopian--pre-apocolyptic, and post-apocalyptic. And watched "Metropolis," and "Things to Come." Then I consumed "The Hunger Games"--all three books--in three days. I had never read "The Hunger Games" before, and I found the writing hard to slog through. I understand that it was supposed to capture the simple, plain speech of Katniss, along with the present tense, but 1st person, present tense is a hard sell for a long book, let alone three. That said, the story was intriguing. I will be curious to see how they handle the horrifying violence of the l

On listening to music and the death of our idols

Someone on the train was listening to “Bohemian Rhapsody” today. I could hear it, thin and tinny, from their headphones. I don’t know how people can do that, listen to music so loud. Or perhaps, their headphones are simply cheap and bleed the sound. I’m feeling my age I suppose, but I’ve never been able to listen to music at high volume. I have fantastic earbuds at the moment. When I put them in, I can barely hear anything else. In some ways that’s what you want, but in others it’s almost disturbing. Am I missing announcements? People asking me to move aside? Telling me that there’s a stampeding rhino heading my way? A couple of weeks ago I could hear the music from the woman next to me. Hear it well enough to recognize the songs: Whitney Houston chirpily singing, ‘How Will I Know?’ followed by Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” A playlist of dead people. Would Nirvana be next, or INXS? Joy Division? Or, like today, Queen? Someone newer, Amy Winehouse? I suppose if you