Being an internet refuge for Graeme McMillan
Oh to be a white male and successful
oh to be a white male and successful
Brief summary:
Avengers 2 comes out.
Feminist and female writers take issue with black widow depiction. A lot of them do.
Joss gets saddy pants and leaves Twitter.
And the #IsupportJossWhedon hashtag begins.This rant isn’t about avengers 2. This rant…
Of course there’s an #ISupportJossWhedon hashtag. Because of course this has become a nerd movement overnight.
That’s why it’s so crucial that a film like “Wonder Woman” does well. We’ve confirmed that it will be the first woman-directed live action feature with a budget over $100 million. If “Wonder Woman” bombs (which we don’t think it will), its failure will be offered as damning evidence proving that big budget films by and about women shouldn’t get made. As Diablo Cody recently told LA Weekly, “If a movie starring or written by or directed by a man flops, people don’t blame the gender of the creator. It’s just kind of weird how the blame is always immediately placed on female directors.”
I don’t know why I’m surprised that Wonder Woman will be the first woman-directed live-action feature with a $100 million + budget, but I am.
(From here, and those who’ve been asking about Marvel’s fear of doing female-led movies, it might be an interesting read.)
Richard was part of an army of hundreds of volunteers around Los Angeles who were sent out to change people’s minds. And a study by researchers at UCLA and Columbia University found that a year later, not only did these voters stay convinced, they also convinced others in their own households to switch. Apparently neither of those things ever happens.
Ukip has paid for a double-page ad in the Daily Telegraph on the same day the paper’s front page claimed that voting for the party was like writing a ‘suicide note’ for Britain.
Yeah, it was a joke. Off-colored. Whatever. I’m unapologetic about a lot of things, but I got into a lot of internet trouble. Because that’s a thing now, you can get in.
By nightfall, however, there was a line of defense in front of the line of police. Gang members wearing their colors had assembled in a row, blocking anyone from getting closer than within four feet of a riot shield. When anyone acted up, he or she was pushed back, often with din but never with violence. Occasionally, one of the ad hoc leaders of the defense line would swap out and talk to reporters about what they were trying to do.
‘I don’t sugarcoat sh-t,’ said Yusha Hasim Al-Fahd, a Muslim who wore a robe and head wrap as he pushed back crowds. ‘I’m not an upstanding citizen. I’m the evil that goes bump in the night in this city. Whoever don’t know my name know my face. But goddamn, can we at least get due process? Send me to jail for life, if I’m a criminal. I don’t want anyone to get hurt tonight.’
“A week or so,” I said I’d return in; that turned out to be optimistic at best, if not downright foolhardy. April proved to be an overwhelmingly busy month for a number of reasons (and is continuing to be, right up until its final day), and even on days when I had time to write here, I’m not sure I would have written more than simply “I’m so tired, I’m so, so tired” over and over again.
When I started writing here daily, I had visions of doing so every day for a year, some kind of grand plan that would also let me write for myself again, even if it were simply pointless meanderings of little worth. I started 2015 feeling as if I was risking becoming an automaton in terms of output; that the pressures of work meant that I had nothing left to give in terms of brainspace for anything else, and I needed something that was my own. (Wait What? is that to some degree, and I love it very much for that as well as for the chance to talk to Jeff on an almost weekly basis.) Hence, writing here.
And yet, the first three months kind of proved to me that I did have little left to give in terms of brainspace, for the most part; I was writing the random, stream-of-consciousness material that I’d hoped for, but it was emptier than I would have liked, and I think the hope that I’d… I don’t know, sharpen mental muscles as I went along or something, didn’t happen. When I was done, I was done; it was clear to see.
None of this should be construed as real complaints, as much as disappointment in myself and the result of a slow realization that I need to recognize my limits better (and, maybe, factor in some more downtime for myself. We’ll see if that latter one happens anytime soon, though). Will I be doing daily posts here again…? I’m unsure, to be honest; I’ll try to do them when I feel like I can do them, and they feel like something I have time and brainspace for, instead of a promise I made to myself than I have a responsibility to fulfill, if that makes sense. So, if anyone’s reading, hello again.