LET IT SNOW!

As my sweety crabbyolbastard said just a few minutes ago (yes he invented a new word):
It's Blizzarding!

It is indeed. Reports by the overexcited weatherman on the local Channel 3 news (which bumped Sunday Morning to 10:30, just to say it was snowing...) are that we will be getting at least 2 feet of snow. COB's dad said "You know its going to be bad when they NAME the storm." The name of our genteel nor'easter is called Carson. Query Did Carson Daley call up the weather people and make his case about how cool it would be to name a snowstorm after him? Better a snowstorm than a hurricane these days - they are rarer.

Don't forget to read my previous post - the huge, long, update of all the interesting news that you may have missed over the last few days... Are they - like in Mel Gibson's Conspiracy Theory all linked? You decide.

So, we have decided that in our snowed in state there should be some really horrifying movies being played to keep us awake, alert, and freaked out - since during a snowstorm there is still that feeling of being isolated, of being "snowed in" and unable to contact, let alone get out into, the world. (No, The Shining isn't on the list unfortunately, we don't have a copy of that yet.) The line up so far is: The Ring Two followed by 28 Days Later... Both are the UNRATED (read scarier and more fracked up) versions. Neither of which we've seen. I was thinking of having a zombie fest follow these but... who knows. Any suggestions? (damn, opening scene to the ring two and we say to each other at the same time "it's the ultimate (teen) chain letter!" and wouldn't you know it, the way they set it up in the first one... it is. this better not turn into one of those stupid teen movies... of course we just said - he waited too long, she'll watch it but not until he's already DEAD! hahahahaha! the irony.

Of course this (not the movie the snow) makes me want to even more, move to Colorado or some place that has a snow culture. New England does in a way but, it isn't that overarching, especially in the lower NE states like CT. And NH - yes I have finally come to the point where I can sorta bad mouth the place... there is a large population of the "inbred" and hateful types up there. Of course, the color of my skin would exclude me from their hate, until I opened my mouth and started voicing my opinions. And it isn't everywhere, just in (some?) the small, poor insular towns. Of which there are many in NH. There are plenty of nice places too - like Laconia and the Lakes Region - that sort of balance it out but... I have had too much exposure to the previous type in the past four years.

I would x out that whole part about NH if I could - don't know how to do it... You could tell me, of course... *sigh* My main problem is that I have ONLY been influenced to that opinion by the singular town of Pittsfield. Of which I have only heard most of the bad and not nearly enough of the good. How it has affected my immediate family, destroyed a marraige that I never wanted to occur, (not that I would take it back if I could because it resulted in three most wonderous siblings) and so on. Should I allow that experience, (and a few others that were purely on an interpersonal basis) poison (I was going to say "color" but then realized what the root of that particular saying probably was) all the good memories I have of NH? Should I allow the feelings of tawdriness influence the good that I've known of people and places?

Back to the movies: why can I not stop yelling at or about the movie at the screen and to my sweet crabby one? About how stupid the people are, about: WHY DO THEY STILL HAVE TELEVISIONS AFTER WHAT THEY WENT THROUGH?! Oh. it was a nightmare. Never mind - I'm going to have to just shut up and watch it.

Enjoy the snow!

Old News, Posted for my own benefit - please ignore...

A Startling New Lesson in the Power of Imagery
By MICHAEL KIMMELMAN
Published: February 8, 2006

Correction Appended

They're callous and feeble cartoons, cooked up as a provocation by a conservative newspaper exploiting the general Muslim prohibition on images of the Prophet Muhammad to score cheap points about freedom of expression.

But drawings are drawings, so a question arises. Have any modern works of art provoked as much chaos and violence as the Danish caricatures that first ran in September in the newspaper Jyllands-Posten?

The story goes back a bit further, to a Danish children's author looking to write a book about the life of Muhammad, in the spirit of religious tolerance, and finding no illustrator because all the artists he approached said they were afraid. In response, the newspaper commissioned these cartoons, a dozen of them, by various satirists. And like all pictures calculated to be noticed by offending somebody, the caricaturist's stock in trade and the oldest trick in the book of modern art, they would have disappeared into deserved oblivion had not their targets risen to the bait.

The newspaper was banking on the fact that unlike the West — where Max Ernst's painting of Mary spanking the infant Jesus didn't raise an eyebrow when recently shown at the Metropolitan Museum — the Muslim world has no tradition of, or tolerance for, religious irony in its art.
( Read more... )

So I am supposed to assume that the Danish paper did this on purpose, for their own amusement... To stir the pot, to get a rise out of an already upset with the world's view of itself people? What the hell were they thinking? Did they think that by doing this they would do something akin to breaking down the Berlin Wall? Did they think that by doing this (and it being repeated over and over by other newspapers) that the Islamic people would be less offended? That they would become inured to it all? Well, that is how the modernists have inured the rest of us - keep shocking and the shock begins to wane, must find something else, some other target... Of course, the western world has had a lot longer, being slowly secularized over time so that the pinpricks of, the assaults of the modernist art world no longer sting.

I find it interesting that they make a specific point to let us know that the Syrians are constantly making fun of, printing poisonous racist crap, the Jewish people. Of course, I will get the reply that racist remarks aren't quite as provoking as religious attacks. I guess it all depends on how sensitive the people being attacked are about the subject. However, religion has brought about the worst of the bloodbaths that our world has witnessed - even if some of them are also linked with economic and political gain...