Buyers of IPhone

  A very accurate description. People line up for days to buy that shit?
  We live in an insane world with insane people. It's really an excellent illustration how the sick consumer society is kicking into even sicker overdrive.

  It isn't strange that the world is so out of whack.

The boy doll

  I don’t know how many negative articles there are about Justin Bieber out there, since I haven’t really checked. The entire subject, the very thought fills me with disgust. But I would imagine there is quite a few. There should be.

  Here is my contribution:

  He can’t sing, literally can’t sing. Not even the wonders of modern technology can fix his weak voice.

  The songs are hardly songs at all, but a tired, old repetitive, uninventive record stuck at the end of the melody. I most certainly agree with Danish newspapers calling him as real as Santa Claus.

  He is a sale pitch, really and nothing more, a celebration of banalities, of the mindless, of prostitution, of people selling themselves. When millions of hysterical girls scream his name many, way too many young boys want to be him. He is, in short a typical early twenty-first century role model, one not first and foremost selling his songs, but an idea, a scheme of submission and enslavement, one tool among many spearheading his masters’ ambitions of a world without freedom.

  One Direction and similar boy and girl bands fit the same mold.

  When he visited Norway this week there was little difference between that and him visiting any country, anywhere. We saw stupidity incarnated. We saw rich people pay for their daughters to meet him face to face, saw him being treated like royalty everywhere and while there was some reflective thought in that and other regards, reflective and critical thought was mostly absent in the public sphere.

  The music publishing industry, like the movie and book industries doesn't sell art, but a lifestyle, one without awareness and independence. They have always supported artists serving up mindless drivel the most.

  It’s very similar to general advertising. Advertising doesn't first and foremost sell a given product, but instills in almost everybody a need for being popular, to belong, of being accepted by family, friends and society. In the boy or girl doll the modern human youth projects his or her longings, an excuse to not seek true freedom, to not live an independent and radical and aware life.

  I don’t wonder why the world is filled with silly love songs. It is because those in charge have ordained it.

The stark truth

  This is so spot on, so accurate, so telling. All people, but especially those professing to be radicals (but clearly aren't) should take it to heart. I will put it to you, to you guys right now: Stop being gatekeepers, stop defending the system by ridiculing system critics and buying tyranny propaganda.

  Others about this subject:

  The absurd and ridiculous

  Watchdogs

Ever After by Kim Harrison, my thoughts

  «There's no witch in Cincinnati tougher, sexier, or more screwed up than bounty hunter Rachel Morgan». From Every which way but dead (book 3 of the Hollow series).

  Aside from having a «tendency» (pun intended) to name the books in her Hollow series of novels after Clint Eastwood films, Kim Harrison is quite the competent writer. I have to think so, right, since I've read every book in the series so far.

  I love the quote above. It more than suggests, in spite of the flaws that there is something more than the ordinary to these books, something confirmed at least to a point when you read them.

  Kim has set up a very elaborate universe of vampires, witches, demons and elves with more than one original twist. There have been ups and downs in my reading of the series, but I do come back for more. I don’t quite understand why, but I do.

  I like the fact that Rachel was revealed to be a demon and also accepted it without too much fuss. Most other writers in the genre of urban fantasy wouldn't have dared to do that, wouldn't have dared pushing even those minor boundaries.

  Ever After is the eleventh novel in the series. And even though Rachel has fucked up again and needs to fix it, she has reached a modicum of calm at her center, isn't the neurotic wreck she was in the first books. Even Rachel’s relationship with Ivy the vampire isn't that unlikely and filled with silliness anymore. As Kim has done earlier she continues building on themes introduced in previous books. There is a progression here that is kind of effective. She is fairly good at characterization, at least with some secondary characters for some reason.

  And I do want to know what comes next, even though I see, or at least initially saw Rachel, the main protagonist as a ridiculous, implausible character.

  One thing in particular is bad about this book. A very important event happens off camera, which can never be good. I could attribute this to the I-form Harrison use to tell her stories, but the event would be easy to work into even that, so it has to be a deliberate choice of the writer and one I can’t say I like very much.

  The stories remain a fashion show of sorts, a choice I don’t care for either.

  And my foremost criticism: These books are advertised as books for adults, but I think they are much more for young adults and hardly even that. The way sex and violence and general interaction is described (or not) is almost approaching that of a children fairy tale, not really for truly mature readers at all.

  I wish writers would stop being so cautious. I guess it has something to do with the fact that the books are published by established publishers. They don’t make waves and don’t want their writers to do so either, and that makes almost all their publications potentially very, very boring.

  As I said, I keep reading these books, but they don’t excite me and certainly not like they could have, if they hadn't insulted the reader’s intelligence.

  My conclusion, I guess, is that in spite of some positive elements in the stories, the negative outmatches them. The potential is far from being actualized. The setup is great, the execution isn't.

The sorry current state of mankind

  Most people clearly prefer the choice on the right, since that is by far the most common these days and has been for a long time.
  It says a lot about the sorry current state of mankind.

Think again

  I used to be the typical bimbo when it came to women’s rights: I didn't give it much thought, taking for granted what I had and hadn't really considered the injustice still very much present in today’s local, domestic and global society.

  But as I was more or less shaken out of my daze I learned more, about both the present and the past, and a possibly terrifying future.

  In Margaret Atwood’s novel A Handmaid’s Tale we see what will happen if the religious right gain the upper hand.

  The rights women have today, still modest compared to men in general have been fought for for centuries, through often hard-won battles.

  Everybody doubting that should read the history of that struggle. It isn't exactly peanuts. A film about it I recommend wholeheartedly is Iron Jawed Angels, an American TV-movie from 2004. Though not completely historically accurate the events described is more than close enough. And what it lacks in accuracy, it gains in passion, in the cruel and intense description of what Alice Paul and Lucy Burns, among others had to endure in the United States in 1917 for women to win the right to vote. It didn't happen by itself. Like sisters in each and every country Paul and Burns and the rest won through great personal sacrifice and with their very lives and health at stake.

  The world is still far from true equality, but it would be far worse if not for those giants that fought for us and won for us.

  If you think, as I did that there is nothing more to fight for, think again.

  A married woman was hardly considered a legal person anywhere 150 years ago. Today, in many places, all over the world, also in western countries, they will force us or are forcing us to carry to term a rapist’s baby, for instance. Rape culture is still very much present many places and even gaining popularity among a particular brand of western males. There are many other similar horrors waiting for us, if we aren't vigilant.

  Many of the same arguments used then, in order to keep women from gaining the right to vote are used today, when keeping us from enjoying equal pay for equal work, abortion issues and more.

  If we don’t fight we will not win and as we've seen recently: we may lose many of those hard-won rights. If the world has improved on these issues, it isn't by much. It remains a long-term uphill struggle.

  The War on Women is intensifying, not waning.

Review: Shadows in the Darkness by Elaine Cunningham

  This is a mature book, at least far more so than many others. It doesn't insult (much) the intelligence of the reader.

  You just don’t find many books like this anywhere.

  Gwen knows she’s different, but doesn't know what she is and she suffers because of it. She is former cop turned private investigator specializing in finding lost and kidnapped girls, like she, herself is lost. And the city of Providence’s steamy underside is where she’s doing most of her work, and she’s good at it, so good that she easily convinces club owners and vice bosses that she is her disguise: a sexy lap dancer, a woman making men turn their eyes at her wherever she goes.

  She’s a very believable «heroine». There aren't many unconvincing events in the book. The story feels very much like real life. Perhaps she is too much in denial when she discovers her true inheritance, and the fact that a sensual woman doesn't have sex during the book are the only things I find a bit frustrating and unlikely.

  It’s not a genre book, another point in Elaine’s favor, the way I see it. If you must label it, call it «urban fantasy».

  Elaine has mostly done licensed work. I guess she earns more money doing that than on her own stories and that is too bad. I will skip the Forgetting Realms, Star Wars and stuff like that and keep reading her real stuff.

  This book is out of print. I was lucky to find it at the local library. Again we see an example of how quality fails to become a bestseller.