Zorral

I'm not so sure about how successful that was, as a reader who was there, in so many ways, and who has always been friendly with Bill. He's really good at where he's not actually involved in so many ways. He likes that position - distance, big overview from afar that is about how we look now. But I was here, and have been ever since, and his writing didn't work for me with that. What those two events, Kennedys assassination and 9/11 had in common was the endless loops of what people didn't know -- just the image of what happened. A picture can be worth a thousand words, but I really and truly swear that endless 9/11 loop was superficial only, and not what it was for us. Then, well -- hey the response by Bush? to put up enormous billboards on the sides of high rises here downtown, where I lived, less than a mile above the Towers, which I knew well, had even worked in them, which told us to get credit cards and go shopping as the best way to counter and defeat the enemy? God I hated him and Cheney -- and still do.

People tried and made a real mess of it. Particularly since it got started way too soon. Immediately in sf/f genre, for instance, many proposed the Fall of the Towers as the impetus for a plot in which somebody takes advantage to disappear and begin a new life ... w/o taking into account that even in ye olden days of 9/11 digital records were so extensive disappearing and creating a new identity was so difficult one needed deeply expensive and deep connections to do so -- and the government had them. So making it just personal romantic journey was ridiculous. Not to mention disparaging of the people who lost their lives and what their families went through. BTW, of such proposals for fiction I ever saw, not one was proposed by anyone who lives here and went through it. The weird politics of 9/11, though almost as forgotten as Katrina, are still playing out right this moment too, in so many ways. See -- for a single instance, Giuliani.

So then I thought of Pat Barker's The Women of Troy (2021), drawn from Euripides’s play, he Trojan Women, and Sophocles earlier play, Antigone, and its sequel, The Silence of the Girls (2018), which draws upon The Iliad Whereas I’ve not been interested by Barker's much praised, other consequences and aftermath of period war books, I was riveted by these two when they were published. Why? Evidently no matter what we know, or how we write, this Bronze Age legendarium of heroes, warriors and divinities, of 3000 B.C. -- 5000 years ago! -- stubbornly retain residual nimbi of glamor and glory. Despite reviewers, particularly very snooty academic (male) fellows, snobbishly informing readers that Barker hasn't a clue about the divine, or how important it is in the world view of everyone in the Bronze Age, as these women in her retellings, don't bow before either the divine or the (male) diviners. Ha!

I finally just finished watching this. I liked and admired both seasons very much, but for some reason had a difficult time getting myself to watch it. This is one of those shows that doesn't benefit from having a week between release of episodes. It began right before going away for about a month, so when I returned there were lots of things to watch, and also, jetlagged, it was hard to get back into. Then at one point I caught up to where season 2 was. After a week, I was entirely meh at getting back to it again. Now that all rest of the episodes are up, I watched one of the remaining eps each night, and everything seemed to be snappier -- and a lot more involving. I dunno.

You nailed it! Thanks.

The Duke's great family is broke, so they commit more crimes to keep the coffers filled and continue the style of ife to which centuries of criming has made possible.

Shōgun Won the Attention War https://www.vulture.com/article/shogun-subtitles-translation-memes-success.html

https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/april-25-2024? More on the Founding Fathers and presidential immunity from the law: JAMELLE BOUIE This Whole King Trump Thing Is Getting Awfully Literal April 26, 2024 https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/26/opinion/trump-immunity-supreme-court.html A new Founding Father time-travels to forestall presidential immunity By Alexandra Petri She knows the Founding Fathers and the Constitution! https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/04/26/immunity-trump-founding-fathers-satire/

For whatever reasons today it's been much in mind that the Trojan War begins with Goddess Artemis's anger (why?) becalming the winds for the sail of Agamemnon's fleet from Aulis, and the war, of the men at least, concludes with the winds churned by the anger of Goddess Athena and God Poseidon, due to the multiple sacrileges committed by the Greeks in the sacking of Troy, preventing them from sailing home. Divine anger and wind, the beginning and the end. Though of course there's other angers that keep most from getting home, delaying getting home, and being murdered when they get home.

Actually, I'm finding the immunity proceedings fascinating.

Presidency and Executive Power! Core Powers! Non-core Power! Elected Nominee in the pas! Non-elected Nominee now! Future uses of criminal law elections! Bad Political Motive! Non-Political Motive! Wishing to stay in power is not a motive to consider! Vindictive investigation and prosecution of previous presidents! No concern of now but the future! When bad things happen because immunity then proved not to be immunity now! No regime of accountability of past presidents. Reagan! Clinton! Public authority or Immunity - Motive? Good grief.

So is Putin and Russia openly campaigning for the stinkin' pile.

The grounds were that the prosecution brought into the case accusations by other women that hadn't been formally charged where they took place, so essentially a mistrial. He's still serving in prison his sentence from the California case conviction.

https://www.si.com/soccer/2023/11/10/carli-lloyd-confirms-uswnt-once-lost-team-15-year-old-boys BTW the loss was 5-2.

O yes. TX, you always win.

But reports such as the latest bombing in Rafah, in which over 30 people were killed -- most of them children -- will also heighten the activist protest movement.

These protests and demos are spreading to many campuses across the US. That seems to be in provoked at least in part to the cops and shut downs and calls by the fascist ilks in congress etc. that the National Guard, the cops, somebody come in beat their asses and arrest them -- or as the stinkin' pile demand, I think it was him, be shot and hung. Shades of 1967!

Hmmm. I missed that all together. But then, as commented, this series did not engage my emotions or curiosity beyond seeing what they did with this once-upon-a-time phenomenon of publishing, and then made-for-tv movie mini-series (1980). Or else I was making dinner -- and/or jetlagged when that rolled by. In any case this son plays absolutely no role in the series.

All we need to understand is, since behind every great family and their great fortune is a great crime, for a great family to continue with its great fortune is to commit more great crimes. Which entertains those over whom they maintain their exploitation and dominance via their great fortunes which provides their great power.

That's what I said. But she's already dead, when he does this. She has no daughters. I didn't know she had a son, so thank you for that information. But, we never saw him. What is he doing? Torananga doesn't seem to know either, or give a damn. He has many sons though, which is mentioned by more figures than himself.

Further, it seemed to this viewer the scene in which Toranaga sets sets free his falcon is a paradigm that setting Mariko to do what the army cannot, which she did, at the cost of her own life. He earlier in the series called her his falcon at one point while Blackthorne and Yabu are goshawks. However, Toranaga says, as the falcon flies, "Bear many daughters." Mariko has no daughters, no children, and never shall. So, what are we to think of this?

Amid arrests and dark warnings about Jewish students’ safety, an editorial at the campus newspaper offered a far different view of the crisis. https://slate.com/human-interest/2024/04/columbia-university-protests-presidents-jewish-students-encampment.html Columbia has a radio station, WKCR, "The Home of Technical Difficulty" which is broadcasting continuously what is happening on the campus concerning the protests and demonstrations. It is online, but regard its self-given subtitle. There are no funds for anything for the radio station. It's entirely volunteer, including the equipment.

There was one bit this viewer's pov appreciated. That was at the end, in, as we have already been informed, Blackthorne's first to fail endeavor to rebuild a ship for seafaring. Buntaro's appearance to throw himself into this failed endeavor along with Blackthorne. Both of them came back from the dead. Both of them failed to keep Mariko from what she wanted, she escaped both of their versions of what they thought was what she should do, leaving them to fail together in this too. Both Ha! However, I really missed Blackthorne's decision, and then mental preparation to commit Seppuku, and the aftermath of being stopped right at the moment, for several days afterword, and then in one way or another for what would be the rest of his life. This, more than anything else in the novel -- and particularly missing in this television adaptation -- allowed Blackthorne to enter "Japaneseness.' That was the powerful bit of Clavell's fiction, that never left my recollection of the readings.

There is so much more involved in the lives of trans people like all of us, than sports, yanno? For many, perhaps even most, sports isn't even on the radar. Sports is not the point or the reason or anything at all. A Breakout Spanish Novel About Class and Trans Identity Comes to the U.S. Alana S. Portero’s debut, “Bad Habit,” follows one woman’s coming-of-age in a blue-collar Madrid neighborhood. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/04/24/books/review/bad-habit-alana-s-portero.html

LIstening over and over to a cover of Tina Turner's version of "Proud Mary" -- everything exactly the same except the woman singing is singing the words in Chinese. Covers are covers -- how many versions over the years have we heard just of "Proud Mary"? What makes this one stand out so?