Posts by Andre Alessi
Last ←Newer Page 1 2 3 4 5 Older→ First
-
Up Front: Staying In, in reply to Emma Hart,
I love the fact that being closeted for a Wiccan is called, at least in the US, "being in the broom closet". I've heard stories of really vile harassment campaigns against people outed as Wiccans in small US towns.
I still struggle with the scope of discrimination like this. The pagan Usenet groups were my first introduction to the "at will" employment laws in the US, when people I'd e-known for years would be suddenly without a job because of their religious beliefs or lifestyle, with absolutely no recourse. The even more extreme, often violent discrimination was much, much harder to comprehend, even when it happened to the same people.
-
Deleted long, rambly, self-centered post.
Shorter me: having a real name as unusual as mine makes anonimity on the internet pretty tricky, but I've been really lucky and privileged.
-
I’ve always really appreciated the added groundedness (was going to say “realness”, but that’s not quite the right word, is it?*) that your posts bring to a discussion because they’re posted under your real name, Emma. I know from my own limited experience that the juggling and self-censoring that can be involved is tricky, and I’m more than a little jealous at how easy you make it look.
*-Rereading that sentence, I think I could have phrased that better. What I mean is that I don't think it would be right to call things posted under a pseudonym as less "real", just as less located in the context of a particular person's life.
-
We spent the weekend in Raglan, where most of my ladyfriend’s family lived at one time or another. It was instructive for me, because I’d never been there, and she could point out various locations that her family had been involved in the history of (the former family farm, the house her great-grandparents lived in and where many of her ancestors were born, the old tavern her aunt and uncle had owned on the main street, etc) The weather on Saturday held long enough for dozens of kitesurfers to flock the mouth of the estuary.
We also caught up with friends on Saturday afternoon and sampled the local fare, and finished the day with a few quiet wines with French friends-of-friends in a van (complete with bed in the back) a few metres down from the police station.
The weather turned dramatically on Sunday, and we were far too soft to get out of the car for any more photos, but sitting at Manu Bay watching the waves break on the rocks while lightning struck the ocean a few kilometres out was quite something.
-
This may have been posted in previous weeks, but…
http://soundcloud.com/user5794040/inner
Alex Taylor is the NZSO National Youth Orchestra Composer-in-Residence, and won the Young Composer of the Year with this piece, [inner]. It’s pretty great Sunday arvo relaxing on the couch music.
-
So the general tone amongst many who should know better is, "How dare someone ask for money from WINZ!"
Heh, indeed.
-
OnPoint: MSD's Leaky Servers, in reply to Terry Baucher,
Leaving aside the appalling security issue, are we all happy that MSD is contracting out a core function of Government?
Given that a private contractor with a less than stellar track record internationally (G4S) is responsible for monitoring people on home detention, I think the Veda link is small potatoes in comparison.
-
I don't think there are enough /facepalm gifs in the world to express my feelings right now.
I mean, I've worked in some sloppy/cack-handed corporate IT environments in my time, but this...
-
Hard News: Irony Deficient, in reply to Joshua Drummond,
I think that’s quite right, which is why some satire inspires truly, bizarrely different reactions from its audience. Alan Moore’s Watchmen is arguably an example of this-it’s blackly hilarious if you believe Moore doesn’t want you to like and admire the characters (satirising the idea that dressing up in costume and beating up criminals is “heroic”) ; but simply a grim, dystopian superhero story if you do take the story at face value.
-
It's interesting that we often talk about comedy "changing" in the sense that performers approach it in new ways, but of course it's the audience that does most of the changing, both over time and across geographical and cultural boundaries.
This is particularly relevant to satire, which is funny precisely because the audience is able to immediately recognise the actual (i.e. intended) reality of the situation being portrayed and compare it to the literal portrayal. That awareness of the "underlying" meaning atrophies/becomes less viscerally real the further the audience gets from the audience the creators imagine when creating their work, so the "tingle" good satire inspires slowly becomes less intense.
