![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraThe top cartoon here is so cute!
Recently read a couple articles (this was one of them) about the "regulation of recess", the banning of dodgeball, etc. I have yet to see an article consider that there might be a difference between dodgeball as a spontaneous/voluntary recess activity and mandatory dodgeball organized by a teacher. Sign me up for the wussification of America, but I do think there's something wrong with a teacher saying "you have to go be a target of violent throwing now". That seems different than some kids thinking it's fun (and knowing they can stop if it isn't).
In other "what's wrong with America" news, this may cause violent eye-rolling. Or disgust. Not the air marshal's perspective but the fact that he had to give it at all, because, *of course* 14 Middle Eastern guys travelling together with instrument cases must be terrorists, they couldn't *possibly* be a Syrian band on the way to a gig, everybody knows them Ay-rabs don't play music (I actually found in one commentary the line that "if the 9/11 terrorists could learn to fly planes, these guys could learn to play instruments". Alas, I cannot find it again.) I feel such shame on behalf of my country that a bunch of musicians can't take a plane without inciting national debate. At least they were allowed to leave in time to get to their concert.
(As a tangent from that, I have never been on a plane with a Syrian band, but I was once on a flight with the Austrian (?) men's volleyball team, who were all blonde and like six and a half feet tall and painfully scrunched into the back of the coach cabin. My recollection is that the tallest guy's heads were hitting the overhead bins above them, and they were all sort of doubled up such that they couldn't put their tray tables down because of their knees. I suspect that they engaged in a good deal of suspicious getting up and standing in the aisle because *yeesh*. And my sister was once on a plane with a delegation going to an African-American Baptist conference or something, all of whom were African-American (given the conference) and, er, overweight, leading to some uncomfortable seating situations there as well. Uh, I guess my point is that there are all sorts of non-mixed-ethnicity groups one might get on one's plane, and people should know that, and not freak out, because yeesh.)
And in closing "news", I picked up "Elegy for a Soprano" as part of my "finally reading everything Kay Nolte Smith wrote" project and opened it and ahahaha. See, the opening scene is the soprano in question singing, and so "the voice was like jets of molten silver", blah blah, "and the long yearning fingers reached, in imagination, for the head that had been severed and laid on a shield" ::snicker:: and "I have kissed thy mouth" and I had to stop reading because ahahahahah, it's Salome. See, it's a really boring opera, and especially slows down at the end, leading to the writing of this filk... and just try to take a scene seriously while humming "There you see it... sitting on its silver dish... you just had to get your wish, now there's something abo-out it (sha la la la) and you don't know why, but you're dying to try, you want to, kiss the head!"
Recently read a couple articles (this was one of them) about the "regulation of recess", the banning of dodgeball, etc. I have yet to see an article consider that there might be a difference between dodgeball as a spontaneous/voluntary recess activity and mandatory dodgeball organized by a teacher. Sign me up for the wussification of America, but I do think there's something wrong with a teacher saying "you have to go be a target of violent throwing now". That seems different than some kids thinking it's fun (and knowing they can stop if it isn't).
In other "what's wrong with America" news, this may cause violent eye-rolling. Or disgust. Not the air marshal's perspective but the fact that he had to give it at all, because, *of course* 14 Middle Eastern guys travelling together with instrument cases must be terrorists, they couldn't *possibly* be a Syrian band on the way to a gig, everybody knows them Ay-rabs don't play music (I actually found in one commentary the line that "if the 9/11 terrorists could learn to fly planes, these guys could learn to play instruments". Alas, I cannot find it again.) I feel such shame on behalf of my country that a bunch of musicians can't take a plane without inciting national debate. At least they were allowed to leave in time to get to their concert.
(As a tangent from that, I have never been on a plane with a Syrian band, but I was once on a flight with the Austrian (?) men's volleyball team, who were all blonde and like six and a half feet tall and painfully scrunched into the back of the coach cabin. My recollection is that the tallest guy's heads were hitting the overhead bins above them, and they were all sort of doubled up such that they couldn't put their tray tables down because of their knees. I suspect that they engaged in a good deal of suspicious getting up and standing in the aisle because *yeesh*. And my sister was once on a plane with a delegation going to an African-American Baptist conference or something, all of whom were African-American (given the conference) and, er, overweight, leading to some uncomfortable seating situations there as well. Uh, I guess my point is that there are all sorts of non-mixed-ethnicity groups one might get on one's plane, and people should know that, and not freak out, because yeesh.)
And in closing "news", I picked up "Elegy for a Soprano" as part of my "finally reading everything Kay Nolte Smith wrote" project and opened it and ahahaha. See, the opening scene is the soprano in question singing, and so "the voice was like jets of molten silver", blah blah, "and the long yearning fingers reached, in imagination, for the head that had been severed and laid on a shield" ::snicker:: and "I have kissed thy mouth" and I had to stop reading because ahahahahah, it's Salome. See, it's a really boring opera, and especially slows down at the end, leading to the writing of this filk... and just try to take a scene seriously while humming "There you see it... sitting on its silver dish... you just had to get your wish, now there's something abo-out it (sha la la la) and you don't know why, but you're dying to try, you want to, kiss the head!"
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2004-09-24 09:46 pm (UTC);)
no subject
Date: 2004-09-27 03:43 am (UTC)