Animals
The Pika, showing that ears aren't everything. Despite its short ears its body structure is more like a rabbit's than like a rat's.
Movies
As a guess teachers are giving students permission to watch the movie instead of reading the real Odyssey. How else would an Odyssey film with an African woman playing the world's best known blonde before Lady Godiva, a small woman playing Achilles not as a half-grown draft dodger but as the great hulking macho muscle man of the ancient world, and the sunburnt Greek islands made to look as gloomy as the Faroes in winter, sell tickets?
I still think it's barbarian. And racist. The ancient Greeks never denied that their whole civilized world might agree that its prettiest woman was Black. They even said the queen of Troy, middle-aged but still admired, was dark, though not Black. Hecuba had black hair, Cassandra had auburn hair, and by the end of the Odyssey Penelope probably had grey hair, and nobody denied that they looked dang fine. Helen was pale and blonde because her mother was the later to be deified swan goddess. Some even claimed Helen hatched out of an egg. So why does Lupita Nyongo need to be ridiculed for not looking credible as Helen? Why is there no movie about Cassiopeia, whose beauty lighted up five stars, and her daughter Andromeda, whose beauty became a whole galaxy? They were African. Granted the story about them is short, but so are the scenes where Helen actually appears in the Odyssey. Viewers think "Who's that supposed to be? That's NOT Helen," and then they start finding fault with Nyongo's perfectly adequate face. I want to see what Nyongo could do with the role of Cassiopeia, for which she'd look right.
Music
During my online time in this 24-hour period I did hear a lot of sounds. Most of what people chose to share were "news" vlogs and podcasts. However:
Ella Langley.
This one is alarming. Sounds like a Seventh-Day Adventist male escaped into mainstream society. "I'm not going to pursue you. Oh no. I'm totally spoiled. I expect you to pursue me." Ick. Yes, older Adventists did boast that they'd fostered an atmosphere that encouraged chastity, so thoroughly that at least one celebrity divorced an Adventist because he kept that icky "I have no sexuality whatsoever, I just sit back and let women throw themselves at me" attitude even after marriage. And guys, even at nineteen, if you wait for any self-respecting woman to pursue you, you will die virgins. (Of course you won't. You'll stop waiting and fall into the clutches of horrible females who only want your money, are unfit mothers, and might torture your dog just to make you be the one who filed for divorce first.) Anyway. Icky Jesse Winchester.
Politics
I was rereading Robert Callahan's Fire in the Whole, deciding it's a keeper even though it's annoying, and then I found this on the Mirror...
Lens traces it to Fud31 on X. Much truth in this cartoon. The man on the other end of the handshake, especially, the Black one, reaches out to accept the statement of good will and the rose, and gets a handful of thorns.
I think Christian churches really need to take more responsibility for educating new members about socialism. Y'know, some of these "why I left the church" memoirs, like Callahan's, really do sound a lot like "My parents were Ds and it bothers me that the church didn't follow the D Party blindly, wherever it's gone, the way my poor deluded parents did." We need to be teaching, especially, that welfare dependency harms the poor, and funding "programs" instead of actively engaging with individuals who have less is a selfish, lazy, self-indulgent choice that does damage. We need to be teaching that when governments demand more of our property "to help people more," the people they want to help are bureaucrats, only. We need to be teaching what the Bible teaches about how God withheld help from the people after they chose to enable a big, intrusive government to lead their nation astray and ultimately destroy it. The parable of the thorn tree needs to be as familiar as the parable of the lost sheep; the history of Naboth's vineyard needs to be as familiar as the history of David and Goliath. Because Christians have hesitated to do that, we still have too many Americans falling for the appeal socialism makes to Christians' conscience--the "social gospel" that does appeal to some things Jesus said, but then interprets them in ways that are contrary to everything else Jesus said. Too many people of good will don't realize that socialism always promises friendly handshakes and pretty roses, and delivers handfuls of thorns.
Which is why the party that's let the "Democratic Socialists" hijack it has to become the Party of Hate and Censorship.
If you're a traditional liberal Democrat or anything other than a Democrat, and you're going to Atlanta, this restaurant is of course a must-stop. Make it one of Atlanta's leading tourist attraction and watch a few Ds hate it, anyway, the way a certain member of my town council hated the Friday Market because she once spent a disappointing day there. Because today's Party of the Burro is not Jimmy Carter's party of "caring" or even Barack Obama's party of "hope and change." They have no credible benefit to claim they offer anybody. They are the Party of Hate. Stay in line or they'll censor you!
Real Estate
Never, never, never buy a house that has anything to do with a "Home Owners Association."
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