September 12th, 2008 by Brianna
And…
Yay! They fixed it! It’s fun again!
Bones has not been trashed after all. The writers of the season opener were just stupid.
There was still lots of inappropriate sex talk in this episode, but it was all by Brennon in her usual blunt style – the others were back to being polite. Also, the investigation part was excellent, and actually the main part of the episode, for once. I am curious to see how the new girl and Brennon bounce off each other – she’s a different kind of character than has appeared thus far.
By the way, I don’t really intend to make a habit out of talking about this show – but then again, I might do it anyway!
Tags: bones, tv
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September 11th, 2008 by Brianna
I just watched the first episode of the new season of Bones, and I have to say, I am just a bit – well – disgusted.
It started out like a typical Bones ep. – Bones and Booth are in England, Bones is being awkward during a lecture, Booth not paying attention to her and putting his foot in his mouth as a result, etc. Pretty soon, of course, a dead body shows up. Then things got weird. Really weird.
Everybody started talking about sex. And genitals. All the time. I mean – ALL the time. Not just a ’some old prof/co-worker wants to sleep with Bones’ sub-plot (though there was that going on too…) Booth, Cam, Zack, Angela, her husband, everybody was in on it. Also, apparently all British people are very polite, cultured, nymphomaniacs.
Since when is this even a stereotype? For one thing, there are plenty of rude British people, I’m sure. Also, while I am told they are a bit less prudish about sex than Americans, this ep. was utterly ridiculous. I guess they just wanted to do something different. Look – it’s funny when Bones says something about sex that is both obvious and impolite – we expect that, and everyone acts shocked, and it’s funny. And once an episode. This was gross. Everyone was doing it this ep. About a dozen people hooked up (I don’t even remember who, it got so old) And I have no idea what really happened with the dead people, because I was busy skipping on Hulu, trying to avoid hearing random penis remarks (which were everywhere). There was no on-screen sex (thank goodness!), but seriously, people, this ep. was dumb. It was just not Bones. It honestly felt more soft-core-porny than most episodes of the L-Word, for goodness sake!
Hopefully, it was just a one-shot to offend the religious right, or something. It better be.
Tags: bones, pop culture, tv
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September 10th, 2008 by Brianna
Well, I had intended to keep my mouth shut on this for a while, but …
There are many feminists on the internets that despise ‘individualists’.
The criticism seems to fall along the lines of: “Individualists think that people are responsible for their own actions, that each person is in charge of their own life, such that if a person’s life is bad, it’s their own fault. Since we know that people can rarely help their circumstances, and that most of the time a person’s suffering is NOT their own fault at all, individualists are selfish, privileged people who don’t understand how the world works.”
I don’t know what other people mean by individualism, but I can’t help but think that only a fool – or worse – would believe that brand of individualism. When I say that i am an individualist, I’m not saying that people are responsible for their own fates, but that they should be. It is obvious that most people are not.
For me, this is what feminism is about, to a large extent. Women should be able to control their own lives, their own bodies, be able to choose their own relationships. Women deserve the be treated as individuals in their own right – not as property, or as a homogeneous group, or as the embodiment of all evil*. I cannot imagine feminism without this concept.
That is what I mean by individualism. Others are welcome disagree.
*I’ve been reading Women Hating by Andrea Dworkin, thus the evil – highly recommended, by the way, if you haven’t already.
(Jump back to the first part of this series)
Tags: feminism, individualism
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September 6th, 2008 by Brianna
I meant to have this out sooner, but school interfered.
To start out, I’d like to give a mini review of the the EP released previous to the album.
I absolutely loved I See Red. I usually dislike electronic music. I usually dislike pop. Perhaps the combination of the two is why I like I See Red. (I rather doubt this though…). Seriously, I liked the EP because of it’s ‘basement productiony’ sound – of course, this was actually the case (it was recorded in a bedroom), although it was mixed by a third person in a studio. Still, the fingerprints of two people in a bedroom are obvious, with the production causing it to still sound clean and neat. This twofold element of the EP makes it unique. Most ‘basement music’ sounds rough, raw, and often noisy and messy. Electronic music is usually slickly produced and often mechanical. While both can be good, the combination of the two managed to retain the raw emotion of the material while making it slick and clean. This was the appeal of I See Red.
Now, onto Common Reaction:
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Tags: music, reviews, uh huh her
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September 2nd, 2008 by Brianna
So, does capitalism cause oppression?
Now, I don’t think that anybody is denying that capital can cause oppression, or that our current capitalist system perpetuates oppression, or that people use capitalism to exploit others. This is undeniable. These facts, however, do not mean that capitalism must cause oppression, that it always leads to oppression. More importantly, they in no way show that there exists another system which by nature causes less oppression than capitalism. I will attempt
to argue not only that capitalism does not always cause oppression, but that capitalism is in fact neutral – it can be easily used by an oppressor, but it also places no barrier to those who would stop oppression.
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Tags: capitalism, feminism, oppression
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