Saturday's all right for fightin'. Saturday night's all right.

[erastes]

So "Lost" series 3 is going to Satellite.  Yay!  I can't say I'm sad about that, AT ALL.  Best place for it, I say. Can we launch it any further into space? Puleeze?

How do spammers KNOW?  I've got about 20 emails in my spam filter saying "Hi erastes" as my subject line - but the thing is, it's being sent to boudicca @ icenii .... I don't understand how they know... *paranoid*

I have to strongly disagree with Miss Snark's comment :. Writing about "hot button" issues like being gay, and dating outside your race, in the hedonisit 60's and 70's is the absolute antithesis of 'fresh and new'. This is particularly true if you lived through it and are writing your own thinly veiled story. The world has moved on. Time to catch up.

OK - so I agree that it's not "fresh and new" but... hedonistic 60's and 70's?  *chokes*  Yeah. Right. If you lived (perhaps) in San Francisco or New York.  For the rest of us things were anything but hedonistic.  Being gay meant you HID, hid yourself, your nature, your tastes, your music, your true self.  I don't think Miss Snark is in her 40's or 50's - so I rather think her perception of those decades are rather coloured by Hollywood and the media in which she lives.  Reading about people's experiences in those decades would be interesting, I think, particularly in comparison with our anything goes "naughties."

I also have to disagree with people glorifying war at this - or any - time.  Sorry.

Comments

[annephoenix.livejournal.com]

I'm getting those spam mails too! I've been wondering if it's something to do with my email client, as I've been getting them addresses to various names I use .... but to accounts that have *nothing* to do with that name. The only thing my accounts have in common is that they're set-up in Thunderbird. Very very strange ....

[erastes.livejournal.com]

It's worrying that someone knows more about me than I'd like them to know. grrr.

Miss Snark

[dubaiyan.livejournal.com]

completely disagree with the "world has moved on."

Re: Miss Snark

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I commented on her post, I didn't say as much as I wanted to say, but I was rather annoyed by her flippant attitude. Granted, she's looking at making a profit, but wiping aside many many people's stories of fear and loathing which still (as you rightly say) goes on today is rather callous, I thought.

[jamie2109.livejournal.com]

Well, I'm in my 40's and from what I remember of the 70's at least in regard to being gay, is that you're right, it was hidden, totally. There may have been sections of the community that were hedonistic enough to accept being gay, but it wasn't spoken about in polite company. Not where I lived anyway. I still credit experiencing my teenage years in that era as the time when my true self was stifled. I specifically remember having a crush on a girl that I talked myself out of because it was 'wrong' according to my peers. I agree, reading about people's experiences in those decades would be really interesting.

[julesjones]

"you're not American & therefore aren't familiar with the spirit of the day and what it's about."

And of course, only Americans remember the war dead on this day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Remembrance_Day
http://www.poppy.org.uk/

[erastes.livejournal.com]

Nod nod. That's basically what I was attempting to say - and I think miladyhawke got annoyed with me because I didn't agree with her quoting a poem on her site saying it was soldiers who gained any rights for us, not politicians, passive resistence, or the power of the people.

However she seems to have deleted all her comments. That's never happened on my LJ before!

[rwday.livejournal.com]

I didn't agree with her quoting a poem on her site saying it was soldiers who gained any rights for us, not politicians, passive resistence, or the power of the people.

Yes, I commented on the poem too saying basically that while soldiers secure and defend our rights, they're not the source of them. At least in U.S. political theory, our basic rights derive from the fact of our humanity (or from God if you're inclined that way), they're inherent and innate, and all the government/army is supposed to do is protect them. It doesn't do a very good job of it, imo, but that's the theory.

[julesjones]

I'm no pacifist. I know too many people with direct connections to the death camps of the Third Reich to think that no war can be justified. But there are also wars that are started for territorial gains, for personal or national ego, for the profit of those who will ensure their own sons and daughters are never sent to the front line. And it's too damned easy for those who start them to manipulate people.

I regret the fact that in another year or two the very last of those last few old men from the war to end wars will be gone. They are the living reminder that war is not glorious, but capable of being what one of the Making Light crowd described as "the very definition of a rotating clusterfuck".

[catsintheattic.livejournal.com]

Thank you for enlightening me about Veterans' Day.

But excuse me, I don't get your comment about not speaking German, or better *being" German. Does it mean that it's easier for an American and a British person to agree that WWII was necessary than for an American and a German person? What are you implying? What do you know about German people and their conscience? I've spend all of my teenage and adult years discussing WWII and still do it, especially with people who feel the need to forget. And I know that they do exist. Young people in my country tell me that they are sick of having to feel guilty. I say to them that guilt is not the issue but awareness. And then I happen to find a comment like yours. Think about your family and what they did for the safety of the world, if you want to. But also think about that in every war, the enemy isn't one homogeneous mass of "evil". We had people who fought Hitler from the inside, people who went into exile and died.

And excuse my tone, if I've been too rude. It's just that your comment left me feeling quite pissed. I'm almost sure that you didn't intend that, and I don't want to start a flame war over it. It's just that maybe next time you write something like that, please think about the whole picture.

I'm really sorry for every loss your family has experienced. And believe me, I'm very glad that Germany has lost this war, because we wouldn't be talking together at all if it were different.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I totally agree, this is a global problem, not just american, or english, or german. What annoys me is the feeling that still lingers on here is the "glorificiation" of war, that it is somehow glorious to go and fight for your country - it's terribly Victorian, and yet it still lingers on.

That being said, I stand amazed that people don't realise that Armistice Day isn't an american invention!!!

I simply can't imagine what it must be to be German and looking back at it, it's beyond my comprehension. Thank you, hun, for being brave enough to comment here.

[catsintheattic.livejournal.com]

Thank you very much for your encouraging comment. I was just flabbergasted when she told me that she didn't want other people to get involved in the discussion she was having with you. Then she deleted her comment, so I cannot answer to her. *shrugs*

I felt bad after receiving her answer, because I really tried not to step on anybodies toes. And I didn't want to drag a war into your journal. But her shoulder to shoulder attitude of "we fought those German speaking people" annoyed me, and I felt that I had to say something to her.

The glorification of war is a problem, because it allows people to go on with that black and white perception of the parties involved. It's exactly that kind of attitude that enhances the next war. The idea that you are doing "the right thing" simply serves to justify torture, rape and killing. Of course, in the disguise of a fanfic, everybody would agree that Harry is one for whom the end will justify the means. But when we think about dead relatives in the war, things are suddenly a lot more difficult.

Being German and looking back at it - I think that people in my country do have a responsibility for being aware of discrimination. We have to look out for it in our country. We have to be aware and to serve awareness. But I also see this annoyance in young people, who say that this war has happened a long time before they even had been born. They don't want to feel guilty. And maybe their attitude just serves to prove that we, as humans, tend to shy away from responsibility when it is connected to guilt.

I think we should really learn to separate those two. A twenty-year-old today cannot be guilty for what has happened in WWII. But s/he can feel responsible for what happens today. Being German, I think we have to feel extra responsible. Not because we are more prone to go bad again, but because we have a first hand historical experience on it.

Germany, as a country, sometimes has a very depressive or at least pessimistic attitude. People are very likely to see the negative side of an issue, no matter which one. And it's good for Germany that it gets more respect from other countries, like it happened during the world cup. Many people around my age (37) have learned that it's bad to be proud of their nation. This is changing slowly. I still feel a bit uncomfortable with being proud of my nation, but I know that younger people have no problems with being proud of Germany. And this helps the country to be more open.

If national pride can be developed in a way that it serves to not look down on other nations but to welcome them, and to see the strengths and weaknesses of the own history, then national pride might be a good thing. We should use it to unite, instead of to separate.

[rwday.livejournal.com]

From where I sat, the 70's were fairly hedonistic if you were young and straight, but that wasn't the case for gays and lesbians. And anyway, what is 'fresh and new'?? Even Shakespeare stole his plots. What makes an idea 'fresh and new' is the way each writer approaches it. The right hands can breathe life into the oldest, stalest plot.

War may sometimes be necessary, but it should never be glorified. Though I've never met anyone who actually has been in a war who glorifies it - that's the province of the armchair general, I think. It's a difficult balance between respecting and honoring those who serve while not romanticizing war.

[erastes.livejournal.com]

I actually think a veterans day is a better idea that the day we have - with us it's still very much the ethos of The Four Feathers - that it is glorious to go and fight and die for your country, and that nauseates me. I'm not saying that I wouldn't've signed up, at least for an auxiliary position if I'd needed to, I couldn't have fought - but I wouldn't do it for glory, I'd do it out of necessity and defensiveness.

[nagasvoice.livejournal.com]

My impression from talking to veterans of various ages from various conflicts is that they felt very much as you say it--they didn't feel any glory was in it, they went because they were convinced it was a necessity.
The disgrace here in the US is that so many of our young people were convinced of this necessity by a shamelessly irresponsible lie. Those kids' efforts to improve things and make a difference have been squandered with poor planning and worse execution past unnecessary deaths into outright evil. They wanted to be building schools and repairing wells and making sure both our own and another country's people could sleep safe at night. They aren't going to buy into anybody's rhetoric any time soon after their experiences there. The level of anger over here has been incredible, but apparently that's what it finally took to get through to people clinging to illusions.
I don't think veterans have a lot of patience with illusions.