transcription [BREAKING NEWS: North and South Korea will sign a peace treaty to formally end the Korean War later this year, 65 years after hostilities ceased cnn.it/2Jz4CIr ]
It’s gotten so fashionable on tumblr to hate on The Beatles but who else is going to eat rotten wood and contribute to soil fertility in complex forest ecosystems?
This is very funny, but can we also just talk about the strange irony that lies behind The Beatles pushback? Because it mostly has to do with sticking it to obnoxious, self-important men who all believe they share some deep, ethereal connection with the spirit of John Lennon that makes them superior to the populace at large, especially when it comes to all those foolish young women who only listen to popular, music-industry garbage. Except, they’re totally unaware of the fact that when the Beatles first became popular, they were massively reviled by…obnoxious, self-important men who believed their appreciation for folk music made them superior to the populace at large, especially when it came to all the silly teenage girls who only listened to popular, music-industry garbage, and acted like fools screaming from their stupid Beatlemania obsession.
Like, the Beatles have effectively been put on a pedestal but the same people who hated them for being teen girl music in the early 60s, and it’s weird AF.
They literally changed the relationship of British culture to the working class and class markers such as accents. They were innovative and had an incredible understanding of music, despite not having any formal training of musical education, which set a new standard for what was expected of modern musicians and opened doors for others. And while the frustration at four British white dudes becoming the poster boys for a genre invented by black people is absolutely legit, that frustration is more about the culture that posted them as such. They weren’t co-opting, they idolized both Elvis and who HE took from, without an understanding of race relations in the U.S. or what it even meant that Elvis rose to success on the backs of men who never got recognition. There’s a story about Paul McCartney, and how he was floored to see a black woman forcibly removed from a whites-only space when they were on tour in the U.S. His reaction? The band refused to play any venues if they were segregated, forcing Southern venues to sell integrated seats.
I have a lot of feelings about the Beatles, and I usually let posts on this site go by when they throw vitriol at them, because I don’t have the energy. Yes, John Lennon was abusive. He also actively worked on changing, not just his behavior, but his relationship to the world, his relationships, and to fix the core of the problem, not just the symptoms. Which is ultimately what we want from our abusers, isn’t it? Being publicly shamed, taking them down a peg, getting revenge on them – it’s satisfying, but ultimately unfulfilling and perpetuating the cycle they began. To see them change, work on themselves, challenge themselves – that leads us to feeling safer. Which is all we wanted in the first place.
Every shitty opinion of the Beatles I’ve heard seems to be a reaction to how other people see them, not the band itself. Fine, you don’t like their music, but if that’s an integral part of your identity, that it somehow makes you cooler or better than others, then you’re trying too hard and you’re just kind of annoying. I think Oasis is garbage but I don’t shove it in people’s faces who love them, because it’s a subjective argument and all I’ll do is make people feel shitty, which, why would I want to do that? You can think the Beatles overrated, but the gazillion bands you DO like who were inspired them probably disagree with you. You can see them as privileged white men, but in their own time and place that context isn’t what it is now.
But to be perfectly honest, the thing that bothers the most about Beatles lore is the bullshit about Yoko Ono breaking the band up. George Harrison was bailing and wandering off on his own for months at a time way before she and Lennon started dating, and the biggest turning point for the band was when – after they had been fighting for weeks – they took a two week vacation during which McCartney hired his father in law as the band’s new manager, even though everyone else had told him a dozen times they don’t want this guy as their manager. And within like ten seconds the guy sold off half the band’s catalogue, which is how Michael Jackson eventually ended up with all their songs (and left them all to McCartney in his will). The band broke up because they started playing together as kids and now they were 30, and also because Paul was kind of a dick. And Yoko Ono got blamed for it, because she was too avant-garde for the mainstream, she was too Asian and female without trying to look like Brigitte Bardot, and she was too present alongside John Lennon when people wanted him to be the person they projected onto him. She challenged his abusive tendencies and pushed him away when she wanted to, and helped him and empathized with his pain, which is an admirable act of kindness, admirable only because she maintained boundaries for her safety and well-being. She challenged him to be a social activist and helped him educate himself, and even though he fell short sometimes, he literally strengthened important social movements. The FBI didn’t keep a file on him because they thought he was helping their white supremacist agenda in the 70s. People still hate on Yoko, still make jokes about her, the same “obnoxious, self-important men who all believe they share some deep, ethereal connection with the spirit of John Lennon” as tikkun put it, without realizing that most of his work that they love was inspired by and helped along by her.
And finally, a sidebar: George Harrison put on the first charity aid concert, not only making them a thing, but also establishing a standard that celebrity visibility could and should be used to bring attention and support to issues like famine. And the did it by listening – not by barging ahead and deciding that he knew best what was needed, but by listening and acting based on learning from someone close to the problem.
I had never heard that story about the Beatles and segregation before, despite having done some reading about both the Beatles and the Civil Rights Movement, so I followed up on it–and, I’m pleased to say, it’s true.
Here’s a news article describing a primary source (a performance contract) that stipulates that they will not perform for a segregated audience. The particular contract discussed is for a concert in California, where segregation was unlikely to be an issue, which suggests that they chose to make this requirement part of the standard language of their contracts.
The first article also mentions that the issue of segregation arose with a concert they gave in Florida the previous year, which led me to this article about an interview they gave at the time of the Florida concert. A quote by George Harrison suggests that their refusal to play segregated venues was well-known, and indicates that they also objected to being booked into a whites-only hotel (though they did not say publicly that that was why they ended up staying elsewhere).
And here’s a piece by a black fan who attended the Florida show–the first time she interacted with whites in a place of public accommodation.
Finally, this all happened in 1964-65, when segregation was a hotly-debated issue, and the Beatles were merely a somewhat popular musical group, not the icons they would later become.
We all thought Loki was the odd one out but it turns out Thor is actually the friendly jock middle child in a family of bitchy drama club goths
jflsdjf;sadjkf;asdf;sa today some dude on twitter decided that my comment about voter registration was an invitation for him to advise me on how I should register to vote. For the record, I have thought a lot about these things & neither want nor require the input of a condescending third party.
Ppl without ADHD be like “oh if I get rid of all possible distractions then you’ll be forced to focus on the boring task!” Fool… You underestimate my Power
An assignment I actually wrote on the board this week:
In groups, write 2 sentences (in Latin) using only the
vocabulary in your textbook. Make sure to include:
1 irregular verb
1 imperfect verb
5 cases
BEES?
I’ll elaborate in a minute, but I need to stop laughing
first.
So I’d originally planned on a 20-minute grammar lesson,
followed by a handout to be finished in pairs, but I’d made the mistake of telling
this class about Latin Day in April and how we were encouraging them to come to
school in costume. All they wanted to do was talk about costume opportunities
(and since I would like to keep my job, I had to explain why staging Caesar’s assassination
in the middle of the lunchroom would be a Bad Idea), so I shifted gears and decided
to channel that creative/social energy into a different assignment.
After lugging them through a condensed version of the
grammar lesson on irregular verbs in the imperfect tense, I split them into
groups and pulled an assignment out of the air.
The requirements:
Write two sentences in Latin
Use ONLY vocabulary from the textbook
Include at least ONE irregular verb
Include at least ONE verb in the imperfect tense
Include 5 (out of 6, including the vocative)
cases
The goal:
To write them on the board for their ‘rival’
groups to translate
They are a competitive bunch, so I knew this would be enough
to encourage them to go All Out. But then one student raised her hand.
“Can our sentences be about bees?” she asked.
Bees. I swear this class has a thing with Bees. I hesitated.
“There are no bees in your textbook.”
“Yes, but you taught us that word.”
I had, back when this same student had asked me how to say “the
bees are suffering” for a kahoot she was writing. Granted, this same student is
planning on coming in on Latin Day dressed as Caligula’s horse, so none of this
surprises me.
I opened it up to the other ‘groups’. “What do you think?” I
asked. “Should we let them write about bees?”
“No,” said one student with a heavy sort of solemnity, looking
me dead in the eye. “We should all be required
to write about bees.”
As the rest of the class eagerly cheered and nodded in
agreement, three things occurred to me.
The word for bee, “apis”, is a 3rd-declension
i-stem noun, which they could use more practice on.
They’re going to want to describe the bees,
which means they will likely also be practicing noun-adjective agreement with a
3rd-declension i-stem noun, which they could also use more practice
on.
This could be flipping hilarious.
And so I added “BEES?” to the list.
The results:
1. apes ingentes Hannibalis ad Romam ibant. Moenia vincunt et Romanis miserum dant.
“The giant bees of Hannibal
were going to Rome. They conquer the walls and give misery to the Romans.” In hindsight the noun miseriam would have been better, but still solid. Mentions bees AND misery. Implies an AU where Hannibal brought giant bees
across the Alps instead of elephants. Carthage wins the Punic Wars. 10/10
2. Argus ignem sui amoris dare volebat ieiunis, ieiunis apibus. “Arge!” apes dicunt. “Nolumus accipere ignem tui amoris.” Argus desperat et se in mare conicit.
“Argus was wishing to give
the fire of his love to the hungry, hungry bees. ‘Argus!’ the bees say. ‘We do
not want to accept the fire of your love.’ Argus despairs and hurls himself
into the sea.” Descriptive. Tragic. Mentions fire. Has something for
everyone. Also 10/10
3. regis magna apis volabat, et volebat occidere regi. “Beeyonce,” inquit, “uxor es. Ama me.”
“The great bee of the king
was flying, and he was wishing to kill for the king. ‘Beeyonce,’ he said. ‘You
are my wife. Love me.’ ” 100/10 for Beeyonce.
I know people are going to nitpick but I think it’s funny that there are only four land animals that it’s unquestionably okay to eat in American culture, while at the same time many Americans think it’s weird that Jews and Muslims don’t eat pork and other things. Also that we have multiple prohibitions against eating certain animals (particularly horses and dogs) that are just as absolute as the Jewish and Muslim prohibition on pork, if not more
And we have tons of other weird dietary laws, like it’s okay to put dairy (i.e. ice cream) in carbonated beverages, or to lightly mix a small amount of dairy into a carbonated beverage (a cream soda), but to actually carbonate milk itself is regarded as horrifying (while being a popular drink in East Asia)
Cow, pig, sheep, chicken? What about turkey?
In any case I don’t think I have heard anyone who eats meat express qualms about eating goat, deer, elk, bison, quail, goose or duck. Those are merely less-commonly-commercialized and so less salient as food animals.
Meanwhile, horse-meat salami is widely available here in Romania and I have no qualms about it at all, but that makes me a bit more of an outlier.
I am still moderately surprised whenever somebody says that Americans don’t consider horsemeat kosher; I guess it’s because you rarely encounter the discussion (plus it’s less intense than dogs or cats)
I think there’s some resistance to eating deer, but not very much, and some sense that goats are a little gross (but no more so than factory farmed anything)
@mailadreapta Turkey, not sheep. Turkey is of course an iconic American dish (Thanksgiving, Christmas) and is offered at most American-style restaurants on at least a seasonal basis. I definitely don’t think sheep is very common in the American diet, though.
I’d place sheep along with other “second-tier” animals like goat, deer, elk, bison, quail, goose, and duck – fairly uncommon, perhaps because of less availability, but sufficiently “foreign” to a large enough portion of the population that most meat-eating Americans, I think, would have qualms about eating at least one of those, either out of distaste or discomfort or even for sentimental reasons (“It’s Bambi!” “It’s a cute sheep!”)
“To understand gender as a historical category … is to accept that gender, understood as one way of culturally configuring the body, is open to a continual remaking, and that ‘anatomy’ and ‘sex’ are not without cultural framing. […] Terms such as ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ are notoriously changeable; there are social histories for each term; their meanings change radically depending upon geopolitical boundaries and cultural constraints on who is imagining whom, and for what purpose.”
missionlameturtle 