Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea. —Henry Fielding

02 April 2004

Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk

I think it is a really easy thing to say that the United Nations isn't doing enough about the situation in the Sudan.  It seems silly to quibble over whether what we are discussing is "ethnic cleansing" or "genocide."  And it is an easy question to ask when we ask "Would it take this long to act if 800,000 Europeans had lost their lives?"  Of course not.  They're Africans and the U.N. is slower to act because the problem is in Africa... and this is what it is: ridiculous, unconscionable, horrific.  But what, even, can the U.N. do?  So Annan is on the phone with the president in Khartoum.  So what!  What is he gonna say? "You really ought to stop funding the Arabs that are killing all of your Black Africans"  Yeah.  That'll work.  I'm not trying to be defeatist about the situation, but this isn't the U.N.'s fault so much as it is the fault of the murdering genocidal people who run the government in the Sudan.  Blaming the U.N. is so easy.


If you haven't seen the 1967 film of Truman Capote's classic crime novel In Cold Blood, you really ought to think about renting it or adding it to your Netflix queue.  It is an excellent crime thriller with a couple of very cool cinematic devices.  It lost me near the end of Act III, but made up for it with the ending.  Acts I and II are awesome though, and it is filled with sharp dialogue and some cracker jack editing.  Really fun stuff.  Plus it's got this great Noir-ish quality... smoke and men in hats and old cars.  I recommend it.


Tonight, Elizabeth and Jer and I went to see Home on the Range in LaVerne.  I HATE that town.  And I realized tonight why.  It's not the huge amount of white people that really drive me up the wall... it's their kids.  The white people are a bit much.  I hate not seeing any black or Asian people.  I think it's weird, but it's the enormous amount of kids that are everywhere that just makes me crazy!  My building does not have ONE teenager in it, and let me tell you, I think that's a wonderful thing.  The movie theatres I go to don't have little kids running around and no one talks during a movie at a Laemmle Theatre.  I've never seen it happen.  But at Edward's LaVerne 12, you can barely hear the movie for all the crosstalk that's going on.  The couple behind me were actually getting to know one another during the movie.  Buddy!  Don't spend the $8 each it cost to get in here and sit on a bench and get to know her.  The movie was only okay.  Roseanne is fun and Judi Dench and Jennifer Tilly are good too.  Plus... wouldn't you know it... Cuba Gooding Jr. is good in the movie.  Seriously, Home on the Range is Cuba Gooding Jr.'s best performance since As Good As It Gets. 


Tomorrow... Love's Labour's Lost at 11am.  Perhaps I will do laundry in the morning.  No way.  I already know I won't.  I'll make myself eggs and watch a movie in the morning and then drive to CSUP to get there just before 11.  Then I can breathe and stretch and think for a moment or to before we begin the madness.

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