29. W4W. Visually Impaired (Glaucoma). Former Grad Student. Novice Crew. Novice Boxing. Linguistics. Education. Fandom. Typos abound. Nice girl with rage issues. Cries in the greeting card aisle. Shitty person; trying to be a better one. Moderate Caffeine addiction.
Thousands in Hong Kong protest China’s influence on new school curriculum
September 8, 2012
Protests in Hong Kong ahead of an election on Sunday are posing a major test for the city’s new leader as voter discontent fueled by anger over perceived meddling by Beijing threatens to shake up the political landscape.
This time round, Hong Kong’s legislature will have a more democratic flavor - it has been expanded from 60 to 70 seats, with just over half of them to be directly elected.
But the results are likely to reflect a recent upsurge in anti-China sentiment, which has been exacerbated by a plan for a school curriculum extolling the achievements of the Chinese Communist Party.
Thousands of people have demonstrated outside government headquarters for the past week demanding the school program be scrapped, forcing Leung Chun-ying to cancel what was to have been his first major international engagement as Hong Kong’s leader at an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Russia.
On Friday evening, the crowds swelled further as tens of thousands of ordinary citizens, many dressed in black, denounced the curriculum as Communist Party propaganda which glossed over the darker aspects of Chinese rule, hitting a nerve in the former British colony that remains proud of its freedoms 15 years after London handed it over to Beijing.
I think it’s important to note that the “Communist Party” in China doesn’t represent the agenda of real communism any more so than the “Democratic Party” represents the agenda of real democracy in America. Both use deceptive language to represent something that they are more a henderence to than a proponent of. Communism is worth fighting for, but the state-capitalist “Communist Party” doesn’t represent communism. At all.
I love seeing grown humans setting about little creative tasks out of boredom and then looking quietly pleased with themselves, like maybe a middle-aged woman on her train home from work manages to make a tower out of empty coffee creamers and gazes at it proudly for a few seconds.
I love seeing other people make the overblown OOPS I FORGOT SOMETHING performance for no-one that most of us do when we have to turn around in the middle of the pavement.
I love seeing stony-faced people in queues unable to contain a smile when a baby looking over its mother’s shoulder in front of them locks eyes and does that astonished stare.
- when someone is standing in line and they don’t quite dance to the music playing, but you can SEE their head bop and them mouthing the words
- when someone thinks no one’s paying attention and they sing-talk themselves thru a task
- when they laugh or try to hide a laugh when looking at their phone
“So Bob said […]” indicates that I am directly quoting Bob.
“Then Bob was like […]” indicates that I am paraphrasing Bob.
“And Bob was all […]” indicates that I am paraphrasing Bob, and additionally I am being a dick about it.
I don’t know about you, but I think it’s fantastic that we have a specific grammatical convention for that.
What I find most frustrating is when people don’t understand this! I don’t know if it’s a generation thing, but sometimes I’ll be talking and say “So I was like “are you fucking kidding me” and the person will look at me all horrified and say “you didn’t actually say that, did you?”
“ In August, 1968, the country was still reeling from the assassination of Martin Luther King four months earlier, and the race riots that followed on its heels. Nightly news showed burning cities, white flight, radicals and reactionaries snarling at each other across the cultural divide.
“A brand new children’s show out of Pittsburgh, which had gone national the previous year, took a different approach. Mr. Roger’s Neighborhood introduced Officer Clemmons, a black police officer who was a kindly, responsible authority figure, kept his neighborhood safe, and was Mr. Roger’s equal, colleague and neighbor.
“Around the first anniversary of Martin Luther King’s death, Mr. Rogers invited Officer Clemmons to join him in soaking their tired feet in a plastic wading pool. And there they were, brown feet and pasty white feet, side by side in the water. Silently, contemplatively, without comment.
“25 years later, when the actor playing Officer Clemmons retired, his last scene on the show revisited that same wading pool, this time reminiscing. Officer Clemmons asked Mr. Rogers what he’d been thinking during their silent interlude a quarter century before. Fred Rogers’ answer was that he’d been thinking of the many ways people say “I love you.”
- Carl Aveni’s FB page
Mr Rogers was one of the good ones.
^^^^^
Considering the fraught and painful history of excluding black people from swimming pools in that era, there is no way this wasn’t a very pointed commentary to the people who were being exclusionary. This was a specifically chosen visual.
It’s not a fuck-you. Mr. Rogers didn’t do fuck-yous. But it was a clear, decisive, pointed statement. It was more than just showing inclusion; it was a deliberate response to what was going on in the world. This was him saying “you can do better. We can all do better. What you are doing is wrong.” This was a sweet, simple, and relatable thing to show little kids, to give them a view of a black man as kind and professional and a trusted adult – but also a lovely and strong statement to their parents and to the world.
It could have lost him his show, or at least his national distribution. It could have gotten him attacked both in the news and personally in person, but he did it anyway. I wish I knew if he ever talked about this, and how aware he and the show producers were of the statement this made.
Man, do we need more Fred Rogers in the world.
ALSO: At the end of the segment, Mr. Rogers helps dry Officer Clemmons’ feet, which is a biblical, supplicatory gesture. The scene was very, very intentionally about inclusion and caring.
Hello Friends! Happy Labor Day (or as one of my college professors humorously called it, Socialist Christmas)! I hope you like freedom because this week’s McMansion definitely has…some of that!
This 1996 beauty features 4 bedrooms and 3 baths, but somehow ends up totaling almost 5000 square feet. For under $1.3 million dollars you’d think you’d get at least 5 baths.
Onwards!
Foyer
Friends, I’ve found the Jaws theme window, and, of course it’s an awkward stairwell window. Best not slam the front door too hard, lest you send those vases tumbling to the ground, where they shatter into a million pieces coating the foyer in 21 years worth of dust bunnies.
Gr8 Room
I will never not make a joke about Bullwinkle upon seeing a cruelly beheaded moose used as a centerpiece. Also that tiny little stove is negated by the tall ceilings and wall of windows. New England Winter: 1, McMansion: 0.
Dining Room
(extremely Lemony Snicket voice:) If one spends a long period of time anxiously waiting in a particularly dreadful place, such as a dentist’s office or tucked away in a municipal post office crawling with several enemy spies, one fixates on the details of said place. In the case of the dentist’s office, one might seek refuse in a particularly bawdy floral painting, or, in the case of the municipal post office crawling with several enemy spies, the increasingly heinous price of postage stamps in a desperate attempt to distract oneself from one’s dire situation.
Sitting Room
Alexa can never truly replace the hole in Jerry’s heart left by his eldest daughter’s running off with an artist.
Kitschen
Did every rural working class family get one of these catalogs or was it just mine?
This blog was looong overdue for one of my pithy generational political jokes. Also shoutout to my wealthier girl-friends growing up in the South who had to hear “how do you expect to find a husband when you [insert nonconforming behavior here]” as a method of policing deviation from the norm.
Master Bedroom
Uncle Jerry is the guy who DVRs football games and doesn’t fast forward through the commercials.
The minstrelsy sun wins the worst ‘an art’ on mcmansion hell dot com award, one I think it will hold onto for a very, very long time.
Bedroom 2
Imagine listening to The Cure in this room before answering the reader poll thanks
Basement
Folks, I’ve seen more inviting tax offices.
Anyways, we’re coming to the end of the post, which means its time for our favorite part:
Rear Exterior
Time for a McMansion Hell Personality Test: Which “feature” window are YOU??
Left Window: you are passionate and intelligent, yet neurotic. Your friends worry that you won’t be able to handle the punishing amount of work you force yourself to do because you would rather be physically exhausted than have to spend ample amounts of time alone with your own insecurities.
Middle Window: You are confident and idealistic, yet neurotic. You think that your problems can be solved by yelling louder than the person you’re currently arguing with. You may have been poor at sports as a child and also have an energy drink dependency.
Right Window: You are kind and dependable, yet neurotic. You enjoy spacing out while reading difficult books, liking but never reblogging, and earnestly avoiding cable news. You may have a penchant for emotionally unavailable romantic partners and ignoring your newly bought cookbooks in lieu of a good old-fashioned round of takeout (your fifth this week.)
I got..all three of these, wow!
That’s it for this week’s post folks! Be sure to stay tuned tomorrow for our special NEW JERSEY McMansion, and this weekend for another installment of Looking Around!
OH AND ONE MORE THING
Are YOU in the Baltimore metro area?? Do you want to witness me give a live diss on McMansions and talk about my rad as hell politics in one of the 3 coffee shops I write this blog in? Well you’re in luck because Thursday, September 7th, I’ll be doing a McMansion Hell LIVE event at Red Emma’s Bookstore & Coffeehouse. More info here, if you’re up to it.
If you like this post, and want to see more like it, consider supporting me on Patreon!Also JUST A HEADS UP - I’ve started posting a GOOD HOUSE built since 1980 from the area where I picked this week’s McMansion as bonus content on Patreon!
Person A: You know… the thing Person B: The “thing”? Person A: Yeah, the thing with the little-! *mutters under their breath* Como es que se llama esa mierda… THE FISHING ROD
As someone with multiple bilingual friends where English is not the first language, may I present to you a list of actual incidents I have witnessed:
Forgot a word in Spanish, while speaking Spanish to me, but remembered it in English. Became weirdly quiet as they seemed to lose their entire sense of identity.
Used a literal translation of a Russian idiomatic expression while speaking English. He actually does this quite regularly, because he somehow genuinely forgets which idioms belong to which language. It usually takes a minute of everyone staring at him in confused silence before he says “….Ah….. that must be a Russian one then….”
Had to count backwards for something. Could not count backwards in English. Counted backwards in French under her breath until she got to the number she needed, and then translated it into English.
Meant to inform her (French) parents that bread in America is baked with a lot of preservatives. Her brain was still halfway in English Mode so she used the word “préservatifes.” Ended up shocking her parents with the knowledge that apparently, bread in America is full of condoms.
Defined a slang term for me……. with another slang term. In the same language. Which I do not speak.
Was talking to both me and his mother in English when his mother had to revert to Russian to ask him a question about a word. He said “I don’t know” and turned to me and asked “Is there an English equivalent for Нумизматический?” and it took him a solid minute to realize there was no way I would be able to answer that. Meanwhile his mom quietly chuckled behind his back.
Said an expression in English but with Spanish grammar, which turned “How stressful!” into “What stressing!”
Bilingual characters are great but if you’re going to use a linguistic blunder, you have to really understand what they actually blunder over. And it’s usually 10x funnier than “Ooops it’s hard to switch back.”
@klmhyoyeon remember when we were together and I randomly said a full sentence in Portuguese and it took me like 30 seconds to realise you couldn’t have understood what I said? good times
They actually sell books that describe the linguistic mistakes non-native English speakers will make based on their language. #thingsyoulearnwhenmarriedtoanESLteacher
My bilingual cousins, however, switch back and forth pretty effortlessly. They only occasionally have trouble translating concepts into English, aged only because they live overseas.
