Talk nerdy to me — Winter of my discontent: Season’s Greetings from Hoth edition

In the last few weeks, everyone around me (myself included) repeatedly asserted to one another how cold it was — so cold, we said, my gosh, it’s so cold — but Hoth scenes always put it all in perspective, don’t they?

via laurenmoran on the tumblr.

So speaking of Star Wars extreme-temperature location shooting, I was watching this segment on the Daily Show recently, and it ends up that there are protests and massive government upheaval going on in Tunisia, where the Tattooine scenes for Episodes IV and I were filmed. I didn’t know that.

To clarify: I knew the Tattooine scene-filming part. I even knew there was a town there actually called Tataouine, although the Lars homestead scenes were not set there, but instead filmed near the troglodyte architectural mecca of Matmâta, which is about 70 miles north of Tataouine (R.I.P., Owen and Beru).

The life-altering modern politics, on the shameful other hand, was brand-new news to me.

Photograph by Jamal Saidi for Reuters.

This is what a futuristic rebel alliance looks like.

The ousting of Tunisian president Ben Ali came as a result of public backlash in the wake of a sham election last October, condemned by the Human Rights Watch. This was followed by incendiary WikiLeaks which surfaced, detailing the president and his family’s lavish lifestyle in an impoverished country.

The revolt was largely organized via social media, relying heavily on texts, facebook, and twitter. Search #sidibouzid for the hundreds of thousands of tweets from Sidi Bouzid, the seat of the so-called Jasmine Revolution.

via the Peace and Collaborative Development Network.

Coming so soon after the 2009 election riots in Iran, which were similarly organized, some of the power-hungry dictators in the Arab world are getting understandably nervous about the precarity of their positions. I said goddamn. How now, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad? You can’t hide technology from the people forever.




What I’m also trying to say, though, with both the “it’s so cold” story and the absolute ignorance of grave disturbances in another country’s Force until seeing it on a quasi-serious news program, is that I’m a shallow, isolated slave to materialism. It is not a proud moment.

Gal pals: they are a Thing

I adore my guy friends, but I vowed recently to work harder on my special female friendships, and so far I am really loving it. And I recently had a very shocking experience that brought painfully home to me how much I need to work on this issue of judging women based on their appearances. I will get to that in a moment. Really knocked me out. Let me get to it in a proper order. This may take a few posts strung out over several days because I got a lot of dogs in the fire these next few days, stanimal. (Totally pointless Frisky Dingo reference.)

First things first!, my breasts wanted to let you know that there is a girl named Panda Eraser and she makes things all crafty style and has a blog, and that is kind of a big deal, mmkay?

That night was an adventure, eh, madame? By the way. Be Nice or Else. (This is legitimately one of the slogans at the not-to-be-named cosmetology school through which Panda Eraser is slogging with admirable style and elan despite their attempts to drag her down; e.g. ‘Whoa, how do you make purple? Mix red and blue? Are you serious?’ and a poster which said ‘Your Amazing’. Don’t let the turkeys grind you down, Virgo Vixen — with god, Guinness, and Ekitty as your copilot, you will triumph.)

The morning after I took that picture, Miss D and I had a hotty boom botty date to pick out the flowers for her and Paolo’s wedding (t minus: TEN DAYS eeeek). I was reading a Lally Weymouth article in Newsweek before she pulled up, and, as I climbed in the car, after a hug and greeting, my opening salvo was, “Man, I was reading this interview with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and they asked him how could he deny the Holocaust. I have to say, his answers were really surprising.”

Aren’t I just the socially smoothest? Like, “Hello and oh, I’m very excited to be part of picking the flowers for the happiest day of your and Paolo’s lives, and we just got over worrying about P’s mom’s recovery from freaking double masectomy possibly conflicting with the wedding day (surgery was postponed), and we’re taking care of thousands of details this week for this important step in the path of your life’s journey together but, hey, can I take a moment of your time to talk about Iranian holocaust deniers? That’s cool, right?” Like, way to stomp on the beautiful shiny optimism of the morning, Elizabeth.

Thank god she is a woman of intellect as well as heart. Not missing a beat, Miss D said, “What did he say? I’m curious.” We agreed we’d only heard ignorant American perspectives on Holocaust denial, but nothing from a Middle Eastern politician. Because that is all normal ladies’ behavior of a Wednesday morning on your way to get wedding flowers. Actually, he did have interesting responses, interesting in the sense of I-had-not-heard-of-that, but it is the same old anti-Semitism you can find in any country with jerks in it which is to say humans in it (total bullshit). Obviously he has a unique perspective because of Iran’s relationship with Palestine and he was positioning himself very diplomatically based on that, but he was saying disgraceful and inexcusable things about Israel, Judaism, and the behavior of Jews in Germany during WWII, to my mind, but that is neither here nor there. (Read the interview online here at the Newsweek website.)

Anyway, having discussed international politics and effectively hammered that shit out, we turned our attention back to the domestic front and went and got the flower situation all nailed down, is the point. Although at first we are pretty sure they thought we were marrying each other, and while watching them stammer to be PC and glance back and forth between us constantly was fun, I eventually clarified, “She is the bride. I’m just a friend who’s helping.” When I told Christo this, he suggested we should have kept them going and tried to muscle a discount from their obvious discomfort. Central Valley’s nearly benignly generic homophobia = just peaches and cream.

Shoot, I need to go for right now. Got to smog my car. I’ll schedule this to post for later and hopefully I’ll be able to turn right back around and finish up. I have more to say, it involves big hair and blondes and me being a terrible reverse discriminator who needs to step down off my aren’t-I-so-cool-for-not-being-cool high horse before the altitude makes me ill in the Bad Way.