Freaky Furday

Fiona Uncategorized

Many thanks to Kaffeeklatscher AND This Little Black Duck for this evening’s theme – I’ve been grading assignments all day and have barely had time to breathe, let alone think about this Friday’s threadstarter.

Anyway, the marks for one subject have been entered into the system, and I only have to put “helpful” comments on another 40 papers. Half of these I hope to finish this evening (not as difficult as it sounds – mostly a matter of cut-and-paste standard observations, because there’s not a whole lot of variation in the kinds of things the students get wrong / forget to write about. The remainder can wait until tomorrow; I still have to construct my standard comments for that subject.

Time for some spooky music.

not to mention

and something I found terrifying at the age of 9:

Enjoy yourselves – and don’t get too triskaidekaphobic!

110 thoughts on “Freaky Furday”

  1. Just had a reminder the G20 summit is due soon . Sweet Jeebus what a close call. NE would have strutted on the world stage in full DEATH CULT mode. shudder.

  2. Ducky
    I’ve already been to the Chrome store and a few other places, but there’s nothing I like that works for me and I can’t get back my old theme. It’s no longer available. I’ll just have to survive with the default Windows 10 setting until I have time to make my own.

  3. Turnbull is not much better than the NE. His waffling has been full of references to ‘the work of the devil’. He is just as big an embarrassment as the NE was.
    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/14/malcolm-turnbull-says-paris-attack-has-hallmarks-of-an-isis-operation

    Turnbull has also blamed ISIS, even though no other leader has done that and no-one has yet claimed responsibility for the attacks.

    And Turnbull was late for his meeting with Angel Merkel, unforgiveable rudeness.
    http://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2015/nov/13/malcolm-turnbull-grips-the-zeitgeist-in-his-berlin-whirl#comment-63330587

  4. I hope anti AS people who are shocked at the Paris attack consider the people they so often demonise have fled places where such attacks happen on a daily basis, often by the same mob behind the Paris attack.

  5. When I was watching 60s war movies with my Dad as a little’n, I used to ask him why the Germans bothered with armies and stuff, when they could just blow up bombs in London and terrify the populace that way.

    He talked to me about “rules”.

    Later on, after I grew up a little, I thought that if The State (l’Etat?) guarantees more or less 100% security, then anyone who took even 1% off that, was defying the State’s authority and was thus undermining the other 99% of the State.

    In my mature(r) years, I have thought that if WE bomb THEM, then why can’t THEY bomb US?

    The product sold to us in the West of highly trained fighter jocks, 30,000 feet above the fray, dropping laser guided bombs on hapless and defenceless targets, who then die terrible deaths with their bloody, eviscerated intestines wrapped around the severed, eyeless, lipless heads of their children, was always false advertising.

    We sit in our fighter jets playing win-win video games.

    They arm themselves with Kalashnikovs and retaliate against our homeland.

    Yet the former is moral and surgical. The latter excites worldwide horror and revulsion.

    It’s not win-win anymore. The targets have learned how to be the aggressors.

    Can we really blame them for retaliating in the best way they know how?Can we condemn them for bringing home to us, in our supposedly secure cities, just what it is like to have random murder perpetrated on our citizens and loved ones?

    I’m as horrified as the next person by what happened today. I’m revolted and disgusted about Paris.

    But can I blame “the enemy” for giving back to “us” some of what we have done to “them”?

    In my heart of hearts, I can’t.

    I hate it, but you can’t say we weren’t warned of the consequences of our actions.

    Can someone tell me I’m wrong? And if I am, where I’m wrong?

  6. BB

    You are right, and I agree with everything you say.

    Tonight New Matilda gave us this –
    (IMAGE: Moyan Brenn, Flickr) Paris Attacks Highlight Western Vulnerability, And Our Selective Grief And Outrage
    https://newmatilda.com/2015/11/14/paris-attacks-highlight-western-vulnerability-and-our-selective-grief-and-outrage/

    It has attracted quite a bit of ‘how dare you say this right now’ comment. But it is absolutely right, and there is no ‘good’ time to point out how hypocritical we are, weeping over one outrage and ignoring another, just as horrifying, because those killed or injured are not white, or European, or Australian.

  7. L2

    Pic from your link. WOW !!!


    The Meezan Chouk attack in Quetta, In September 2010. In the background is a billboard sponsored by the Australian Government, warning locals of the danger of getting on a boat to seek asylum.

  8. kk
    Yep.

    if you were dealing with that carnage you would not be taking much notice of warnings against taking a boat to Australia. In fact that billboard, for those who did notice it, might have seemed more like an advertisement of a way to get to a better place than a deterent.

  9. leonetwo

    I remember an interview several years back with an AS on Indonesia , I think it was not long after a boat sank with a lot of drownings. The guy was asked if he knew the risk of taking a boat. He replied that the ASs knew full well the risks and he thought about 5 % died on the trip. However this was far better odds than what he faced in Afghanistan where he was a target for the Taliban and so he and his brother were happy to take their chances on a boat.

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