At the Static

A weekend at the Static, yes, a weekend. I had Saturday off to make up for working an extra day earlier in the month. AND...a weekend when miraculously, we have internet. This hasn't happened since spring. Makes a difference. You think you want to step outside of the worldwide web, but only until you can't get back in.



I am reading a book that is very enjoyable apart from the sloppy translation that sends us back to the fifties. 'The Elegance of the Hedgehog' is an amazing read, but the gendered language of French does not need to be translated so literally into the ungendered English language. Yes, I know I could probably read it in the original and be less annoyed, but I didn't want to wait three months to have a copy couriered by tortoise from France.



'Flavorwire' (sic) gives us ten U.S. sitcoms that moved women forward. Of course, they are just that, sitcoms, and there are other shows, such as Cagney and Lacey, that really did the business. There are even other sitcoms that showed women as able to think for themselves, such as 'Cybill' and that leads nus right back to Britcoms such as Ab Fab, Girl on Top and The Vicar of Dibley that did the same. There are still programs that get it almost right, Bones for example, but then when you look at this season's offerings,  sometimes women seem so peripheral to everything, you'd think we lived in a different realm, oh wait.....



And at least in the UK, that isn't going to get much better, since 'Bird's Eye View',  a festival that screens films by women, has had to be cancelled due to funding cuts.



British TV presenter, Eamonn Holmes (Irish, but works on British TV), ended an interview with a rape victim who had the presence of mind to deliberately leave evidence at the scene of the crime, the rapist's car, by saying to her, 'well I hope you take taxis now.' Yes, yet again, blame the victim Eamonn, well done, not. Sometimes you've just got to wonder how the person gets the job.