Fail

The Associated Press reports today that

Burial sites are next to king, suggesting laborers were paid and not slaves

Yeah, um, actually, everyone with an education has known this for twenty years. Even I knew that as a kid. In fact, I got in arguments with my Jewish friends about it. They wanted credit for their ancestors having built the pyramids. It's upsetting how many people read articles like this and go "ZOMG not uh! That evidence is made up! Ze Bible doesn't lie!!!" No, it doesn't lie. You know why? Because it's a sodding book. Like the one I wrote this summer. And for the record, my book is Fiction, so it's full of lies. As a writer, I'm a liar by trade. All writers are. Including those who scrawled down fables in Hebrew thousands of years ago, then decided some of their stories sucked because they showed that women are human beings and aren't all virgins and whores, so they hid those scrolls in caves in the Dead Sea...

Anyway, since this is a complaining post, I'd like to share this film preview:

Leap Year

First off, since when can a woman not propose to her boyfriend any day of the week? Second off... that montage of quaint "Irish" folk going "just kiss the girl!" and participating in all of their Irishy shenanigans? Let's just say that when I first saw the preview, I stared in shock. Like, disturbed shock. Like, "Oh no you didn't," shock. But yes, they did.

Films like this are the equivalent to a story with the plot of "A cute little redhead is upset that her boyfriend gave her diamond earrings, but hears a myth that if she goes and lives down South with a black family, she'll gain the magical powers to be able to propose to him. *cue montage of Minstrelsy antics by blackface actors.*"

For those who will argue that the Irish have not been treated with the same racial prejudice as African Americans, you're right. In many ways, they've been treated worse. In the 1700s the Irish were considered to be below the blacks of America, and were not considered white. They were called "Niggers inside out." Since a slave could be insured, people hired the Irish for jobs where they were likely to die.

For the past 800 + years, the Irish have been victim to systematic, institutionalized cultural genocide by the English. The Irish Catholic was treated as a race, and for much of history, was denied nearly every basic human right. The iron-fisted grip the English have had on the Irish was so effective that the country has yet to achieve total independence.

Historical rant aside, Leap Year appears to be an insulting caricature of a people who have been shat on for hundreds of years. And now, once again, Hollywood is the one doing the shitting.

To be fair, I haven't seen the film. The preview made me cringe so much that I felt compelled to write something publicly about it.

Okay, sailing pictures to come soon!

Mackenzie's Momma -- ...I am overwhelmed merely by your description of everything on your shoulders. Holy crap. I have no idea how you do it, woman! You're amazing. An inspiration!