Katze mit Wut

I had a good laugh when I found this cartoon. Because a) haha, funny, b) ooooooh, fruitbats!¹, and c) haha, Carmen Miranda hat!
And then I thought, wait, what do I really know about Carmen, anyway?

Famous for promoting Brazil all over the world, she was a Broadway star, the highest paid artist in Hollywood and the highest paid woman in the USA.
—Wikipedia

And apparently, she more or less died on Durante's show. I never knew.

These are the last lines of an interview Dyann Esparza did with Hudson Leick (who played Callisto on Xena: Warrior Princess) for whoosh:

ESPARZA: What is the weirdest, most bizarre memory that sticks out in your mind about Xenaland?

LEICK: When someone kissed my breast.
[Author's note: This occurred in Palo Alto when a fan, while holding Hudson in his arms, leaned down and, well, kissed the skin exposed.]

ESPARZA: Anything to say to the fans after 6 years?

LEICK: Don't kiss my breasts.

It's interesting how this works out in written form, conjuring an almost comedic pattern that I suspect wasn't there in the interview thanks to tone of voice.

So. Here's Hudson Leick then. She played Callisto, a gorgeous, very physical warrior queen. It's not surprising some will see the character in a sexual light, even if the character was never portrayed as sexual at all, just as physical¹. This bears repition: Hudson played a physical character. So on one hand, fans know she's not Callisto — embrace Callisto, you're dead. Never mind the breasts.
So what happens here? You know she's not her role; if she were, you'd be dead. So, you know there's an actual actress involved, but you take making her really uncomfortable² in stride for a brief moment of fantasy fullfilment? What's up with that? Did you think that showing that her agency, emotions and humanity count for so much less than yours that your will be done was some sort of weirdass compliment? Did you think being a target for their fan's sexual lapses is a justifiable part of an actress' job description? What's up with that?

¹ She was also in a dysfunctional emotional bond with Xena that came out in a variety of ways that would sometimes visually hint at bondage themes, or at fight fucking being just around the corner, though the character seemed to be torn between absolution, consolation, and revenge, but never actual sex.
² In pictures with fans, she also struck me as very thin, almost fragile. Now, I don't know what that fan looked like, but that might even make it scarier. The thing though is that whether or not it was scary is neither here nor there; annoying or infuriating are really no more excusable.

This of course is from Vicious Lips, a movie so obscure that I had to write my own synopsis and (1st) comment. It's the sound of the '80s in one long hairotica music video. In a trashy scifi setting. Honestly, who cares at that point about it having no plot? : ) And yes, I'd still really, really like to be able to buy the soundtrack!

I bet you thought they made stuff up for Yes, Minister.

«The Secretary of State for the Colonies or Colonial Secretary was the British Cabinet official in charge of managing the various British colonies. The position was first created in 1768 to deal with the increasingly troublesome North American colonies. Previously those responsibilities had fallen to the Secretary of State for the Southern Department, who was responsible for Southern England, Wales, Ireland, the American colonies, and relations with the Catholic and Muslim states of Europe. […] In 1782, following the loss of the American colonies, the office was abolished, and its duties given to the Home Secretary […]. In 1794 a new office was created […] — the Secretary of State for War, which now took responsibility for the Colonies, and was renamed the Secretary of State for War and the Colonies in 1801. In 1854, military reforms led to the Colonial and Military responsibilities of this secretary of state being split into two separate offices. [… Among the holders of the office were Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton ("It was a Dark and Stormy Knight …") and Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 3rd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos as well as of course Winston Churchill.] Until 1925, when the office of Secretary of State for Dominion Affairs was created, the Colonial Office had responsibility for all British colonies and dominions besides India, which had its own Secretary of State. In 1966, with most of the colonies gone, the office was merged with that of the Secretary of State for Commonwealth Relations to create the new office of Secretary of State for Commonwealth Affairs. In 1968 the Commonwealth Office was subsumed into the Foreign Office, which became known as the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.»
adapted from Wikipedia

And they call it Byzantine.

This plugin lets you run a webcomic in your serendipity (s9y) blog. Originally by Wesley Hwang-Chung, this revised version uses tags rather than categories to identify content, and does away with some code for things that can more elegantly be solved with style sheets (CSS).

Updated from version released earlier today
— theming of navigation be easier / more detailed
— mode where latest comic isn't at top of front-page, but at whatever position it would be if it were a normal article (that is, sorted by time/date). that is, the difference to normal articles would be that only the latest comic is shown (and has a dedicated navigation to reach the older ones). This solves the issue that if the latest comic is older than the latest normal article, it will still "outrank" the normal article, that is, seem newer thanks to it being shown first. This is a problem if a) the comic or comic-entry is large enough so the casual visitor might not see the normal article below it; b) the weblog is run in "mixed" mode with both comics and normal articles; and c) the visitor actually uses a webbrowser rather than a feed-reader.
— only show latest comic + navigation when show entries by tag (iff the tag identifying comics was chosen in the tag-cloud, but not if any other tag that a comic may happen to have was selected — in the latter case, article mode prevails).
— German translation