By Walt Whitman
Delicate cluster! flag of teeming life!
Covering all my lands! all my sea-shores lining!
Flag of death! (how I watch'd you through the smoke of battle pressing!
How I heard you flap and rustle, cloth defiant!)
Flag cerulean! sunny flag! with the orbs of night dappled!
Ah my silvery beauty! ah my woolly white and crimson!
Ah to sing the song of you, my matron mighty!
My sacred one, my mother.
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I got to have two meals out on Wednesday. First I had lunch at Minerva with Paul and Daniel after taking the latter to get his arm x-rayed and put in a new cast. It looks from the x-ray like it's healing fine, knock wood, though not with the arm in the cast, and he will have to wear the new one for another two weeks, so we went out for Indian food to celebrate. Then I had dinner with Gblvr and walked all over the mall with her, though we were very good and didn't buy anything -- considering that it was 98 degrees outside, the mall was a really nice place to walk.
We watched episodes 4-5 of Game of Thrones, and I have to say once again that, while I appreciate the quality of the acting, I am utterly unimpressed with both the stories and the characterizations...as Adam says, there seem to be four or five general types repeated in multiple characters, and the women are pretty much all cliches thus far. Spoilers: I can't believe fans I know apparently adore this show for the gay bloodplay, the same way people excuse Sherlock for its racism and sexism because of the gay passion. GoT is more patriarchal than a lot of stories set in Medieval Europe -- one daughter worried she'll only have daughters and be worthless as a wife, another wishing she could be a lord (with her dad reassuring her that she'll marry a lord and have baby lords), lots of gratuitous tits in whorehouses and the bedrooms of powerful men, and men calling other men "cunts" to show disdain. Ugh.
It's ironic that for the most part, the news coverage of Weinergate is more respectful of women as individuals, and I got to end the day with Jon Stewart discovering from Weiner that people may be having sex while watching The Daily Show, then learning that it was Bill Clinton who was on his show the night Weiner suggested watching and having sex at the same time. Weiner apologizing to Clinton for embarrassing him is funnier than anything any humor columnist could possibly write about the scandal.
Here are a few more photos from the National Aquarium the weekend before last, definitely not my best since I had the camera settings all screwy:
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