(no subject)

A little more Mengzi... (These are just fragments, that strike me as relatively comprehensible without a lot of involved explanation.)

"These people snatch their people's season, and make it so they can not weed and hoe and nurture their father and mother. Their father and mother are cold and starved, their elder and younger brothers, wives and children are all scattered and separate. They entrap and drown their people. When your highness goes there, you should reconnoiter. In any case, who would join with the King and be your rival?

"The ancients say, as for the humane, they lack opponents. King, do not doubt this."

Random bits...

I'm glad I'm off the prednisone, however, the shift from being slightly wired and insomniac to tired all the time is no fun. I keep finding myself all depressed, and then realizing that it's largely fatigue. However, I still can mostly breath. In my spaced state, though I drove over to rocket_jockey's to have him try on a leather jacket, and to check out a camera... and forgot the jacket. Days like this I shouldn't be allowed out on my own. But I got to take home a really nifty camera. Whee!

Looking forward to perfoming at the sword festival with Craig. Matching pretty new silks. Matching swords. Fun fun. And my new shoes arrived, and they are a very good thing. Really helps with stability, having shoes that aren't falling apart. Ilyeos are just the best. On the other hand, my back tweaked yesterday, and while I made it through sword pretty well, I mostly sat out or stood to the side and stretched during Chen. One more piece of that puzzle: because of the ligament damage to the SI joint, my psoas and/or some of my abdominal muscles are always tight trying to compensate, and this twists my sacrum around funny. Okay, I mostly knew that...

It's kind of funny to be discussing the image of the swordswomen in the Martial Arts Film Class right now. (Especially when I'm online at the time getting mail from Shifu.) All this "Is this about empowerment or exploitation?" bit one might expect. And of course, I don't think one can be a woman in the martial arts long without being aware of that tension. Though some of the cinema theory stuff is pretty amusing. (Especially in it's heterosexist assumptions. And for that matter, the assumption that no one in the audience is watching all the half naked guy performing their martial arts with similar sensual interest.)