mana

I spent half of 1994 traveling in Indonesia, and it seemed that disasters were hitting the country left and right. Workers rioted in Medan, elephants stampeded outside Tapaktuan, a tsunami hit western Java, volcanoes erupted in southern Sumatra and in Lombok, and if I recall there was an earthquake that year also. Across the archipelago people took it to mean one thing: General Suharto would soon fall. His mana was weakening, and could no longer hold the country together.

Sure, I don't believe in things like that. But it's still hard not to see comparisons between Indo in '94 and the USA in '05.

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This just came out in the Public Interest Newswire: A 1999 "Reserve Component Unit Commander's Handbook" and still in effect, states that if a discharge for homosexual conduct is requested "prior to the unit's receipt of alert notification, discharge isn't authorized. Member will enter AD [active duty] with the unit."

In other words: you can be openly gay and serve in a war. You cannot be actively gay and serve during peacetime. We all knew that, we just didn't realize it was official policy. This completely puts to the lie the military's claim that gay service members would upset morale during combat.

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My NetFlix addiction continues full force. I've been having a great time ordering old and foreign movies that you can't find here. There were a couple, though, that I wanted and they didn't have [in particular, Jean Genet's Un Chant d'Amour]. So I wandered over to check on ebay ... found it ... and then found some others ... and pretty soon I'd ordered a dozen movies from a Singapore store that sells classic DVD's that haven't been released in the US. It all seems vaguely black market to me, but apparently it's all legit. I've been so good about never, ever going on ebay. I've never even looked at the site. Now my innocence is shot.

The movies started arriving this week. We watched Summer and Smoke (1961) a few nights ago. It's a standard Tennessee Williams southern melodrama, starring Geraldine Page as a repressed minister's daughter who's all spirit, and Laurence Harvey as a playboy who's all flesh. I'd recommend it for any fans of great acting - Geraldine Page is stunning.