"Patriarchy still reigns supreme in Taiwan." In ca…
“Patriarchy still reigns supreme in Taiwan.” In case you don’t want to read the entire article, I’ll summerize it here: “Bad men! Baaaaad men! Men bad! Men should die impaled on pointy sticks! Oooooh! Bad, bad men! *spits* ” This attitude is more and more common in Taiwan. As I work in advertising, I see it all the time. I don’t know if this has anything to do with the fact that women are in charge of our company, but most of our advertising targets women, and any men that are portrayed in the media are either emasculated(good men) or evil(bad men!). We have commercials with women dressed in clean white dresses, dancing on a green hill top. Then a storm comes in and the mountain erupts into a black tangled forest, and the Evil Men come and sexually harrass the women, lead them into prostitution, etc., followed by a public service message asking for donations. Then we have the skin-whitening cream commercials that try to get women to want to become white. Men, apparently, only buy whisky, because that is the only product in our accounts that targets men, and we have a lot of accounts. If you’ve heard of a major brand, we probably have that company as our client. But I am just a lowly editor and all this upper-management strategy is making my poor little brain hurt!
I’m listening to Richard Wagner’s Ride of the Valkyries. Yes, I know it’s a ‘Chestnut’, as we called pieces played too frequently back at WLUR where I jockeyed some discs on occasion, but have you really listened to it lately? There is one point when the entire brass section just gets together and leaves the rest of the orchestra behind, relegated to playing accompanying trills and other inaudible frivolities while the brass dominate with a single, united theme. Yeah, brass! Pieces like that are why I chose to play the trumpet, when given the choice, after studying violin and piano. Another composition that sends chills down my spine is the section of Mars in Holst’s The Planets when the entire orchestra bursts out with the dadadada da-da da.da.da! theme, every single instrument is playing the same note in the same pattern as loud as it possibly can. It is the full power of the orchestra condensed into the two-measure equivalent of flooring a Diablo. I only realized this when one of the orchestras I was in actually performed it, even though I was already very familiar with the piece at the time.
The typhoon decided not to make much of an appearance besides a little rain and wind, so still I have to work today. At least I remembered to bring my music this time.
Overheard on the radio this morning: “Here is Marsha Chen from China Securities for a financial update and other China Securities promotion. Marsha, why is the economy not recovering?” “Well, Bill, the economy is not recovering because the ecomomy is bad.”
