Sunday's Stray Thoughts

Wasn't planning to do a post this morning, but then I saw this presumably homemade Red Sonja Lego minifig, and well, this is how posts are born.

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On a more serious note...

Why is Ukraine in turmoil? (BBC News [Europe])
"[P]rotests broke out after President Yanukovych's government rejected a far-reaching accord with the European Union in November 2013 in favour of stronger ties with Russia. Thousands of people, outraged that a long-standing aspiration for integration with Europe had been ditched overnight, poured into central Kiev for peaceful protests. They have occupied Independence Square, known as Maidan, ever since."

Yanukovych fled the capital yesterday, and protesters promptly stormed the palace, freeing long time rival / political prisoner Yulia Tymoshenko.

From here, either the Ukrainian populace holds an election and puts a pro-Western government in power in the next six months, or else the Russian Army puts on Ukrainian uniforms and crushes all resistance in the name of their puppet government.

In related news, the Olympics is ending today, and it seems that world politics can hardly wait.

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Emma and I watched Justice League: War last night, and I think we both thoroughly enjoyed it.  

Justice League: War
For one thing, the movie version of the story made a Hell of a lot more sense than did the six-issue arc by Geoff Johns and Jim Lee that kicked off the new Justice League book in DC's New 52 continuity.  However, there was a LOT of gratuitous swearing in the movie.  Tons.  And none of it was necessary; it all felt forced.  Presumably, the studio--Warner Premier--wanted the movie to carry a PG-13 rating rather than a simple PG, so they added all that naughty language to make sure that it happened.  If you ask me, however, the language detracted from the story.

The story itself was pretty simple.  It's an origin story, with all of the JLA heroes extent in the world at large but generally unfamiliar to each other.  However, when Darkseid sends parademons to invade the Earth, the heroes have to learn to work together.  That works, because it keeps the plot simple, and all of the action is definitely of the cartoon superhero variety.  For example, nobody gets killed on-screen, save for the parademons, who weren't necessarily alive in the first place.  

As I said, I watched it with Emma, who'll be nine next month, and she followed the story easily and wasn't scared at all by anything she saw.  However, my wife and I both winced when a bit-character told Wonder Woman that she "dresses like a whore" and then followed up by talking about how he cross-dresses in a similar outfit in the privacy of his own home.  You ask me, it's that attitude right there that explains why DC can't figure out how to put a Wonder Woman movie together at all, even as Marvel is about to make a gazillion dollars on a movie about a machine-gun-toting raccoon and a talking tree.

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Enough.  I need another cup of coffee... 

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