Thoughts about True Blood

Unspoilery thoughts: I liked it, on the whole I thought the additions to the book worked pretty well, but it sometimes sank into tacky oversexed melodrama. Also they added in too many new plot points towards the end of the season, it made for a somewhat unsatisfying conclusion.

I find it amusing that the main character, her boyfriend, and her brother are played by a New Zealander, an englishman, and an aussie respectively :) (I spent ages trying to figure out before realising: it's that guy from Home and Away!)

Also while I can see the purpose of the character best described as "The World's Most Annoying Vampire" they are indeed pretty annoying.

SPOILERY THOUGHTS (And it's a murder mystery, so don't click if you have ANY intention of watching)
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Rambly thoughts on niceness

I've been meaning to post some coherent thoughts on niceness for a while but I think I need to post some incoherent ones first to get my thoughts in order :)

So: I'm a "nice" person, in that I'm friendly, and polite, and non-threatening, and passive (and that's what I'm going to mean by "nice" in this post. I realise that's not the only definition). I used to feel rather smug about this, and wish other people were more like me(*). But the older I get the more I realise that not only is this "niceness" harmful to me (as I get all repressed and ignored) but it can also be harmful to those around me, and stems largely from entirely selfish motivations.

Disclaimers like whoa, I'm definitely just stream-of-consciousnessing here. And have a headache :)

EDIT: This is a bunch of thoughts about the flaws of niceness, mainly as it relates to me and my behaviour. Niceness has a lot of benefits too, I just didn't go into them. Also people make some good points in the comments.
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I bet you they won't let that horse on the internet

A Dirty Pun Tweaks China’s Online Censors: in response to internet censors, chinese people create and share an "inoffensive children's song" about a "grass mud horse"..which uses puns to be (a)Obscene and (b)Criticise censorship

Here's the original video (as far as I can tell) *restrains self from making a comment about the gendered nature of the language* nb "harmony" is code for "censorship".

Here's another, from the article and I'll totally ignore the point of it to say it's very cute, and I found the chinese rap and animation interesting.

It's also really interesting to see how the Chinese Government uses cracking down on pornography as an excuse to censor everything. Not that any other governments would ever do that *cough*

Since the NYT can be annoying, full text after the cut:
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