Perspective, perspective

Like, oh my god, there is a *reason* the movie "Osama" has been sitting, untouched, on top of my television since August.

It's 'cause it's fucking DEPRESSING.

I had to stop watching it for a little bit -- to write, to watch Letterman, to eat my *very* late dinner of pumpkin-yellow pepper soup -- just to decompress from the oppressiveness of it all.

It's about a girl in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan who disguises herself as a boy so she can work and help her mother and grandmother survive (dad having been killed in the Kabul war and brother having been killed in the Russian war).

The film is rife with women in burkhas and starts out with a protest scene in which all these burkha-clad women are protesting, yelling, "We are not political! We are hungry! Give us work!" And then the Taliban shows up and starts hosing them down with fire hoses and rounding them up and throwing the women in carts enclosed by chickenwire -- and then, I think we all know what happens to them, even though the movie doesn't show it: If the stories are right, they get sent to a soccer stadium to be crushed by a stone wall that's toppled on them. Or something like that.

Ick.

(I want you to know, S2, that I'm *watching this movie for you,* because I have a constitutional disposition to sending back Netflix a film unwatched when it's been sitting on top of my TV for more than two weeks, much less one that's been there since August 21. And I really want to snag "I (heart) Huckabees," because it is one of the funniest fucking films ever.)

And you know, after I watch this film, I'm gonna need to laugh.

So what's the "Perspective, perspective" headline all about? You watch this film, my friends (my women friends), and whatever thing is bugging you, whatever psychic ache or fundamental unfairness in our society, whatever ... and you will just *not* be feeling so bad about whatever the hell it is.

Because women, under the Taliban? THAT SUCKS!