It's been a while since my last update, but here's a quick little story that made me chuckle.
Moviemaker James Cameron has re-edited a scene in Titanic showing stars sparkling in the night sky - after a leading astronomer told him the astral alignment was incorrect.
Cameron tells Culture magazine, "Oh, there is one shot that I fixed. It's because Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is one of the US' leading astronomers, sent me quite a snarky email saying that, at that time of year, in that position in the Atlantic in 1912, when Rose is lying on the piece of driftwood and staring up at the stars, that is not the star field she would have seen, and with my reputation as a perfectionist, I should have known that and I should have put the right star field in.
"So I said, 'All right, you son of a b**ch, send me the right stars for the exact time, 4.20am on April 15, 1912, and I'll put it in the movie.' So that's the one shot that has been changed."
Not a lot of people would probably notice, but it's interesting and amusing all the same.
Oceana, a charity dedicated to saving the world's oceans, is looking for submissions for their latest anthology. A collection of short stories devoted to that popular Japanese trope, tentacle porn.
Tentacle sex celebrates helplessness in the face of ravenous, remorseless, undeniable lust. I want to see stories with characters, settings, and plots. People change. The world is revealed. Things happen. They don't have to be deep, but they have to be there.
Stories set in any time period, setting, or sub-genre are fine. Any flavor of speculative fiction is fair game, and if you can figure out a way to do it with a contemporary setting, I'm good with that too!
Stories should be between 2,500 and 7,500 words. Exceptions will be made for outstanding stories.
If you're still curious and want to know more (or even sneakily submit a story, you can check out the site.
I would comment more, but I think I said enough already.
Advertising is designed to get certain emotions going to sell their products or ideology. Quite a few adverts cause controversy. United Colors of Benetton have released one such ad campaign which has sent people up in arms.
Benetton's Unhate campaign is trying to spread the message of tolerance and "unhate". Quoted from their website...
What does UNHATE mean? UN-hate. Stop hating, if you were hating. Unhate is a message that invites us to consider that hate and love are not as far away from each other as we think. Actually, the two opposing sentiments are often in a delicate and unstable balance. Our campaign promotes a shift in the balance: don’t hate, Unhate
I think this is a WONDERFUL message to spread. It's not everyday that a big firm would release a specific campaign urging people the world over to stop hating each other. Unfortunately, this message is a little lost on some people. First in line to argue this "controversial advertising" is the Vatican, on behalf of Pope Benedict.
Don't they make a lovely couple?
Locking lips with the Pope in that image is Sheik Ahmed el-Tayeb, a prominant imam and scholar of Sunni Islam from Cairo. Other images in the campaign has Barack Obama kissing the leaders from China and Venezuela, Angela Merkel kissing Nicolas Sarkozy, the President of Palestine kissing the Prime Minister of Israel, and another personal favourite of mine, Kim Jong-il kissing the president of South Korea, Lee Myung-bak.
Unfortunately, the Pope's poster hasn't been up for more than an hour before they were forced to pull it from their website due to complaints from Vatican City.
"This shows a grave lack of respect for the Pope, an offence to the feelings of believers, a clear demonstration of how publicity can violate the basic rules of respect for people," said Father Federico Lombardi, the Vatican's spokesman.
The posters were unveiled in a "series of guerilla actions" according to the company, with the posters of Benedict/Ahemd, Merkel/Sarkozy and Obama/Hu Jintao being revealed in Rome, Paris and Milan respectively. As of yet, the Pope is the only one considering taking legal action against the company for his particular poster, although I would be very interested in hearing the reactions of the other posters from the other featured leaders. Alessandro Benetton, the deputy head of the company, knew what he was doing in this provocative campaign but wanted to share the ideal notion of love through these posters. Good on him, I say; I love this campaign.
"The central theme is the kiss, the most universal symbol of love, between world political and religious leaders," Alessandro Benetton said in a statement.
I work in a rather enclosed office in a supermarket with five other women, although at most there is only three of us in at a time. Coversation varies greatly between us all depending on which mix of women are in there. Today, I was in work with two of them - one of them being the oldest in the office (for ease sake, let's call her Mary). I was happily going about my work, filling in some forms when I come across something in one of them that made me exclaim in surprise. Both women turned around in shock and berated me for swearing.
So what did I say?
"BLOODY HELL!"
It was my turn to turn to them in shock - it's barely swearing, I argued. Worse had been cried out before by people on the shop floor. Then Mary looked at me quite poigniantly. I was being told off because I was blaspheming. I don't know whether I hurt my situation with them at the time by laughing out loud. Neither of them had ever come across as hugely religious, though Mary had proven herself to be quite conservative in the past. It got me thinking though; my Dad had raised me to respect language but to also realise that sometimes words are just that. Words. At the time, he was trying to teach me that swearing wasn't all that a big deal if used right (humour, anger etc). As such, I treat a lot of my own speech like that - I try to think about what I say and how I say it (easier written than spoken, I'll admit) but in the end, I'm not going to spilt hairs over how I use words to whomever, relevant censorship and borders applied, of course (I'm not going to openly swear in front of children, for example).
But what really tickled me was when one of the managers came in for their usual checks - mid-conversation, he declared "JESUS CHRIST!" I immediately turned to Mary and cheekily responded "He used Jesus' name in vain, how come he can get away with blasphemy?" She was ready for me, with a less than witty comeback.
"It's unbecoming for a lady to swear."
Well Jesus Christ riding on a pogo stick from the bloodiest pits of Hell. I guess I'm no longer a lady then.
So, four months ago, Westboro Baptist Church had the tyres of their minivan slashed after protesting at another funeral.
Shortly after protesting the funeral of Army Sgt. Jason James McCluskey in Oklahoma, members of the Westboro Baptist Church headed back to their minivan, only to discover that its front and rear passenger-side tires had been slashed. To make matters worse, when they drove into town they were unable to find anyone who would repair it.
Yes, old news, but I only came across the link thanks to someone on Facebook. It also gave me some food for thought. What the WBC do is heinous. But, begrudgingly, they have a right to have their say (as wrong and bigotted and awful as they are). And isn't slashing their tyres giving them more reason to be even more angry at everyone? And not helping them either? Again, people have their own opinions and are perfectly within their rights to refuse to help bastards. But will that really help the problem? I suppose this is my rose-tinted glasses at work, but wouldn't showing them that "okay, you're bastards, we hate your message, but we'll be the bigger people here and help you out". Though I guess that would only give them reason to go all out and assume they're winning support or that everyone else are just pushovers.
Then again, the WBC are easy targets in themselves. And make lovely inspiration for counter protesters.
Question of the day: Would it work the other way and make lesbians straight?
I don't know why - might be his happy grin, or my love of the word "fabulous" but this was my favourite picture.
So, it was International Women's Day this week. And to mark the occasion, one Mr Bond (circa. Daniel Craig) and his female employer M (circa. Judi Dench) have filmed a little short.
He doesn't look too happy in that dress, and who could blame him? It looks horrible!
Comedy is a hard business, I can understand that. After all, it's difficult to cater for a wide audience with different opinions on what's funny. I myself boast a sometimes strange sense of humour (according to people around me, and my bad/odd attempts at jokes). There are times though where jokes are little more than attacks on people and then the lines of humour blur. I refer to the infamous BBC event known as "Sachsgate", where comedians Jonathon Ross and Russell Brand had phoned up Andrew Sachs, an elderly actor and started ragging on him about his grandaughter and making very lewd and crude comments that no grandfather wants to hear. Especially whilst live on radio air time. Now, whilst it may be a "harmless" prank call, it did distress someone who is basically a pensioner in the name of comedy - that leaves a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.
However, that leads me onto something else. Reading this article on Yahoo News, I can't help but wonder whether people need to lighten up just a tad. I happen to be a fan of Top Gear; whilst my knowledge of automotives barely goes beyond identifying different models, the humour and stunts in the series makes it for some very entertaining viewing. Whilst watching the series, you also become familiar with the humour the presenters have - brash, laddish, quite often crude but good-natured. I mean, c'mon! Jeremy Clarkson is not exactly known for his tact and finesse with the English language! The editor highlighted a particular piece of dialogue that actually had me in stitches and wish I caught this particular episode.
Hammond: ...Cars reflect national characteristics, don't they, so German cars are very well built and ruthlessly efficient, Italian cars are a bit flamboyant and quick, a Mexican car's just going to be lazy, feckless, flatulent, overweight... leaning against a fence asleep, looking at a cactus, with a blanket with a hole in the middle as a coat. May: It is interesting, isn't it, because they can't do food, the Mexicans, can they? Because it's all like sick with cheese on it, I mean... Hammond: Refried sick! May: Yeah, refried sick. Hammond: I'm sorry, but just imagine waking up and remembering you're Mexican: 'awww, no'. Clarkson: No, it'd be brilliant... because you could just go straight back to sleep again.
Okay, so they went after the stereotype of Mexicans. So what? We're all guilty of using a stereotype to make jokes about particular groups - the English can't cook and are uptight, the French are pompous chickens, the Germans are no-nonsense doms, the Italians are very...metrosexual. And it maybe that they hate Mexican food, and whilst I love the stuff, it can sometimes look less than appetising (presentation is the key - it's so easy to make a nice burrito fall apart into a gloopy, meaty, spicy mess that does sometimes look like it was digested once already). Now, that exchange doesn't strike me as anything spicy or controversial. The only shocking thing on there to me was that most of it was Hammond and not Clarkson! Whilst browsing about the Internet on this, I did come across one youtube video of a Mexican giving his own commentary about the storm in a teacup.
I will conceed on one point he made - yes, the stereotype used was an American born one and you can accuse the Top Gear team in being lazy with their jokes. But really, a stereotype's purpose is supposed to be a quick caricature of a group that everyone can recognise and unfortunately for this guy, this does mean that we Brits are more familiar with the American version. Perhaps he could petition one of the more upper brow comedians to make a higher class of stereotypical joke - Stephen Fry comes to mind but I think he's still trying to dig himself out of his Japan shaped hole.
It seems people just want an excuse to be angry or outraged nowadays for no reason. Okay, so these three boy-men are on the world stage now thanks to Internet TV, but I think they wouldn't do too bad in showcasing British humour. Next to other classic British examples Frankie Boyle or Al Murray, I think these three boys are pretty tame. Let them have their playground humour and let's laugh with them.
