Category: junk thought

Why We Need Annoying People Sometimes

LobsterI get a lot of guff for having a picky palette – largely due to my distaste for the insects of the sea – and I want to re-iterate a point I tried to make back in episode 037, Beef-pocalypse.

Variety in behavior isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. I may be picky, but that’s a survival trait that puts me in a certain statistical bracket where I’m unlikely to be poisoned by an ocean-born toxin. This spectrum is what makes us so resilient during wide-spread disasters, even if it comes across as an annoying refusal to eat at Red Lobster.

There are those amongst us who are the exotic mushroom tasters, just as there are those amongst us who fly experimental jets, and, although the one may not seem as romantic as the other, they’re both holding up the fight on one of humanity’s frontiers.

To those trailblazers: I applaud you – I just won’t dine with you.

Not Exactly Bumfights

From the film GladiatorI learned something new about gladiators last night – they were apparently rather rotund.

From archaeology.org:

Consuming a lot of simple carbohydrates, such as barley, and legumes, like beans, was designed for survival in the arena. Packing in the carbs also packed on the pounds.

So they’d be easier to see from the cheap seats?

No.

“Gladiators needed subcutaneous fat,” Grossschmidt explains. “A fat cushion protects you from cut wounds and shields nerves and blood vessels in a fight.” Not only would a lean gladiator have been dead meat, he would have made for a bad show. Surface wounds “look more spectacular,” says Grossschmidt. “If I get wounded but just in the fatty layer, I can fight on,” he adds. “It doesn’t hurt much, and it looks great for the spectators.”

Archaeology.org also has a glossary of gladiator terms, including:

Subligaculum: A traditional loincloth worn by gladiators

Not to be confused with “The Santa’s Beard”, my own, holiday-themed, traditional loincloth.

Some Returns

Weekend At Bernie'sHey, remember when I said I was going into a more weekend-style blogging mode? I wasn’t kidding.

Here’s a brief recycling overview of some of my recent tweets.

 

 

Women vs Pop Culture

The Ties That BindFound strangled to death, with his own tie, three days later.

After my recent post regarding the problems with older films, I got thinking about gender and popular culture.

I choose to believe this is sarcasm.

You mean a woman could shatter it over the edge
of a table and ram the jagged end into your condescending man-bits?

Locating examples of vintage chauvinistic advertising is depressingly easy.
Wrong

Hard to tell if this is any better than the original ad, which, instead of “wives”, said “black people.”

What’s frustrating, to me at least, is that there seems to be a general assumption that these are relics of some ancient past, and not, say, something our own parents would have commonly seen in magazines lying around the house.
To be fair, that man is happy just to kill ANYONE.

Is it always illegal to be drunk at work? Don’t ask Mr Hobo.

I’m sure glad we’ve moved beyond our chauvinistic past.
Which is more vomit inducing, the ad or the sandwich?Gang-rape is never funny.

The Dogs Of War

Airedale Terriers in gas-masks I recently heard that Chows (AKA Chow Chows or Chowdrens), were once used to de-throat injured enemy combatants on ancient Chinese battlefields. I rather suspect this is another bit of historical urban legend, especially as I can find no reference to such brutality on the internet, but it did remind me of the somewhat more heroic real-life tasks given to Airedale Terriers.

A sample, from the wikipedia:

“The Airedale was extensively used in World War I to carry messages to soldiers behind enemy lines and transport mail. They were also used by the Red Cross to find wounded soldiers on the battlefield. There are numerous tales of Airedales delivering their messages despite terrible injury. An Airedale named ‘Jack’ ran through half a mile of enemy fire, with a message attached within his collar. He arrived at headquarters with his jaw broken and one leg badly splintered, and right after he delivered the message, he dropped dead in front of its recipient.”

Canines, of course, have a long history with war – but did you know you can buy replica armour for your mutt?Replica Dog ArmourThis is based on a real Roman design, although I believe the original was made of metal and not felt, and is yours for the low price of $150 from Collars & Couture. My favourite part of the ad-copy?

Helm and Greaves also available.

An Uncomfortable Song & Dance

I’m a big fan of older films, including musicals, and, like many buffs, I’ve found myself in the “no one likes to watch black & white movies, and that goes double for musicals” discussion.

While I do agree that a large portion of the viewing population is lost to the simple visual issue of aesthetics, I think many of my fellow enthusiasts downplay the fact that a lot of old film content is simply unpleasant. The glossing of the silver screen has lead me to notice some uncomfortable naïveté.Clark Gable smokingFor example, were you aware that in 2007 the MPAA, who gives the motion pictures their ratings, decided that excessive smoking can lead to a film being rated R? It’s apparently why Sigourney Weaver’s character begins Avatar as an intense smoker, then, midway through – post-MPAA announcement – she suddenly drops off.

I know from living with two recovering nicotine addicts that my personal safety is always improved by avoiding films with copious amounts of puffing, which excludes a lot of pre-’50s pieces.
James Cagney hits Mae Clark with a grapefruit in Public EnemyWhile it’s never been especially all right to go around pummeling ladies, I’ve certainly had a few moments of “whoa” while watching older films. There’s a scene in The Philadelphia Story where Cary Grant covers Katherine Hepburn’s face with his palm and throws her to the floor – it’s played for comedy, and I think it works as such, but the first time I saw it I had to rewind to be sure that my eyes had just taken in what my brain was telling me they’d seen.

It’s not that every third film had a wife-beater, but there was certainly a lot less room for an actress to be anything other than a saint or a hussy, and the use of ladies as MacGuffins to demonstrate villainous brutality can really grate on today’s viewers.
Astaire in blackface in SwingtimeThe worst offender, however – and this goes double for musicals – is casual racism.

Judy Garland in blackfaceIt’s horrible enough to have a film with a groveling, illiterate black-servant character played for comedy, but there’s a period in musicals in which you can not avoid a well-known actor showing up, under a cake of makeup, to make the modern audience uncomfortable. The picture above is Fred Astaire, in blackface, for the movie Swing Time, which is otherwise a nice little dance & song flick, and the picture on left is Dorothy herself, Judy Garland, from Everybody Sing.

Toto, we’re not in the deep south anymore:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7Y2Ll24GRU]

– and let’s not even discuss how much blackface Bing Crosby did.
Bing Crosby in Holiday Inn
The usual reaction is to say these problems are “of their time”, as if that gives them some pass – personally, I don’t mind glaring menacingly at the bad so that I might enjoy the good, but I also understand that people who don’t have the stomach for it are also “of their time.”

A Cup Of The Clown's

While out and about this weekend, suffering the same store-based woes faced by many this season, I spent some time trapped in a McDonald’s with two eight year olds. It isn’t the first time I’ve tried my mouth at their coffee, but I’m hoping it will be the last. The reason I bring it up, however, is to discuss something I found odd about the way Ronald goes about dispensing his caffeine.

The fluid itself is terrible, or at least in my opinion, so we won’t bother debating the flavour merits. What IS interesting though, is the sheer level of design they’ve put into delivering their vile clown-juice. The cups are double walled, a feature that saves you from the two-cup or little-ring-thing techniques, and the lid, when compared to the lids offered by other coffee-chuckers, is perfection.

I’m not saying you should check out McD’s brew, but I am saying someone needs to trick a Starbucks executive into holding one of their receptacles.

Go Download Yourself

Deep Thought
The problem I have with the futurist idea of downloading your brain into a computer is the same problem Dr. McCoy had with using transporters on Star Trek.

His complaint was simple: despite the fact that a version of you pops out at the far end, the process dictates that the current you is destroyed, a blue print of your former body is sent to some distant point, then a new you is assembled.

Despite my great love for technology, and the possibilities it will be presenting us in the next hundred years, I do not believe the process of dumping your brain into a computer is ever going to catch on as anything more than a disturbingly precise last will and testament, or possibly as some sort of wisdom dispensing novelty that will drive Japanese ancestor worship into the stratosphere.
The Tron Laser
Imagine:

You’re sitting in a chair, an over-sized helmet held in place via a black chin strap, a tingling at your scalp. The process has taken three hours, but finally the technician who helped you into the rig comes back into the room and brightens the lighting.

“All done,” she says.

“That’s it?” you ask.

“That’s it,” she replies.

So you walk out, exiting the office with an awkward wave to the receptionist. Sure, there’s another you somewhere, a digital-you that may continue on for thousands of years with a little luck and a decent back up routine, but you’ve still got to get your left leg to stop being asleep after sitting so long in an awkward position, and there’s the drive home to consider.

You’ll never be that machine, and you’ll likely never think of it as anything more than an offshoot of yourself, a child that might have some sort of immortal superiority complex.Master Controller From Tron

An Odd Question

Dancers for Empire Of The Sun as photographed by B. MayerI was listening to a podcast the other day, and the host and his cohorts were discussing swimming with dolphins. The idea was presented that a lady pregnant with twins shouldn’t be allowed in the pool, as the animals will become confused by the dual-babies and attack the woman and her unborn.

Is this just an urban legend thats grown up around the insurance hazards of letting a pregnant person do something strenuous?

Google hasn’t provided an answer, and I’d be interested to hear if anyone has heard this before/might be able to shed some light on the situation.