Category: junk thought

Busy

War of the Worlds

Very busy day, but consider this the first installment on a larger thought I’ve been meaning to coalesce :

Members of the New Tribes Mission, a fundamentalist missionary organisation based in the US, carried out a clandestine mission to make contact with the Zo’é of Brazil to convert them to Christianity. Between1982 and 1985 the missionaries flew over the Zo’é’s villages dropping gifts. They then built a mission station only several days’ walk from the Indians’ villages. Following their first real contact in 1987, 45 Zo’é died from epidemics of flu, malaria and respiratory diseases transmitted by the missionaries. – Survival International

At that point War Of The Worlds had been in print for nearly 90 years.

Eye Rhymes

A bit of interesting randomness:

Eye rhyme, also called visual rhyme and sight rhyme, is a similarity in spelling between words that are pronounced differently and hence, not an auditory rhyme. An example is the pair slaughter and laughter.

Many older English poems, particularly those written in Middle English or written in The Renaissance, contain rhymes that were originally true or full rhymes, but as read by modern readers they are now eye rhymes because of shifts in pronunciation. An example is prove and love. – Wikipedia

Was Love, Louve, or was Prove, Pruv?

Laugh Tracks & Late Night

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y94584UUw1Q]

Pink Panther, probably because of the lack of dialogue, animation, or sensical jokes, always had a laugh track that stood out.

No one uses canned laugh tracks anymore of course, but until recently I’d forgotten how many cartoons used to have one.

A recent viewing of teletoon retro – with a micro-midget in the crook of my arm – brought up some odd memories: as a kid huffing Scooby Doo it wasn’t long before I realized that not only were the laughers repeating themselves, they were also apparently heading over to Josie and the Pussycats and laughing at those jokes in pretty much the same way.

It was only once I’d asked wikipedia that I realized how prevalent the problem was:

Critics took note of the inferior sounding laugh track permeating Hanna-Barbera’s Saturday morning fare. The same prerecorded laugh can be heard after nearly every punchline, which does not go unnoticed by the astute viewer. The fact that the treble was mixed far too high for the soundtrack it accompanies only drew attention to the falsity of the practice. Several shows that are victim of the abridged laugh track are The New Scooby-Doo Movies, Captain Caveman and the Teen Angels, The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show, Dynomutt, Dog Wonder, Jabberjaw,Hong Kong Phooey, Josie and the Pussycats in Outer Space, The Flintstone Comedy Hour andHelp!… It’s the Hair Bear Bunch!. – Wikipedia

I think the modern/adult version of this is, unfortunately, the Letterman audience. I sometimes wonder if the crowd handlers are dressed like lion tamers with high voltage stun sticks.

I greatly enjoy the first half hour of The Late Show, but every quirky tick gets measured applause, every half-gag elicits a short homogeneous laugh – the quality of a joke can be judged by length, but not by intensity, there seems to be no exuberance or extremity permitted by the electro-rod carriers. It may not be the tinny guffawing of Scooby Doo, but the crowd response is so predictable I find it difficult to understand the difference.

Still awaiting the sequel, The Nakedest Prey

Speaking of coveting: Have you ever seen that movie, The Naked Prey?

It’s the one where a bunch of “Savage Africans” kill some Caucasian folks who refuse to pay them tribute, then chase the last one around the savannas while the audience shifts uncomfortably in their seats from all the racism.

There’s a school of thought these days that the film is brilliant despite the racial discomfort. There’s very little dialogue, most of the movie is just an underdeveloped white guy running through the grass in tiny underpants, and yet it remains pretty compelling.

The Naked Prey

Weirdly, the plot is supposedly based on a true story, “John Colter’s Escape”, which tells of John Colter and his partner crossing some Blackfoot Indians and having to run away. Not quite Africa, and shooting a fellow in front of his friends isn’t quite the same thing as refusing to give a gift, but still very “The Most Dangerous Game”.

To bring it back to my coveting: the thing that’s really always stuck with me about the movie is the design of the weird person-poker they gave the tribesmen. It’s tough to find a clear picture, but it looks like they got a discount on used swords from an old BBC production, then replaced all of the hilts with two foot poles to make them pass as ‘spears’.

I’ve always found this weird mutant weapon to be awesome – it’s exactly the kind of thing I want my Japanese-RPG character to be carrying, or to have hanging on my office wall in case of zombie attack.

Titles

The ColonelI’m under the weather and over-medicated, so please pardon me if I take a ramble:

Back in the late ’90s the internet was a bit of a wild frontier. People hadn’t really figured out what they were and weren’t allowed to get up to, and nothing that happened online seemed quite real in the classic sense.

At the time I was an impressionable youth who felt he needed more respect, so I joined the clergy. It wasn’t an easy thing to do back then, it involved some emailing back and forth as I recall, but I’m glad to see these days the process is more automated.

I’ve never performed a marriage, but I rest better knowing that I legally could. (In case of emergency.)

The discovery that the system had been simplified got me thinking about expanding my proper title. If I can scrape a few hundred dollars together I should be able to get my doctorate, making me The Reverend Doctor Skinner.

If I can then rescue a Southern Belle and get myself a Kentucky Colonelcy – Reverend Colonel Doctor Skinner –  it should be a short leap to British Knighthood – Sir Reverend Colonel Doctor Skinner*.

(As a side note: I was unaware until recently that esquire was a title bestowed on people who weren’t quite Knights, but who were also better than your average Gentleman. So says wikipedia.)

*or maybe The Reverend Doctor Colonel, Sir Skinner? Hmm.

Ke$ha on Conan

I was introduced to Ke$ha by last night’s Conan O’Brien. In case you missed it:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CbMWaNKWrN4]

Of course I was outraged, it’s obvious that the entire setup is a rip off of a famous act from the late 1980s.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fMKT0gGEBJQ]

People Of The Future

It seems to me, given the abundance of high caloric menu items these days, that the people most fit to survive are the people who take in the least number of those calories, and expel as much of the junk as possible*.

Is the person of tomorrow a lean,  mean, pooping machine?

(*Although this may seem like a very Western-biased mindset, it is my pretty depressing belief that even the most starving nation will one day find itself awash in twinkies and pizza pockets.)