Back to basics
I will create a new alternative site soon, the other had to be deleted as it became slightly insecure. That is all I will say in a public forum. No need to worry, but these things happen and anyway I can explain it all to you privately. In the new site, there will be no publicly broadcast material and so this site will likely wither away as well. All this means that you will need to send me your email addresses so that I can send you invitations to the new site. We will then repost photos, songs, and blogs so that all will be back to what once was.
Time away from the USA has made me wish for a few shallow things, like a decent movie theater. Singapore would seemingly promise such things, and while the theater is fine, the choice of films is severely lacking. We went out to see anything and decided that "Happy Feet" must be the lesser of all evils--if we were correct in this assessment, the world is a darker place than I'd ever feared. Such a confused little story that combined elements of a musical using pop songs of the worst kind and with a seemingly tacked on environmental message that made little to no sense. Anyway, it was nothing less than terrible. If I were in the States, the chances of my viewing "Happy Feet" would have been nil, save for an unexpected blow to the head, or under the persuasion of abductor with a weakness for animated film. In Singapore, I not only went willingly, but it was my idea.
I will tell you the story as best I can. A penguin couple hatch a penguin son. Penguin couples mate for life and they meet each other through the performance of a unique song that attracts their mate. The newly hatched penguin can't sing, but he can dance. However, dancing is simply not appreciated by the other penguins, so he becomes an outcast. (The songs the penguins sung in the film were all tired pop songs and many suggested adult content--apparently to appeal to adults?). The outcast penguin learns of the existence of humans, whom he calls aliens, and eventually seeks out human contact to convince them to stop stealing the penguin's fish. He swims to San Diego, I'm guessing, is placed in a zoo wherein it is implied he slowly goes mad. But wait, he sees a little girl through the glass and starts his crazy dancing. The whole zoo crowd roars approval. The next thing we know he is back in antarctica telling the others that humans like it when penguins dance. The humans show up, the penguins dance, a montage reveals the human political debate that follows (about what? I don't know) and then the humans decide to stop interfering in the fish supply of penguins. The film ends, not nearly soon enough, and I wonder what the hell I was thinking. I still don't know. I mean, penguins don't dance, so what is the actual message: save the entertaining animals? Okay, look for your new invites.
Time away from the USA has made me wish for a few shallow things, like a decent movie theater. Singapore would seemingly promise such things, and while the theater is fine, the choice of films is severely lacking. We went out to see anything and decided that "Happy Feet" must be the lesser of all evils--if we were correct in this assessment, the world is a darker place than I'd ever feared. Such a confused little story that combined elements of a musical using pop songs of the worst kind and with a seemingly tacked on environmental message that made little to no sense. Anyway, it was nothing less than terrible. If I were in the States, the chances of my viewing "Happy Feet" would have been nil, save for an unexpected blow to the head, or under the persuasion of abductor with a weakness for animated film. In Singapore, I not only went willingly, but it was my idea.
I will tell you the story as best I can. A penguin couple hatch a penguin son. Penguin couples mate for life and they meet each other through the performance of a unique song that attracts their mate. The newly hatched penguin can't sing, but he can dance. However, dancing is simply not appreciated by the other penguins, so he becomes an outcast. (The songs the penguins sung in the film were all tired pop songs and many suggested adult content--apparently to appeal to adults?). The outcast penguin learns of the existence of humans, whom he calls aliens, and eventually seeks out human contact to convince them to stop stealing the penguin's fish. He swims to San Diego, I'm guessing, is placed in a zoo wherein it is implied he slowly goes mad. But wait, he sees a little girl through the glass and starts his crazy dancing. The whole zoo crowd roars approval. The next thing we know he is back in antarctica telling the others that humans like it when penguins dance. The humans show up, the penguins dance, a montage reveals the human political debate that follows (about what? I don't know) and then the humans decide to stop interfering in the fish supply of penguins. The film ends, not nearly soon enough, and I wonder what the hell I was thinking. I still don't know. I mean, penguins don't dance, so what is the actual message: save the entertaining animals? Okay, look for your new invites.
posted by athensinternational at 4:55 PM
2 Comments:
Once again there appears to be something you just don't understand.
Penguins are cute. Cartoon penguins are even more cute. Dancing cartoon penguins...well they just shatter the cute-o-meter.
On a not so cute note, here is an interesting article from the New Yorker (and it mentions Indonesia):
George Packer on the "War on Terror"
About the article above; some of it strikes me as correct while other parts just seem creepy. The creepy part is the underlying assumption that we are right and the rest of the world just doesn't understand that. What we need is just better propeganda. More applied social science and hip commercials on the internet.
It reminds me of a year or two ago we had a big PR push to try and convince the Iraqis that we had no intention of establishing permanent military bases in Iraq when, in fact, a better approach might have been to change the actual policy of having permanent bases in Iraq.
I obviously don't like jihadists, but there seems to be a basic assumption that just because they are very bad that our policies and intentions must be good.
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