things i have learnt

Curtis Got Slapped ©

2010-11-11T06:07:00.000-08:00

This must be the internet sensation of the moment. An entirely black Mother writes to the superintendant of her school district with a list of demands after her entirely black son, Curtis Bowen, is slapped in "1/4 of his face" by an entirely white teacher.

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3364241

Highlights;

"I am the sovereign mother, intellectual property owner, creator and caretaker of Curtis Bowen ©"

"Kiss my entire black ass"

‎"I must now heal my son who's (sic) very soul and innocence was slapped on October 19, 2010"

The list of demands, ranging from; making a payment whenever Curtis Bowens name is sued, 2 all expenses paid family trips to Disneyland, a personal audience with Barrack Obama, and monthly jazz, drum and bass lessons from top musicians.

But the best had to be the list of things which must never happen, which included;

mysterious deaths to avoid making payments

attempts to sabotage her jazz career

and harrassment from 'the alphabet gang'

The letter has appeared in the last couple of days so there is no overall decision on whether this is real or not... it could be part of a viral campaign or written by an 'expert troll' but I'm leaning towards it being true, and some googling has started to back this up - there is a Lisa Henry Bowen in Kansas (last seen working as an academic coach and mentor) and a friend of mine found the notary on Facebook.

Carl Tanzler's alternative sex doll

2010-05-06T04:45:00.001-07:00

Carl Tanzler (1877-1953) was a German radiologist working in America’s Key West during the early to mid 1900s. His name has since become renowned not for how he managed patients through illness but for his personal relationship with one patient - which lasted 10 years into her death.

Tanzler claimed that during his childhood his ancestor the Countess Anna Constantia von Cosel had appeared to him and shown him images of a dark haired beauty who she declared would become his true love.

Whilst working at the Marine Hospital in Key West, Florida, Tanzler met the woman whom he believed he had been shown by the Countess Anna in his visions. She was a young Cuban-American named Maria Elena Milagro de Hoyos. Tanzler met the girl (who went by the name ‘Elena’) when she was bought to his unit suffering from the then fatal disease Tubercolosis. Now deeply infatuated, Tanzler focused his efforts on finding a cure for her. However, despite his attentions, she was overcome by her turbocolosis and was to die aged just 22 in October 1931.

After her death, Elena’s family allowed him to take control of her burial. He had her preserved in formaldehyde and built her an over ground masoleum in Key West cemetary. He is said to have visited her nightly, even leaving behind a telephone in order to carry on their ‘conversations’ once he had left. In 1933, he removed her body from the tomb and finally brought her home with him.

He found that despite the formaldehyde, Elena was beginning to decompose. Tanzler fought as hard to keep up his morbid attempt at keeping her with him as he had when she was alive, and used many methods to try and preserve her body. Over time her skin was covered with wax and plaster of paris, her eyes were replaced with glass ones, her hair replaced with a wig (which had been made from some of her hair after she’d died). Her skeleton was held together with piano wire and he filled her chest and stomach cavity with rags to keep her shape. It was even claimed by some present at her autopsy that there had been a cardboard tube inserted in place of her vagina - although this can not be substantiated as it was not suggested until the story was retold in a televised account years later.

Elena was finally ‘rescued’ from this faux-life almost ten years after her death, when her sister, who had been suspicious of Tanzler’s motives, visited his house and found the ‘doll’ that her sister had become. After her ‘rescue’, Elena’s body was put on display to the public before her dignity was finally preserved and she was given a secret burial in an unmarked grave in order to prevent her body being dug back up.

Tanzler never served any jail time for his actions.

Review: Roadkill/ Joyride (1991)

2009-11-27T07:20:00.000-08:00

If there’s any ‘book’ that you can read by its cover, then it’s a horror... movie. There are basically three types: good, good-bad, and bad. Sometimes, something that looks bad turns out to be good-bad; sometimes it’s the other way round. This, essentially, is the algebra of horror. And this, essentially, was rubbish. Not rubbish in a hilariously-bad-SFX-and-ironical-script’ kind of way, but terrible as in; ‘what-was-the-actual-point’.

When I came to write this review I searched google for others, expecting my own words to have been put in a far more eloquently hilarious way than I could have put them. I was wrong. Somewhere between watching Roadkill, and writing about it, most of the reviewers thrown up my search appeared to have forgotten how truly terrible the film was. The most accurately ennui-ic reviews I read are Amazon’s ‘this film is all right (sic)’ and ‘Steve Zahn is a good and sometimes funny actor’.

There are many ways of supporting the argument that this film was, in fact, entirely pointless. For a start, the film is set up as if a potential love story. College guy talks to semi-nude college girl on the phone, college guy is aroused by his by proxy-proximity to her clunge, road trip is arranged. Cheesy-horror love-fest is established and the ending of the movie is already evident – all will die, couple will live, some how this will make up for death of everyone else. That’s not what’s going to happen? Right, so this is going to be a mould-breaking thriller of a movie? No, it’s still crap, they just couldn’t quite manage to pursue the whole love interest storyline. UH reet.

Furthering us towards the point-of-lessness is the female characters in the first place – the male characters are crap, yes. The female characters are something else. The female lead, Vanda, is she of the ‘will they… no… no they wont’ storyline, who vaguely goes missing towards the end of the film. Even less point-fueled is her friend and future room mate Charlotte, who drops in a one liner (along the lines of “aren’t you a big boy. Chortles”, leaves film, we find out later she has been kidnapped, then she arrives at the end of the film -get this- alive. Yes, alive. What is the point of the gratuitous dead girl, if we do not see her being kidnapped, and then she turns out to be alive.

Apparently the original edit of the film had romantic scenes between Vanda and each of the brothers. This might have made the film seem slightly less pointless, but then again thank God we weren’t subjected to any longer looking gratuitously at the cold, dead eyes of LeeLee Sobowski. She's about as plausible as a sex pot as a muller pot with tits.

I’d guess that the people who made this film were relying on it having enough success to warrant a sequel. One of those proper sequels with the same characters and a cinema release. Instead the straight-to-DVD next part came along 8 years later, and with Steve Zahn already having moved on to playing past it white policemen (see: national security) the bells had toled on the chances of him and Walker reprising their college boy and rebel brother roles.

Chris Colon?

2009-05-18T06:04:00.001-07:00

clipped from www.webdesignerdepot.com

2009-04-05T12:56:00.000-07:00

It Will Never Work

2009-04-05T11:20:00.000-07:00

Some people are stupid (see the first post) whilst others are ludicrous and ridiculous geniuses. I find it interesting that on the whole, stupid and genius can be hard to differentiate between.

Picking up where 'It Will Never Work' left off. Dave Gorman's new show 'Genius' is a good exploration of this, the award winning theory that there is a very thin line between stupid and genius. Genius allows members of the public to contribute to the show in order to have their inventions judged to be either 'genius' or 'not genius', by those best qualified to make that distinction, celebrities.

It Will Never Work was a magazine style program aimed at kids which every week explored a summary of ridiculous and unlikely inventions, leaving its, let's face it, largely adult audience coming up with strange ideas of their own.

Genius picks up from It Will Never Work left its viewers (no, not in a mass Phillippa Forrester inspired wank), arriving on the BBC at around the time that IWNW's target audience have developed into time-flooded students and bored post-grads. Viewers send in ideas which are then set head-to-head in a competition to win a remote control trophy.

So far the program has seen such gems as symmetrical-alising the Isle of Wight (to attract more tourists - those 'who want major attractions and symmetry from their holidays, but aren't bothered about the attractions'), and a 25 hour moisterising cream for those who want a lie in.

The highlight of the series so far has been Jonathon Pryce giving himself a cheeky snog whilst Dave Gorman begs him not to in a rather disturbed sounding voice.

ignoramus parents twine on about handless TV presenter

2009-02-25T11:17:00.000-08:00

So, apparently Ofcom received 90 complaints from parent's of children who had been subjected to the horror of a C-Beebies presenter who is missing half an arm.

It is fair to say that the BBC like to tick boxes on their 'Inclusive' check list. Eastenders is a tribute to this; when Eastenders tackles one group of 'outsiders' they really go for it. The last couple of years seeing the introduction of various mentally unbalanced characters and 2 physically disabled children. Eastender's problem is that they always start off trying to tackle an issue by making it a non-subject. They seem to come from the same mindset as those who try to avoid accusations of racism by pretending not to notice someone is black.

You can imagine them in a witness stand parroting; 'he was tall...stocky... cant think of anything else to say about him', 'yes Miss Eastender, but was he black or white?', 'I couldn't say... I didn't notice'. This is what destroyed their first attempt at introducing an Asian family and produced the oddity of Ben Mitchell. A hearing child actor who wears a hearing aid in order to play a child who apparently is not actually deaf.

Back to C Beebies presenter Cerrie Burnell. The problem, parents are squealing, is not that they are 'disabledalists' but that this woman's deformity is 'scaring' their children. The problem is that she is leading kids to ask them to many awkward question.

It isn't fear that these parent's are describing, it's ignorance, fear of the unknown and an interest in finding out why she's different. The only way that these problems can be dealt with, for adults as well as children, is for the subject to be raised. If children aren't educated about difference from an early age, if they aren't aware that yes, some people are missing parts of their bodies, then they could end up age 40 and writing whiney letters to the BBC about their kids being scared by the Seven Dwarves.

What is needed is for disability to fully enter public discourse. I often joke that the only acceptable discrimination left is against gingers but this isn't true, as it seems that political correctness falls short for many different types of people. Yes, people are scared, people fear becoming disabled them selves, they fear their own mortality, and disabled people can for some be a reminder of this. But that is ignorance. In some cases it could be said that ignorant people should be left to their own stupidity. But for the disabled there are many obstacles to living normal lives even without the attitude barrier. It is important that people are taught to respect the disabled and their needs in order to construct a more inclusive society. Disabled rights policies are not suitably upheld. It seems at the moment for every 'reasonable adjustment' there is a 'reasonable excuse'.

'This new presenter is c*** - face facts - but because she has a disability then she was given a job. [It is] positive discrimination in my books.'

So? In this case I think, so what if it is positive discrimination or box checking that for the presenter the job. It is necessary for disabled people to appear on television, especcially kids TV, as this is the best way of initiating public and private debate.

There must be thousands of disabled people out there who could be as worthy of TV work as the 'normal' presenters, and if this one lady helps to make this a possibility, and can be a role model to disabled would-be stars who may fear that they would be rejected by the media on their physical, then the BBC should be given adequate respect for appointing her.

The benefit of these ignorant complaints is that public attention has been well and truly drawn to the situation and hopefully force people to confront the issue.

I think that the time has come to elect Tom Shakespeare as prime minister. The ideas on inclusion which he suggests in his book Help and his BBC Blog are superb.