Are we there yet? NYs resolutions

[nb I've stolen the title of this from another blog who in turn stole it from movies who stole it from kids - no specific child has been identified as the originator of the phrase but should it be trademarked  or copyrighted or have any other form of incredibly important legal protection I will unashamedly apologise, and grovel in a cowering and subservient manner appropriate for someone with no dignity or rights.  Please don't sue me]

I don't like New Years Resolutions. My behaviour suggests I must be lying as I've only ever achieved one, despite having made many.  One of the most spectacular attempts was an own-goal - not to make any New Year resolutions. 

The single success was to finish a particular play I was writing. It was a bloody awful play so I'm not sure what was achieved there. The idea was to review NYRs (see how quickly acronyms get formed? 4 lines in no less) them on my birthday in August (24th and yes I accept vouchers), which has only happened once.

The aim of them seems to be to make things better, and starts from the premise something is wrong.  While aware that the idea that nothing is wrong right now is a little ludicrous (elephants in living room analogies seem very popular right now) mostly things in my life are wrong, or less than ideal, for a reason.  So these resolutions are more of a 'are we there yet'.  Wherever there is. 

This year I will make a resolution, it will be more of a statement.  It's actually a new year's truce - I'm not giving myself a hard time.  I must be there by now, or somewhere.  So I'm here. Sod the rest of it. I must be glorious, experienced or famous enough already.

I am happy though to suggest NYRs [TM©] to people I know eg

• I must ring Sam more
• Sam's birthday is 24 August - send him a voucher
• I must ring Sam a lot less

I can tailor them, just ask.  Or if you want, you can 'be there' too.

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SamNZed's 2010 almanac - unlikely predictions you saw here first

Almanac's were very popular over 100 years ago and contained useful and exciting predictions about the coming year.

Based on inate psychic powers I have here are some predictions you can set your TIVO to in 2010

 

1    The new Dan Brown novel (working title - The Cowell Myth) will hinge on important arcane knowledge discovered by playing back Susan Boyle's music.

2    'Five fruit and veges a day' and any product with the word 'Lite' in the name will be proved to be responsible for the obesity epidemic.  Scientists will apologise and advocate returning to the thinning diet of overcooked meat, three veg (one of which must be peas), and potatoes for evening meals, and only white bread as the way of reversing the problem.  This will gain scientific support when Oprah adopts it in a one-off special TV show.

3    Gordon Brown will finally get angry at Tony Blair as he works through stage 3 of his grief at being given the British PMship to late.  During his public meltdown he'll make a Freudian slip referring to Blair as his jedi father.

4    2010 will be the first year in over a decade where Demi Moore will not have new photos of her breasts published.

5    Ronald Reagan will take another step towards formal sainthood when the US Congress designates his tomb a national monument and pilgimages encouraged.  This will clear the way to Reagan's visage appearing on Mount Rushmore. The first Reaganite bishops and priests will be annointed.

6   A video of Bill English practising being sworn in as Prime Minister will be found in a VHS being sold as surplus by the NZ Govt.

7   A new reality show where people have to live in a septic tank will be canned due to too many applicants and problems finding a place for the confessions camera.

8    TVNZ will organise a political party leaders' debate and simply forget to invite Phil Goff. 

9    The first Super Mayor of Auckland will be made an ex-officio member of the NZ Cabinet, this will be reversed when Mark Ellis wins in a write-on ballot campaign.

10   Graham Henry's long rumoured compromising pornographic video and photographic footage of the NZ Rugby Union Board engaged in an orgy will be revealed.  Dan Brown will start writing a book on 'the conspiracy of high pitched whimpering'.

11    Tom Cruise will turn out to have green scaly skin.

12    Al Queda will turn out to be working for the CIA and the UN and committed to dominating the USA and overthrowing the Constitution and most importantly taking away the right of ordinary Americans to own missile launchers. Conspiracy nutbars across the US will get to celebrate saying 'nyah nyah na nyah na'.  After several months of 'I told you so' crowing the conspiracists will develop new theories that this discovery was all fabricated by liberal media and that Al Queda, the UN and CIA really aren't co-ordinated but just a huge muddle.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Two really popular movies that need to be binned

An Emperor's new clothes moment. 

While many movies are just awful some well made films have a dimension where somehow they dress up pyschosis into family movies and somehow they do well. 

There are two older popular films which I think are disturbing and everytime they appear on TV I wonder why they continue to be shown. "They're naked I tell you!  Naked! - NO clothes, can't you see!"

1 Mrs Doubtfire

Man unable to see his kids except under supervision imitates an elderly Scottish woman and takes on housekeeping for his exwife and them.

Given there is no way it could be pulled off in any situation except where the mother was absent, hardly meeting the housekeeper, I think there is possibly a sinister subtext, probably unintended, about denial. This is actually about a sinister Trojan Horse home invasion.

Whatever the end should have been more like the 70's sicko classic Bad Ronald or some off-edge Jodie Foster film. Big reveal kids and mum run for lives into the night and Mrs Doubtfire gets run through with a pitchfork held up by Sally Field to protect herself.... closing scene she holds the kids tight sobbing as the police arrive and the dead but grimacing Mrs Doubtfire stares at them and bleeds down the pitchfork handle.

2 Sleepless in Seattle

This woman pursues a man she has never met who is on the other side of  the US using his young son on the basis she 'knows' they should be together. 

Where I come from we call that stalking and would describe her as delusional.  The end of the movie should be Meg Ryan dragged off by the FBI heavily sedated and screaming how they will always be together while Tom Hanks takes his forever traumatised son away to live in Hawaii.

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How do you find an elf? - By Juliet Lapidos - Slate Magazine

According to a poll conducted in 2007, 54 percent of Icelanders don't deny the existence of elves and 8 percent believe in them outright, although only 3 percent claim to have encountered one personally. The ability to see the huldufólk, or hidden folk, can't be learned; you're just born with it.

via slate.com

I don't need to comment on this.

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Sweden's bizarre tradition of watching Donald Duck (Kalle Anka) cartoons on Christmas Eve. - By Jeremy Stahl - Slate Magazine

via slate.com

Okay this is very weird

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Healthy Difference for Men: Coffee may help prevent Prostate Cancer - todaysthv.com | KTHV | Little Rock, AR

A study of nearly 50,000 men over 20 years shows that those who drank coffee had a 60 percent lower risk of aggressive prostate cancer.

The study shows that there was a reduction in the high grade cancers. Most men do not have the aggressive form of cancer.

The data indicates drinking coffee might even lower the risk of other types of prostate cancer. Coffee affects insulin and glucose metabolism, as well as sex hormone levels. All of them play a role in prostate cancer.

Doctors say the study suggests that caffeine is not the ideological factor for the reduction of high grade cancer. It could be hormonal or antioxidants.

The magic in the mug is not the caffeine; in fact, the research shows men benefitted even when they were drinking decaf.

Researchers emphasize it's still too early to say coffee will protect men against prostate cancer, but all indications are, it won't harm them.

via todaysthv.com

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Thank You/en - Wikimedia Foundation

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See your live comment now. Then, read about why other donors around the world support Wikipedia, or find out if your company has a corporate matching gift program.

Show your support for Wikimedia Download these buttons and banners for your website, blog or social networking page. See more Share this:		Please tell us your Wikipedia story

Wikipedia is a project of the Wikimedia Foundation. Questions or comments? Contact the Wikimedia Foundation: donate@wikimedia.org

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Retrieved from "http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Thank_You/en"

Categories: English | Fundraiser | 2009

via wikimediafoundation.org

Often I use Wikipedia instead of Google.

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Elmwood Players

Book Now! Christmas pseudo-Pantomime Celebrate Christmas by getting involved in a Christmas mystery for kids. The warmest comedy this year from the North Pole.   'Who Stole Father Christmas?' Written & directed by Sam Fisher

Synopsis

When Father Christmas vanishes along with the contents of the safe Senior Detective Constable Sergeant Inspector Kris Kringle of the North Pole Special Branch Police Constabulary is on the scene to solve the mystery.

 

By deputising the audience and singing lots of songs Kris Kringle sorts through the facts. Was it Wonky or Flippin Elf? Or Little, Littler or Oddly Elf? How about Mrs Christmas? Or the representative of the Asia Toy Company? Someone knows more than they're letting on as the blizzard has stopped any escape for the villain.

Cast:

 

Father Christmas/Oddly Elf	Tom Vavasour
Wonky Elf	Erin Williams
Flippin Elf	Sophie Rea
Mary Christmas	Holly Loughton
Busy Lee	Cushla Parker
Detective Kris Kringle	Braydon Priest
Little and Littler Elves	Emily Harrison, Georgia Mangelsdorf

Season dates: 17, 18, 19, 20 December

 

Want to find out about Auditions

Elmwood Players has an email list for notifying all interested actors about auditions. It is not limited to stage roles we sometimes get requests from film-makers, independent producers and tv/film students who all need actors for their projects.

 

Register on the Elmwood Audition list by emailing Kris: prez@elmwood-players.org.nz

 

via elmwood-players.org.nz

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Controversial church billboard - national | Stuff.co.nz

via stuff.co.nz

hmmmm

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Anne Applebaum - Anne Applebaum on devaluing humanity and hope in Copenhagen

Watching the news from Copenhagen last weekend, it wasn't hard to understand where he got that idea. Among the tens of thousands demonstrating outside the climate change summit, some were carrying giant clocks set at 10 minutes to midnight, indicating the imminent end of the world. Elsewhere, others staged a "resuscitation" of planet Earth, symbolically represented by a large collapsing balloon. Near the conference center, an installation of skeletons standing knee-deep in water made a similar point, as did numerous melting ice sculptures and a melodramatic "die-in" staged by protesters wearing white, ghost-like jumpsuits.

Danish police arrested about a thousand people on Saturday for smashing windows and burning cars, and on Sunday arrested 200 more (they were carrying gas masks and seem to have been planning to shut down the city harbor). Nevertheless, in the long run it is those peaceful demonstrators, the ones who say the end is nigh, who have the capacity to do the most psychological damage.

I'll pause here to point out that I enthusiastically support renewable energy, believe strongly in the imposition of a carbon tax and am furthermore convinced that a worldwide shift away from fossil fuels would have hugely positive geopolitical consequences, even leaving aside the environmental benefits. It's true that I'm not crazy about the Kyoto climate negotiation process, of which the Copenhagen summit is the latest stage. But I'm even more disturbed by the apocalyptic and the anti-human prejudices of the climate change movement, some of which do indeed filter down to children as young as 9.

Over the years there have been many radical statements of this latter creed. In the infamous words of a National Park Service ecologist, "We have become a plague upon ourselves and upon the Earth. . . . Until such time as Homo sapiens should decide to rejoin nature, some of us can only hope for the right virus to come along." A former leader of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals once declared that "humans have grown like a cancer; we're the biggest blight on the face of the earth." But it is a mistake to think that this is the language of only a crazy fringe.

Look, for example, at the Optimum Population Trust, a mainstream organization whose patrons include the naturalist David Attenborough, the scientist Jane Goodall and professors at Cambridge and Stanford -- and that campaigns against, well, human beings. Calling for "fewer emitters, lower emissions," the group offers members the chance to offset the pollution that they generate, merely by existing, through the purchase of family-planning devices in poor countries. Click on its PopOffsets calculator to see what I mean: It reckons that every $7 spent on family planning generates one ton fewer carbon emissions. Since the average American generates 20.6 tons of carbon annually, it will cost $144.20 -- $576.80 for a family of four -- to buy enough condoms to prevent the births of, say, 0.4 Kenyans.

The assumption behind this calculation is profoundly negative: that human beings are nothing more than machines for the production of carbon dioxide. And if we take that assumption seriously, a whole lot of other things look different, too. Weapons of mass destruction should perhaps be reconsidered, along with the flu virus: By reducing the population, they might also reduce emissions. Perhaps they should be encouraged?

Coupling all that with a firm conviction that the end of the world is nigh, you can see how homework is rendered pointless. As for hopes for the future and faith in humanity -- forget about it. But while we're at it, we might as well forget about reinventing our energy sources, too.

For while it's true that humans are often greedy, stupid and destructive, it's also true that we got to where we are at least partly thanks to human creativity, ingenuity and talent. Electricity is a miracle, an invention that has brought light and life to millions. Modern communication and transportation systems are no less extraordinary, helping to create economic growth in places where poverty and misery were the norm for centuries.

All of them depend on fossil fuels, but they don't have to: A profound change in the nature of human energy consumption is possible -- thanks to the entrepreneurship that created the Internet, the compassion that lies behind the advances in modern medicine and the scientific reasoning that sent men into space. As for nihilism and hatred of humankind, it teaches us nothing, except to give up. And we shouldn't be passing that on to our children either.

applebaumletters@washpost.com

via washingtonpost.com

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Pedant, purist or protector - reacting to badish use of England writing

When I was young I was advised that everyone is allowed to be a bore about one subject.  So in the same way I take all the advice I'm given I ignored it and I am a bore on at least 15 topics.

Today's one annoys my wife. A lot. 

And in the scheme of things ranks near the bottom of major issues facing humanity.  But this stuff does annoy me. I'm not going to even try and justify it.

 

The packaged loose leaf tea I buy has 'please open the other end' written on it.

The local mall posts a sign that says 'please use side doors due to adverse weather.'

 

I spose at least they're both trying, but do they mean please?  No.  They mean either 'you have to' or 'sorry'. 

The tea one is dumb.  While you can open the thing the wrong way you end up ripping the bag and making a mess - so they're doing this to help you.  What they mean is 'Open the other end' OR 'This end doesn't open'. Why are they saying please?  They're trying to be polite but it's more about helping us so really they need to get some mojo and take credit for an easy opening package.

 

The mall is just people trying to be too clever.  'Adverse' how about 'bad' or 'windy'?  The main issue is there's no choice either unless you want to walk quite a way.

What these turkeys mean is 'We're sorry ( & the fecking doors are badly designed by an architect who's never been here so they point the wrong way and don't work)'  so they should say 'Sorry but you'll have to use the side door because of the weather.'  Although this isn't strictly correct - it's not the weather but the doors and the orientation of the doorway. Please might be - 'please don't scale the roof, just follow the arrow.' 'please don't smash the doors, go round the side'.  Why don't they say sorry? The staff don't feel it's their fault.  Why do they say 'adverse'?  They're trying to sound correct, clever or authoritative.

 

I have better things to do now.  Next post will be on the joys of Christmas.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Facebook | Sam Fisher It's less than a week from opening night and again I find myself asking 'What have I done?'

via facebook.com

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California as an island, utopia in the shape of a skull, and other strange maps. - By Frank Jacobs - Slate Magazine

via slate.com

I really enjoyed this. No idea why.

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