Rainbow taken from the car as we were on the motorway between Penrith and Lancaster.
Now we discover that insane-o-cat likes to be carried around in a bag.
My Goddaughter enjoying kids TV on a very lazy Sunday morning.
Encounter with an obvious dosser-tastic youth on th train. there are many reasons to be distressed by what he was saying and wearing.
First hard frost of the season settles on Lancaster after a clear night.
So I was watching Ben 10 this morning (yes I watch childrens' television, in fact the only reason we have Sky is because my wife and I are enormous fans of animated media, live with it), and something really irked me. Part of what I see as a general malaise in childrens' television. Not all childrens' television of course, just some of it.
It is the over-dumbing down. Making nonsense when sense was so easy to achieve.
Deep breaths...
Let me explain the context of my ire. The episode in question is called "Kraken", in it a giant creature in a lake is attacking people. They discover that the creature is only trying to protect its children (eggs) and that the apparent eco-friendly mariners are stealing the eggs. At one point the leader of the 'Bad Guys' states:
"be careful with those eggs as that will be an expensive omelette"
But, of course, it won't. Fish eggs don't make omelettes in any way. Fish eggs make caviar. Now I can understand them wanting to make the joke, but they could have said "that would make the world's most expensive caviar." Same joke, only now it is also relative to the real world.
I know this is just a cartoon, I know it doesn't matter in the small scale. But it is more proof that we make things dumb, we make them cheap, and we have people thinking that fact. There are some who will never question what the TV tells them unless they don't understand it.
So if we say caviar and the kid doesn't get the joke a good number of them will either look up the information or ask, and so stimulate learning. There are always some who will not, and some have stated that "no child should be left behind", but the truth of the matter is that sometimes you have no choice. The child might not have the aspiration or the ability to keep up, does that mean we have to have a world populated by the lowest common denominator?
When I was young I loved to watch Doctor Who. In those days they made up about as much science-babble as the modern Who, but one thing they also did was use language that was rich. One of my earliest memories of looking in a dictionary was after watching an episode of the Key to Time, A Tom Baker (Fourth Doctor) story, in which a Sontaran arrives and boldly states:
"I am a member of the Sontaran Special Spacial Service"
To which the Doctor quips:
"Isn't that carrying alliteration too far?"
I had to look up the word alliteration, as I had no idea what it meant, it of course is the repeated first sound of a word, so we had SSSS. Again, I didn't quite get it, so asking my parents resulted in an explanation of who the SS were and how this joke makes a reference to that and the nature of the Sontaran's, a joke on the repeated sound being over the top and now I have some knowledge that stays lodged in my brain because I had to LEARN it.
The best way of learning, to my understanding, is discovery. You do this yourself. You are prompted to do it by things that don't make sense or you don't understand.
So there is great need, in all that we do, not to 'dumb down' but to 'raise up'
/rant
There is a war going on and it is one that we are totally missing. It is between tribes of young ladies who are recogniseable only by the adorning of war paint and re-styling of their forms to resemble toys or animation characters.
Yes it is a war between the Silver-hair Trolls (who also look somewhat like Mirage from the Incredibles) and the Oompa Loompas.
Take a look around you and you will see them.
Silver Trolls with their burnished orange skin and silver hair, attracting crowds of young males to tend to their whims as they flitter from conquest to conquest. While opposing them are the brighter orange (ochre?) Oompa Lompas with their many coloured hair and glaring eyeshadow colours that range from blue through aquamarine to green to nicely offset the tone of their skin in a garish manner, who paw for the same pups but will settle for an unknowing male that can be easily manipulated and bent into shape.
They roam in packs, sometimes they have their own subtle language systems that mimic ours but are in fact covert forms of communication intended to deceive so that they might seek out those women not yet committed to either of their toy-tastic pursuits.
Be wary of them.
And don't even get me started on the Disney Princesses...
These may be the last words that I write for I have just returned to you dear reader from the future...the not-too-distant-but-still-not-here future and what I have to tell you is horrifying in its horrifyingness.
But wait...
I have to hide...
The Twitterati may have heard me, must warn Dan Brown not to get Langdon to investigate the Googletarian orders...
So here I am waiting in a long queue to get on the Caledonian Ferries at Oban on the way over to Mull. Always try to get to the ferry terminal early. you have. higher chance of being placed to the middle front of the ferry so can get off early on the other side. added to that you an leave your vehicle and finish your final bits of shopping.
