Edward Snowden: fancy dancer?

This is the boy that talks and talks (and talks).

At first you think you're dealing with a high school kid, like in that movie, what was it called, Catch Me If You Can. He's sort of cute and unshaven, yet not unkempt, so he appeals to a wide spectrum of people. He comes across well.

It could be argued that he's only acting to expose a glaring social wrong that should have been addressed back in George Orwell's glory days. Like the frog in warm water that is gradually boiled, we have been anaesthetized by the religion or drug of galloping consumerism and the near-total dominance of technology. It's not that we don't care - we don't even notice any more that everything we say, think, eat, sleep or do is being monitored and manipulated ALL THE TIME.

It's just possible that somebody has to make us care.

But heroes have flaws. This guy, I swear to you - and this is purely intuitive - there's something wrong here, something "off", or at very least something so highly orchestrated that it bothers me. It takes a lot of work to appear so sincere, so articulate, so relatively casual. Not a trace of ranting or raving. But I think the truth is that he craves and even requires this sort of global attention to survive.

There is no way in the world Snowden could have done this phenomenal whistle-blowing all by himself: he would need a global network of assistants, accomplices, whatever. So why is he speaking as if he alone knew how to access a buried trove of forbidden information, taking a life-threatening risk in bringing it all to light?

Isn't he playing into the American ideal of the solitary hero, the lone cowboy who doesn't need anybody's help because needing help is WEAK?

Is he on "our side" or not? What exactly IS "our side", and why are so many right-wing pundits pounding their pulpits and denouncing him as some sort of devil-worshipping-pro-gun-control nut case?

What is it about him, besides the odd-sounding British name and the feeling he has dive-bombed down from out of nowhere? It's the eyes. They shift and shift. Is he just nervous? Why does the calm correct voice not match the face?

This is why I posted the gif, to illustrate the discrepancy. What can it mean?

My sense is that it will all come out over the next few weeks or months, and the truth will be layered and convoluted. Lots of people think he will be killed, but the truth is he wants us to think that. And when it comes to the movie deal, he can write his own cheque. Mission accomplished?

Oh, and. . . don't they say you can judge a man by the company he keeps?

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

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Can you see. . . in 3D?

And so say all of us.

What the hell IS this thing?

Book

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia





A book is a set of written, printed, illustrated, or blank sheets, made of ink, paper, parchment, or other materials, usually fastened together to hinge at one side. A single sheet within a book is called a leaf, and each side of a leaf is called a page. A set of text-filled or illustrated pages produced in electronic format is known as an electronic book, or e-book.

Books may also refer to works of literature, or a main division of such a work. In library and information science, a book is called a monograph, to distinguish it from serial periodicals such as magazines, journals or newspapers. The body of all written works including books is literature. In novels and sometimes other types of books (for example, biographies), a book may be divided into several large sections, also called books (Book 1, Book 2, Book 3, and so on). An avid reader of books is a bibliophile or colloquially, bookworm.

A shop where books are bought and sold is a bookshop or bookstore. Books can also be borrowed from libraries. Google has estimated that as of 2010, approximately 130,000,000 unique titles had been published.

So that's what's cluttering up my house.

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You say vagina, and I say va-WHAT?

I didn't write the intriguing article below - it was written by Martha Kempner for an interesting site called RH Reality Check (RH standing for reproductive health). No discussion of reproductive health would be complete without a mention of education. This  makes the article's revelation even more shocking: Anne Frank's immortal diary is being criticized and considered "inappropriate" for adolescents, not for its stark description of life under Nazi oppression but because Frank includes an accurate description of her developing adolescent genitals. This kind of insane prudery is both headspinningly ignorant and groaningly typical in a culture that really hates women's pussies. 

I'm sorry, but it does. Hates them. Women (myself included) have been boondoggled into thinking they're abnormal, weird, bad-smelling, and shouldn't have anything "down there" but a neat slit or, like a Barbie doll, nothing. We should not swell or protrude or bush out in any way. If anything does, shave it, trim it, even cut it off (and labioplasty, incorrectly referred to by plastic surgeons as "vaginal surgery", is now becoming frighteningly common as young women seek the "perfect slit", free of mess, fuss or feeling).

---

Barbie - You Bitch!
Conforming to Sociocultural Ideals of the Perfect Vagina
A Public Health Issue

If this reminds you queasily of a slightly less-drastic form of female circumcision, then - you'd be right. That is exactly what it is. Cutting off parts of ourselves because they're seen as ugly, abnormal and (worse than that) sexually taboo is nothing more than socially-sanctioned mutilation. 

What else? Though we've supposedly outgrown the Freudian dinosaur belief in the "vaginal orgasm", "vagina" has taken over as the descriptive term for everything below the belt, obscuring and even denying the locus of sexual response and enjoyment for almost all women. The vulva. The pussy. The (if you don't mind the term) cunt.

If you don't like cunt, and some don't because it's also used as a nasty name for someone we don't like, then just come up with some other term such as muff (female masturbation is sometimes called "buffin' the muffin") or jellyroll, which was blues singer Bessie Smith's favorite euphemism. As with Mae West and her infamous "is that a gun in your pocket" line, the censors didn't even know what it meant.

Not so incidentally, vulva has a very different sound and feel to it, a different texture than the clinical-sounding vagina. It's voluptuous, is what it is. It sounds like Volvo, a luxury car. It has curves and folds. Vagina always reminds me of Regina, and I sure don't want to go there.

I think people are uncomfortable with the word vulva because it sounds dusky and erotic.  I think people are uncomfortable with the IDEA of vulva because it's so much simpler for women just to have a neat little hole.

The vulva is external, and yet at the same time fairly well-hidden, like a rabbit in the bush.
Female masturbation can also be called "petting the bunny", and we know what bunnies are like: not the Playboy type, but the sort that spring around in the lush woods, coupling joyously whenever the urge strikes. Once they get started, there's just no stopping them.

Take that, you Michigan mother!

Half the People in the World Have a Vulva—Can We Please Get Over Our Fear of the Word?

by Martha Kempner, RH Reality Check

A Michigan mother has become the latest person to complain that a blunt, accurate account of female genitalia—one that uses descriptive words and proper names—is too explicit for school. It’s an argument that we’ve heard many times recently about textbooks, sex education lectures, and even political speeches, but this one is a little surprising. This time the source of the “pornographic” material is the classic book about the Holocaust, The Diary of Anne Frank. Are we really so obsessed with women’s body parts that one paragraph about them is enough to cause a panic even when it’s in a book about far more serious issues?

The book, as most people know, features the first-hand account of a young Jewish woman who was forced to hide in an attic with her family and others during World War II. A new, less edited version of the book has been released. It includes passages in which Anne explores her own body. In the passage in question, Frank writes:

Until I was eleven or twelve, I didn’t realize there was a second set of labia on the inside, since you couldn’t see them. What’s even funnier is that I thought urine came out of the clitoris…When you’re standing up, all you see from the front is hair. Between your legs there are two soft, cushiony things, also covered with hair, which press together when you’re standing, so you can’t see what’s inside. They separate when you sit down and they’re very red and quite fleshy on the inside. In the upper part, between the outer labia, there’s a fold of skin that, on second thought, looks like a kind of blister. That’s the clitoris.

The Michigan mother complained that this was far too graphic—in fact pornographic—and completely inappropriate for school. In an interview with the local Fox affiliate, she explained that her daughter brought this too her attention: “I thought it was because she was concerned about the depressing aspects surrounding Anne Frank and all that, and she said no it was because they were talking graphically about Anne Frank’s genitalia.”

Although it is 2013, and about half of the world’s population is female, our body parts seem to cause constant kerfuffles. Recently I wrote about a biology teacher in Idaho who is under investigation in part for using the word vagina during his lecture on human reproduction. (As I said at the time, I’m really not sure how one could give a lecture on human reproduction without using the word vagina, given how many roles it plays.) Last year, I wrote about a report on sex education in New York state and was particularly horrified to learn that one textbook used in New York and other states defines the vagina as the “organ that receives sperm during reproduction.” 


This description is inaccurate (it’s not an organ) and offensive (a part of the female body should not be defined exclusively in terms of what it does for men). And who can forget last summer when state Rep. Lisa Brown (D-West Bloomfield) was banned from speaking on the Michigan house floor because she used the word vagina in a speech against an anti-abortion bill.

Things get worse the more specific you get. The word vagina is often used to describe everything between a woman’s legs, because, despite the controversies surrounding the word, it’s considered more socially appropriate than accurate terms like vulva, labia, or clitoris. (Emphasis mine. This whole issue exposes the hypocrisy of supposed "openness" when referring to women's genitals: now it's almost OK to say "vagina", but the word is constantly being misused to stand in for all the sexually-responsive parts of a woman's body. The culture seems to prefer the less-threatening concept of an uncomplicated, functional tunnel.)

What struck me most about Frank’s description is just how accurate it is. Though she starts by laughing at her past ignorance, the passage provides a spot-on description of where everything is and what it looks like. She also knows all of the correct terminology (though obviously the book has been translated from the original Dutch). Frank was clearly a great writer, and her parents seem to have educated her well about her own body.

Unfortunately, many women growing up some 70 years later do not have this kind of education, at that, in my opinion, is what’s behind our obsession with female genitals. As Frank said, these parts are hidden between a woman’s legs. This makes them very different than penises and testicles, which are more visible and recognizable to most. If we don’t look at these parts and we don’t talk about them in any detail—or worse, if we insist on using nondescript or cutesy terms like “down there” and “vajayjay”—two things happen: ears perk up when you say vagina, and panic ensues if you even whisper the word clitoris.


My first reaction upon hearing this mother’s complaint was about perspective and priorities. The book starts conversations about a disgraceful chapter in human history. Kids ask questions about anti-Semitism, concentration camps, gas chambers, and the complete and utter disregard for humanity. On a personal level, they likely think about how they would react if their freedom was taken away and they had to live in hiding. How shallow do you have to be to be more worried about how they’ll react not to this horror and misery but to a description of some body parts?

In one way, the Michigan mother is right: Kids do not need to know about Anne Frank’s genitals to learn about the Holocaust, and they will likely focus disproportionately on this passage because they are in seventh grade and because they’re not hearing about this anywhere else. That said, had the passage been in any other book, be it a novel or a biology textbook, it likely never would have made it into a school in the first place.


The solution is not to ban this new version of Anne Frank’s diary. The solution is to make vulvas about as mysterious as elbows. No, I’m not suggesting that we walk around pantsless with legs splayed. I’m simply proposing that we do what we do with all other body parts: Call it by its proper name, define it clearly and accurately in school, and stop freaking out.


Half the people in the world have a vulva. Can we please get over the word already?

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Creepiest gifs you ever saw!

I gif too much. I'm just too much of a giffer in every sense. And now this new conflict comes into my life (as if I needed one): I'm finding out I pronounce the name of my beloved mini-vids wrong, or at least wrong by the reckoning of the geniuses who invented them.

I'm spozed to say "jiff", like the peanut butter. "Giff" like I've been saying it doesn't make it cuz it isn't correct. Even worse is the way I used to pronounce it, spelled-out-like: gee eye eff.

Why NOT gee eye eff? We say "pee en gee", don't we, not "ping" or "pinge"? The arguments about this on the internet are endless and truly heated. I'm going to have to come up with my own bloody name, but until then. . .

Creepiness delights me, always has, and even more as I get older and closer to my own inevitable creepage. When I found troves of Victorian automatons on YouTube, by yar, I was off to the races.

This is Nancy the life-size automaton, and she can knit and tap her foot and stuff, but who cares about all that when you have a face like this? Those shifty eyes are something to behold. Worse than human.

Was this supposed to be pleasant at one time, do you suppose? Or did people enjoy a bit of after-dinner queasiness now and again?

They don't know how to make dolls like this any more. It would be banned immediately.

This is a rabbit violinist, mighty ratty by today's standards. I wish he'd stop looking at me like that.

I call this one Hellhound.

Saving the best 'til last, this one was featured in my Dead Monk in the Middle of the Road post of a while back. I apologize for the teeny size and graininess, but it was all I could find. This astonishing artifact came from 1560 and represents a monk who looks diseased, if not demented. He seems to speak across the centuries.

But what is he saying? If we could hear his utterances from deep in the mists of antiquity, what would they be?

"Bluhbluhbluhbluhbluhbluhbluhbluhbluhbluhbluhbluhbluhbluhbluh!"

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I keep on dancin'. . .

I keep on dancin' (keep on)
Keep on doin' the jerk right now
Shake it, shake it, baby
Come on & show me how you work
Yellin' in motion
Keep on doin' the locomotion, yeah
Don't worry, little babe
Shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it, yes!
[Chorus:]
Keep on dancin' & a-prancin' (ah)
Keep on dancin' & a-prancin' (ah)
Keep on dancin' & a-prancin' (ah)
[Organ Solo]
I keep on dancin' (keep on)
Keep on doin' the jerk
Shake it, shake it, baby
Come on & show me how you work
Yellin' in motion
Keep on doin' the locomotion, yeah
Don't worry, little babe
Shake it, shake it, shake it, shake it, yes!
[Chorus:]
Keep on dancin' & a-prancin' (ah)
Keep on dancin' & a-prancin' (ah)
Keep on dancin' & a-prancin' (ah)
[Organ solo, temporarily fadin]
I keep on dancin' (keep on)
Keep on doin' the jerk right now
Shake it, shake it, baby
Come on & show me how you work
[Chorus:]
Keep on dancin' & a-prancin' (ah)
Keep on dancin' & a-prancin' (ah)
Keep on dancin' & a-prancin' (ah)
[Fade]

RIAARRRRRRWWWW! Tigers on the loose at the JDRF Walk for the Cure

Erica is transformed from a sweet little girl into a TIGER! Today we all enjoyed going to the JDRF Walk for the Cure on her sister Lauren's unstoppable Ladybugs team. It's a kid-friendly event with rock climbing, mini-golf, arcade games, clowns, balloons, more mascots than I've ever seen, and FREE hot dogs! The face-painting was something else at this event- I'll post a few more pictures below. All in all, a fun day with a great purpose: to bring us a step closer to a cure for Type 1 (juvenile) diabetes. Next year Grandma is getting HER face done.

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Lauren ROCKS at the JDRF Walk for the Cure!

Lauren ROCKS at the JDRF Walk for the Cure! This is a family event we all look forward to every year, a walk to raise funds and awareness for the Juvenile (Type 1) Diabetes Research Foundation. Lauren was diagnosed at 15 months, and here celebrates her exuberance and vitality in an impromptu dance performance onstage!

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

GO! (or: come back, Mr. Whipple - wherever you are)

(Note. I've dealt with this issue before in a previous post, but every time I see a new Charmin ad I have to update this due to their absolute genius for presenting their product in the most astonishingly offensive manner possible. And yet, the ads just go on and on. And so must I. . .)

When I first saw one of those Charmin ads - you know, the ones with the cutesie cartoon bears running behind trees to take a royal dump - I was pretty offended, but I managed to more-or-less tune it out. 

But then they escalated.

The Mama and Papa bear seemed highly concerned with Junior's wastefulness in the TP department, but the nice Charmin voiceover convinced them that with their brand, you could "use less". At the same time, Junior developed a problem: "Little bits left behind," requiring regular rectal inspection from Mama.

Little bits of what? I had to ask myself. And if it was toilet paper, why were they sticking? It didn't "bear" thinking about.

But then I noticed the annoying Baby Bear announcing at the end of the commercial, "We all go. Why not enjoy the go?"

Jesus Christ!

I wondered if I was the only person who was completely astonished by this bit of business. Characteristically, I went on an internet search and found so much shit I couldn't believe it.

Proctor and Gamble decided, in some bold and possibly idiotic move, to rip the inhibitions away from bathroom functions, to elevate urination and defecation to the lofty and even fun level they deserve. We should all be enjoying our basic bodily functions, not just getting them done so we can get on with our day. 

Interestingly enough, when I look up samples of Charmin ads on YouTube, ALL the comments are negative. NONE of them think the bears, including the shitty-assed Baby Bear, are cute. The newest ad is even more jaw-dropping: Charmin will, apparently, help you keep your underwear clean. (And this in full knowledge of the fact that these bears don't wear any clothes.)

I honestly don't know why this headspinningly offensive campaign is still on the air, but it just goes on and on, year after year, continually upping the ante, so to speak. One wonders what's next: actually watching the bears go grunt, grunt, plop? How much more explicit can these ads be?

(As an aside: why are there three colors of bear: red, blue and brown? Does the brown bear really get down to it, and will we soon be subjected to the fruits of his labours?)

Below I quote the only article I could find that deals with this embarrassing subject to any depth. But even this piece isn't complete. To kick off their cute new campaign, a few years ago Proctor and Gamble set up a sort of Defecation Expo with gigantic toilets and Disney-like washroom cubicles. Their public ambassadors, all fresh-faced and attractive, had to be people who "really, really enjoy going to the bathroom". One of their slogans was, and no, I am not making this up, "sit and squat".

The Wikipedia entry reads: 

Times Square Charmin restrooms 

In 2006, Charmin opened up public restrooms in New York City's Times Square. The location is now a new Disney Store. The convenience of having clean restrooms in Times Square during the Christmas season was a novel idea. There is currently no news of a 2013 Charmin restroom location at this time.

In case you can't quite make out the want ad above, some of the most unbelievable lines are:

"Do you enjoy going to the bathroom enough to earn $10,000.00? Charmin is conducting a national search to find five super-fun, enthusiastic people to work at the Charmin Restrooms in Times Square, NYC this holiday season. Description and Qualifications: Greet and entertain bathroom guests. Then, blog about the experience. All candidates must really, really enjoy going to the bathroom." And I can't go on, sorry.

I don't know, maybe it would be healthier for us if we DID sit around the water cooler comparing anecdotes about the quality and duration of our poo-poo experiences, ideally at lunch time. Maybe we should have little contests (judged by a rotating panel of poo monitors) to see who uses the least and most squares, and even a fragrance tester to determine whose dump smells best and worst. Might have something to do with what you ate last night. The curry, perhaps?

"Enjoy the Go"? Is Procter and Gamble's Campaign for Charmin a Bizarre Joke? (from BrandCulture Talk)

November 26, 2012 

Every once in a great while we encounter a campaign so execrable it defies belief. Charmin's "Enjoy the go" fits the bill and causes us to question whether the marketing geniuses at Procter and Gamble have lost their minds.





The campaign rhetorically asserts, "We all go. Why not enjoy the go?" Can this possibly be the Charmin brand assertion? Indeed it is. The brand embraces a path as grammatically desultory as the campaign is incomprehensible.

Here at BrandCulture Talk (with a hat tip to David Aaker) we spend a good deal of time discussing rational, emotional and self-expressive brand benefits.  Brands that lay claim only to functional benefits are subject to being quickly eclipsed by competitive offerings. Only by laying claim to emotional and self-expressive value can brands create enduring competitive advantage. Except for a product like toilet tissue.

We suffer no illusions as to the job Charmin is designed to perform. By seeking to elevate excretion and dejection to a source of pleasure, however, the campaign is at best puzzlingly risible (albeit in poor taste) and more likely, seriously unhinged. Charmin endeavors to explain, "We all go to the bathroom every day . . . especially after morning coffee. Talk about getting things going! . . . Whew, that curry was hot [steam whistle sound effect]! Bottom line, we all spend a lot of time going." We do?

How a company that is arguably the world's preeminent marketer of consumer packaged goods created, and continues to support this campaign is a mystery.  P&G has extended the campaign into social media (recent Tweet to Charmin's nearly 8,000 Twitter followers: "Anyone have a favorite game they play while 'enjoying the go?' We enjoy a certain mad avian galactic battle one"), a Facebook presence with over 325,000 "likes" (!) (recent post: "Did anyone have Charmin on their Black Friday shopping list????") and a dedicated blog that descends from the simply gross to a creepily voyeuristic "Daily peek inside the cleanest public restroom in Times Square" (although they may have rethought that one as the last "daily peek" took place in 2009). This campaign is so bad for so many reasons that the writers of Saturday Night Live would be hard-pressed to invent this madness as a parody.

And just to make this whole campaign a wee bit classier, let's add . . . Kim Kardashian a couple of "Enjoy the go" bear mascots, a Brooklyn drum corps and a ceremonial glass key to the toilet! See for yourself:

So . . . instead of furthering the devolution of the English language while mawkishly celebrating the unspeakable, wouldn't P&G be better served by dusting off an updated version of the venerable Mr. Whipple, who successfully hawked Charmin for over 20 years? Mr. Whipple cleverly extolled the functional (and actually valuable) benefit of softness through the inability for virtually anyone to resist the siren song of "squeezing the Charmin"? Like the iconic "Maytag Lonely Repairman," Mr. Whipple distinguished Charmin from competitive offerings with aplomb in more than 500 commercials, and was at one point the 3rd most recognizable American -- only behind Richard Nixon and Billy Graham. Not once did he feel compelled to mention enjoying the "go."





The late Dick Wilson, the actor who portrayed Mr. Whipple, hit upon the crux of Charmin's dilemma in a 1985 interview with the Chicago Tribune: 'What are you going to say about toilet paper? I think we handle it the best way we can." If only  P and G took his advice.

(An awful p. s., then I will truly stop. In what used to pass for morbid curiosity but is now seen as chirpy cheerleaderism, I decided to google terms which might be said to support the idea of "enjoy the go". What I came up with were terms for two psychiatric disorders: urophilia and coprophilia. This is the sort of stuff Dan Savage deals with in his ever-fascinating Savage Love column (not that I ever read it).

Sorry, folks, but this is what "enjoy the go" really means. Perhaps Proctor and Gamble had better do their homework more carefully next time.)

http://margaretgunnng.blogspot.ca/2013/04/the-glass-character-synopsis.html

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm