Won't someone think of the children?

As an overly concerned parent of none, I am outraged and disgusted with the blatant advertisement of salacious entertainment that has been violating television screens with increasing frequency. The broadcasters have shown to have questionable understanding of what is decent and appropriate programming by allowing the advertisement to be shown even between 7pm to 9pm, when decent, law abiding and morally upright citizens sit down at the living room with their families to perhaps watch a program about healthy living and family values.

But these obtuse broadcasters would rather have healthy and decent minds polluted with filth like advertisements for child pornography.

The advertisement of which I speak of is below.



Not only does the advertisement feature a singer that that has a name of a hooker, he also looks like he belongs on a police wanted poster for convicted sexual offenders. This man, as I have later found out, has been known to make young girls weak in the knees and hang on to his every word.

On closer inspection, one finds that the entire advertisement is cunningly designed to cause the rapid and subliminal erosion of children’s moral and sexual values. It suggests through an infectious jingle and easy choreography that it is acceptable to view and indeed enjoy child pornography.

Let us first consider the purposely sexually charged lyrics. Without paying much attention one could very easily disregard the lyrics as harmless especially when sung in that catchy benign melody that disguises its darker meaning, this is obviously a devious ploy from the creators of the advertisement. Taken as it is, written on paper, one immediately notices the similarities to the script of an average pornographic video.
Indeed one need only change the words ‘Singapore’ to ‘Bitch’, ‘drum’ to ‘dick’ and ‘feet’ to ‘fuck’ to find that the lyrics matches perfectly to one of the more popular videos on the pornographic website, hornyslutsfrombehind.com.

Consider also the ‘dance’ of the pedophilic pied piper. As in the case of the lyrics it is easily dismissed as quite harmless. In fact it brings to mind other more decent and appropriate kid oriented shows such as Barney or The Wiggles which also feature simple dances for children to easily follow along. Except in the case of the advertisement the ‘dance’ conveys a hidden message.

The dance starts with cupped hands brought together at the wrist, this is the image of a flower which represents the sexual purity of children, it is also a symbol of the vagina.
The sequence continues with the hands removed from each other in opposite directions quickly, this represents the destruction of the flower or deflowering the sexual innocence of the child. The coming apart of the hands also symbolizes the vagina being breached.
Lastly, the two hands are formed into the shape of guns and several ‘shots’ are ‘fired’. Guns are widely known to be phallic symbols and the firing of the guns reflects the act of ejaculation.

The above clearly shows that the advertisement promotes the sexual violation of children. As the advertisement comes to an end, we find that it is actually in support of the Youth Olympics.

If there can be said to be any good to have come out of this, it is that it has brought to my attention, the staging of a massive event here in Singapore, of what is in essence a pedophilic rock concert where children perform ‘tricks’ while wearing figure hugging leotards to entertain a crowd.

Answer me this, how is it that it is entirely appropriate of a young lady to wear sparkling, brightly coloured, one piece swimsuits to prance on a bar but when an adult female wears frilly pink nightwear while twirling around a pole, it is suddenly too racy?

Is it because the pole is upright and the bar is not?

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Away We Go is the latest in the series of movies that feature hand drawn stylized graphics, other notable examples being Juno and (500) Days of Summer.



Let Strongbad educate you on the significance of hand drawn images in movies.

Besides the visual similarities, the movies also share many common themes among them and have all had the phrase ‘a rom-com with a difference’ appended obtrusively on a promotional picture in a newspaper at some point.

I feel like Juno exposed a niche market for quirky romantic comedies and left in its wake a pair of dauntingly big shoes to fill. This year we have Away We Go.

Pregnancy is in again and the unrealistically attractive characters of (500) Days of Summer are replaced with the more relatable John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph, in fact someone thought it would be better if John grew a beard to obscure any trace of that youthful good looks.

The movie follows the couple of Verona and Burt as they make their way across America in search of a place to settle down and raise a family, Verona six months into her pregnancy but looking like she’s in her eighth.
They having decided that it would be best to live near friends or family.

And what friends and family they have! Everyone they encounter in their journey are maladjusted, undergoing some personal tragedy or are borderline psychotics. And the strange thing is Burt and Verona are always surprised.

The disjointed plot is tremulously held together by Krasinski’s charm transposed almost wholesale from his character in The Office. Burt could easily be an older, more jaded Jim with a beard, although in some instances he is more like Dwight. Maya Rudolph is the stoic pregnant girlfriend who tolerates her clownish boyfriend with all the patience in the world while still carrying the emotional baggage of her parents death years ago. Verona is definitely not the fun, energetic, wide-eyed innocent of Juno.

Needless to say, there is a happy ending, although it might seem a little forced and stilted scene leading up to it felt more like a synopsis of everything that preceded it.

See, the main reason why Juno was a good movie was that it had a lot of heart, clichéd as that sounds. Away We Go attempts to have heart but made the mistake of removing the youthful exuberance of Juno and having the impregnator attempt at having a sense of humour. It may also be in Juno’s favour that it depicted the sweet, innocent, passionate start of a romance instead of the flickering, smoldering embers of its midpoint.

While we have established that Away We Go is no Juno, it is also certainly not (500) Days of Summer. One wonders if the latter was really an appropriate title, not only is it pointlessly clumsy (I cannot imagine what the parenthesis is for other than to make it harder to type) it is also a dreary and tedious movie. (500) Days of Winter with No Heating more like.

Tom is a pathetic loser and Summer is disinterested and cold. They do not deserve the frustratingly attractive bodies that house them, a lot like real life actually. And unless I’m really out of touch, the public opinion on Paris Hilton has not improved. How are we supposed to like these people?

At least Burt and Verona are likeable.

So Away We Go is somewhere stuck in the middle. If you are itching for this particular brand of romantic comedy, it satisfies. It maybe suffers from being a little similar to Juno, but then if you really like Juno, it’s out on DVD.

If you like to watch hopelessly attractive people with the personalities of cardboard cut outs get their heart broken, watch (500) Days of Summer just remember to skip the last 10 minutes.

Here is where the title should be

Oh yea. I had a thing on the interwebs where I post occasionally humourous essays or posts which I could then upload for all and sundry to peruse. A web-log I think it was called. My, it sure seems an eternity ago since I’ve written something.

Well let’s see.

Hmmm….

Errr…

So… do you?

I mean, nice weather we are having….

Well not exactly, I mean of course it has been a little bit like The Big Guy left the thermostat I little too high but relatively speaking it is quite nice weather we are having. It sure could be a lot worse. We could be in Iceland.

……

You know what?

If I were to ever find myself in a zombie apocalypse situation, I would much rather be bitten and turned into a zombie than to try to survive. I mean, there really isn’t much of a point in being a human except boning the remaining hot broad with breasts you can use as a bookshelf. Might as well get it over with.
Also why do you think there is always one big breasted survivor in every zombie apocalypse? Are zombies allergic to cleavage or something? Maybe zombies are confused by the irregular silhouette of a well endowed woman.

I’m tired of this make believe conversation. Moving on.

I don’t know what it is about doing nothing. The thing about doing nothing is that often you find that it is quite difficult to then not do nothing anymore. It is almost as if an inertia builds that resists any sort of force acting on it. In light of this revelation I have conceived this alteration to one of Newton’s laws.

An object that is at rest would remain at rest until a resultant force acts upon it, at which point the object would groan pathetically and turn over sideways and pull its covers over itself.
Not the most concise or catchy scientific law but accurately describes about 80% of all adolescent boys.

It’s not so much that I’m not doing anything than I am doing nothing.

I’ll let you think about that for a bit.

Done? Alright.

It’s strange living in this twilight zone, no there are no vampires but it is like living in a time bubble or a forgotten pocket of some faded old jean shorts of time. Seconds, minutes and hours lose their meaning and any passage of time is gauged more by the semi regular occurrence of hunger or hearing American Idol playing on the television in the living room. Both of which leave me feeling empty in the stomach.

I rarely have anything approaching the semblance of thought. In the past two weeks the only real thoughts I had were the drivel concerning the zombie apocalypse and how strawberry and Nutella on toast would taste. It was quite delicious actually.

Now I’m just prattling. I should stop here before I lose all self respect and start writing posts about how much my life sucks compared to everyone else. God, I hope I don’t become that.

That would be no different from being a zombie.