A Gift of Cranes

This young lady is collecting paper cranes to send to the people of Northern Japan whose lives have been so devastated by the events of 3-11. Please consider participating in her simple, yet so beautiful, project of human love and hope for one another.

This is your 'One Good Thing' for today...

Foul Fish

by 8RG

The infamous Courtney Stodden is apparently continuing to develop her acting bug. She's made a commercial for some company playing the role of a mermaid fished from the sea by two young men. One of those young men happens to be Asian (Peter Kim, according to the credits). You can find it with a search, I'm sure, if you want to see it.

Sadly, despite the fact that he 'gets the girl' in this sketch (or, actually, half the girl considering her fishy nether regions), his role is once again as a caricature of an Asian man living in the West. He wears nerdy glasses while he fishes off the cliff, and speaks in a heavy, halting, broken accent - repeating the phrase "I score!" several times.

References are then made to 'hooking up' in connection to 'scoring' by his fellow fisherman (played by Steven J. Robinson), just to make sure the audience is in the correct mindset for the next gag lined up to play on stereotypes. His first catch of the day is a smallish fish while the background music switches to a pseudo-Asian twang. His buddy proclaims it only an appetizer in frustration - since he is starving by now.

Oh, I see what you did there... yeah - a small fish - and all those other symbolic implications of small in reference to Asian men. It's all resolved of course when the Kim character gets a "bigger hook". I can only shake my head at such ham-fisted story lines - even in this small change commercial.

Courtney wearing a tail is then hauled onto shore so that she can flop around and prune up her face in her trademarked weird looking, non-sexy convulsions while making an overly obvious double entendre. Just more blah, blah, blah at this point. Nothing original or creative here.

This 'fish' is just old. And foul.

"Not I," said the...

by 8RG


Anyone else remember the childhood story of 'The Little Red Hen'? It's one of those parables meant to teach a lesson about moral behavior or the basic truths of life. I remember it quite well because it was included in the set of Childcraft books that I often read.

It goes roughly like this:

There was a Little Red Hen who lived on a farm with her three friends - a dog, a cat and a duck. One day she found some seeds on the ground and decided to plant them. She asked her friends if they would help her plant the seeds.

"Not I," said the Dog.
"Not I," said the Cat.
"Not I," said the Duck.

"Alright," said the Little Red Hen, "Then I will."

Later, the seeds grew into fine stalks of wheat and again the Little Red Hen approached her friends.

"Who will help me harvest the wheat?" she asks.

"Not I," said the Dog.
"Not I," said the Cat.
"Not I," said the Duck.

"Alright," said the Little Red Hen, "Then I will."

This process repeats in the same way, through having the wheat ground into flour, and then finally into using the flour to bake a fine loaf of bread. At the end, the Little Red Hen asked her friends:

"Who will help me eat this bread?"

And they responded:

"I will!" said the Dog.
"I will!" said the Cat.
"I will!" said the Duck.

But the Little Red Hen replied:

"No. I have planted the seeds, and harvested the wheat, and ground the flour and baked the bread all alone because none of you would help me. So now I will eat this bread - all by myself."

And she did.

I really don't know if anyone will get the point I am making here by bringing this old tale up. I've learned that people will feign an intense and very convenient obtuseness when it suits them to do so. They will 'play pretend' quite a lot.

"I didn't know!"
"I didn't see that!"
"I was going to, but..."

Which is, basically, "Not I!"

Unfortunately, this just means that it will take a lot longer for any of us to get the bread, if we manage to get any at all.

Apathy is the enemy.