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Marketing Wit

              I love it when an advertisement leverages off an unrelated but well-known predecessor!  Do you remember the Bigpond advertisement where a Dad tells his son about 'Emperor Nasi Goreng' and China's apparent rabbit plague when his son asks him why the Great Wall of China was built?  Well, the Powerhouse Museum has released a tongue-in-cheek advertisement promoting their most recent exhibit.  Very clever!

"Too many rabbits in China" video & image originally uploaded by blergh19 on YouTube.

"Powerhouse Museum - a parody" video & image originally uploaded by NICKBB on YouTube.

Need my Lost fix!

Ravi & I have just finished watching the whole of Season 2 of the tv series "Lost."  It was excellent!  It was a little slow at first & it kinda annoyed me that the writers seemed to be taunting the viewers with the lack of relevant information being shared around for no other reason than to artificially prolong the inevitable - solving the mystery of the island.  But the finale more than made up for the slow start!  I'm still wandering about it, recalling clues, trying to tie the loose ends together, coming up with my own theories.  Has "Lost" season 3 started yet?  I desperately need to find out what happened immediately after the finale episode blacked out!  Help...me....

Picture originally uploaded by jcroft.

Lost in Lost

Last weekend we bought the Season 1 dvd of "Lost," the American series about a group of people stranded on a strange island of big monsters, polar bears, underground capsules & 'the others.'  Since our schedules last year did not permit us to religiously watch each episode in chronological order towards the end of the 1st season, we made a vow to purchase the dvds for Season 1 & 2 (we also refrained from watching Season 2 when it screened on tv).  Did you know that Season 1 is comprised of 7 dvds, each containing 4 episodes?  Who knew the season was that long??  Anyway, the "Lost" collection joins 2 other collections we have: "Family Guy: Seasons 1-4" and the entire series of Tin-Tin (the cartoon, not the dog).

Other shows I would like to get season dvds are: Sex & the City, Grey's Anatomy, Degrassi Junior High (for old times' sake), Seinfeld & Arrested Development (shortlived, I think it was bumped after 2 seasons but the comedy was GOLD!).

Picture originally uploaded by randomdialogue.

Read unseen Seinfeld episode!

Seinfeld was one of my favourite American sitcoms so I was heartbroken a few weeks ago when I lost a Seinfeld treatment I co-wrote during my university days.  So I wrote another treatment - not the same one, but a brand new episode called "The Trophy Wife."

Download seinfeld_ep_the_trophy_wife_by_ladyclare_padua.pdf

It's more like a movie-length episode rather than a 22-minute one but if you're free to read it, I hope it makes you laugh.  Feel free to give me any feedback.  And yes, I realise they've stopped making the show.

Picture originally uploaded by amnesic kid.

What Do Babies Need Most? Milk or Cuddles?

I was watching a documentary on the ABC early this morning about Dr. Harry Harlow & his efforts to explore the depths of human emotion.  In the 1950s, it was a cold era for babies because mothers were discouraged from cuddling their babies too much, especially boys because prevailing thought was that too much touch would make boys weak, afraid &/or gay.  Harlow sought to understand the importance of touch so he conducted experiments using infant monkeys.  He constructed 2 'mothers' - 1 made of cloth (for cuddlng) & 1 made of wire (however the wire mother carried a bottle of milk) - pictured.  He discovered that the infant monkeys were drawn to the cloth mother more, even going so far as to cuddle the cloth mother & stretch their hands to reach for the bottle the wire mother had (yet still clinging to the cloth mother).  He also discovered that if the cloth mother was in a room of unknown & scary objects, the infant monkey seemed to become emboldened by the presence of the cloth mother, enough to explore its surroundings.  However, if the wire mother was in the room with the unknown & scary objects, the infant monkey cowered in the corner & cried continuously.  Not unlike the behaviour of a baby in a room full of clucking strangers without his/her mother.  Babies get very unsettled & cry until someone he/she recognises holds him/her.

Harlow wanted to explore the depths of a child's love for its mother.  He put tiny spikes on the cloth mother as well as a small hose which spewed hot steam on the infant monkey sporadically.  Each time the infant monkey was pricked by the spikes or jetted in the face with hot steam, the monkey fled.  But every single time the infant monkey always returned to the cloth mother, regardless of how many times it was hurt by it.  Harlow's research did much to help us understand how abused children always return to their abusing mother in order to receive love, whatever the cost.

Harlow discovered that the infant monkeys raised by the passive cloth mothers grew up into maladjusted adult monkeys.  They lacked the social skills to relate to other monkeys & showed no interest in mating.  Harlow forced them to mate & have infant monkeys of their own.  He found that they were indifferent mothers, sometimes abusing & killing their own babies. 

It obviously isn't enough to be a passive mother.  Children require love as well as education in order to survive as an adult in the future.  It was an insightful documentary & made me think about how I am raising Captain Booger Features.  I'm so glad that I give him plenty of hugs & kisses to the point where Captain Booger Features often says, "Mummy, get off me." Noice, noice.

Pictures originally uploaded from The Adoption History Project.

Anne Frank - The Voice of The Holocaust Victims

I happened to catch a 2-hour documentary last night at 12:30am (I know, I know, I'm very tired!  Thank God I'm working from home today!) called "Diary of Anne Frank: Echoes from the Past."  It started off as a "making of the film" & turned into a documentary about the real-life Anne Frank (Hitler's most famous victim), from her happy childhood days pre-WW2, to when she hid in an annex with her family & another family, to their capture by the Nazis, and her transportation to Auschwitz & Bergen-Belsen, where she died with her sister of Typhus.  They had interviews with her cousin who lived in Switzerland at the time (he fondly remembers that Anne had always dreamed of being a writer), her childhoos friends and even her pen pal who wondered why her pen friend stopped writing to her abruptly, only finding out later (1956) that her pen friend was actually the famous Anne Frank.  Apparently she was driving with her mother when she heard a promotion of the movie "The Diary of Anne Frank" on the radio.  She wondered if THE Anne Frank was her pen pal so she purchased the book & read it, comparing it to the letters she kept from long ago.  She cried for 3 days straight upon realising what had befallen her pen friend.  The most amazing thing about the documentary was the following quote from the voice-over: "Of the 25,000 Jews who hid in Amsterdam, 8,000 were found & killed.  More than 5 million Jews were killed during the Holocaust.  And one young girl became their voice."  I guess that's what every writer aspires to be - the voice of a cause or an element of the human condition, whether it be categorised under drama, chick lit or computer programming for dummies.  I wonder, if Anne Frank survived the concentration camps and returned to her father (the only surviving member of her family and the only survivor from the group which hid from the Nazies in the Annex), would her story have been heard?  With the same level of poignancy?  Would she have allowed her diary (with all her private thoughts) to be published for all the world to see?

Anne photo images originally uploaded by Google Images.  Photo of Anne & her sister, Margot's, grave was originally uploaded by Today in Literature.

Chocolatey Clare

I watched a documentary on the history of chocolate on SBS tonight.  Fascinating stuff.  It looked at the major chocolate events on the calendar - Christmas, St. Valentine's Day, Easter, Halloween.  I didn't know that the reason why St. Valentine is remembered by lovers everywhere is due to his opposition to Emperor Claudius II's decree that marriages not be celebrated (apparently he wanted to conscript young men to the army but an old law forbade married men to be conscripted).  For his resistance, St. Valentine was beheaded.  Emperor Nero used to hold extravagant parties whereby he would "storm" the party with chocolate - meaning, he would raise the roof of his palace & arrange for thousands upon thousands of sugary chocolate-covered almonds to be showered on the party guests.  I also didn't know that in the US, Halloween is a very important day for chocolate-makers & sellers.  In that one day, chocolate-makers & sellers make up (on average) one-fifth of their chocolate revenue for the year!  Chocolate has become synonymous with celebration.  This documentary reminded me about another documentary I saw a few weeks ago on the ABC which tracked the family who created Darrell Lea.  However, their story is far from sweet.  Monty Lea & his wife built a chocolate empire which eventually destroyed their family.  The Leas had 3 natural children & adopted three more children.  Mrs. Lea ran her family like she ran her business - efficiently.  She adopted the children from young unwed mothers who worked at the factory in order to entertain her children so she wouldn't have to.  She had a theory called "walking the dog." If you have 1 dog, you need to take it out for walks.  If you have more than 1 dog, you don't need to take it out for walks because the dogs are likely to play with each other & get their exercise that way.  With 6 children she didn't believe in reading them bedtime stories in person.  She rigged an intercom system so by bedtime, when every child was in their room and she was already settled in bed, she instructed her kids to turn it on & she would read them a bedtime story through the intercom from the comfort of her bed.  Eventually the kids rebelled.  Only 2 of their children went on to work for the business.  Eventually their dogged determination for the company to succeed sapped all the energy out of their personal relationships until they were also ruined.  The eldest son even made his own son and his brother (who had worked in the business for 40 years) redundant, citing their ineffectiveness in helping Darrell Lea prosper.  Their bitterness at his betrayal followed him to the end, when he died of leukemia a number of years later.  His brother & son refused to visit him in hospital.  But he was proud & resolute right up until the end - refusing to consider that he may have been too harsh in his treatment of his only son & younger brother.  He is dead now but Darrell Lea is still strong, churning out those chocolate bars & balls.  Almost seems like the company is cursed - sapping the energy of its founding family in order to flourish.  No-one from the immediate founding family works for Darrell Lea anymore.  Only a few of the cousins still help churning out that chocolate but there is not 1 Lea that remains on the board of directors.  Tragic.  My dad would say the story of the Leas is a classic example of what is wrong with capitalism.  Yet, how could a tiny chocolate square (that helps women all over the world maintain rubber tyre tummies) do all that? . . . .