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(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
10 September
No, not a Hollywood title of a film, conflating One Fine Day (1996) with I Don't Know What (2012, post-production), or anything else...
I'm referring to World Suicide Prevention Day* (WSPD), but, being controversial, it all does seem a bit like that Spielberg film that I could never face seeing, Saving Private Ryan:
Tom Hanks, I am sure, is fine, but not so much what is the concept (or what facts - there apparently are some - is the concept rooted in?), as what's the point of the concept? (Substitute any other industry-standard (or non-standard) screenplay-writing word for 'concept', if you object.)
Mother of four (?) can't be subjected to the announcement of the death of x of them (where x is 3 (or fewer)) on one day, I gather, so save one of them (i.e. he doesn't die), y, so his death, too, doesn't need to be announced at the same time: 'take him out of' the dangerous position in which he is, at the risk of z lives, rather than lying about whether he is dead or not.
The military, of course, always scrupulously honest, especially when (as with the Battle of Culloden (or Prestonpans, for that matter)) it comes to agreeing with the enemy where the sides will engage each other (cf. Winfrey's Last Case**), so a real bind for them to lie, if y were to have died:
How could they lie to a poor mother about whether her son is / sons are dead? Sob, sob.
Back at WSPD:
The parallel? A flurry of activity to publicize the cause, prevention and statistics of suicide on one world-wide day.
Why not a lot less, not all at once, just all the time, done properly, so that, on the 362[.25] days of the year that are not WSPD (or either side), Private Ryan gets as good a chance of getting saved then? For, aren't days*** and weeks of this kind in danger of being tokenistic, too little focused on a tiny part of the year, and no encouragement to proper funding, day in, day out?
I don't know, but when else have I had all these Tweets about suicide?: I don't mind - but don't much need - them, but couldn't they just piss off with overload and quash any compassion or understanding, when too many people wrongly think those weak who choose to end their own lives?
Requiescat in pacem
End-notes
* The name is simply wrong, in Ronseal terms.
And I type it, to check, into Google®, and Google doesn't even know what 'world suic' leads to, in its form-completion mode!
** Ripping Yarns, courtesy of Jones & Palin.
*** And I might include World Mental Health Day, because the people with an interest in it huddle (and everyone else can pretend to have been 'off the radar' or 'not to have had a signal' that day, but, never mind - there's always next year...).
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Showing posts with label Ripping Yarns. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ripping Yarns. Show all posts
Monday 10 September 2012
Monday 30 April 2012
The Dave-ings of an Arranged Mind (1)
More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2012
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
30 April
Well, let's see where this goes*:
1. Cameron is a Scottish name
2. David is a Biblical name
3. Blair is a Scottish name
4. Eric Blair (also known as George Orwell) made Barnhill, on the Isle of Jura, hame**
5. Brown actually sounds Scottish, as well as being it
6. As did John Smith, at rest on the Isle of Iona
7. In both cases, certainly with less affectation than Billy Connolly*** in Mrs Brown (1997)
8. Osborne, whose first names were originally Gideon Oliver****, first had paid employment, with the NHS, in a way reminiscent of Defoe: he had to make computer entries of the names of the dead of London****
9. In rotten Boroughs*****, votes cast by those actually dead may have exceeded those of the living
10. Which inevitably brings us, once more, to the question of Gogol and Dead Souls (1842)
11. But, in the UK, we pride ourselves on knowing The Government Inspector (1836 (revised 1842))
12. Apparently, a bit like the origins of Tomkinson's Schooldays****** (1976), Pushkin was supposed to have told Gogol an anecdote, from which Gogol then derived his play
13. Which takes us neatly to Public Schools, judges (again!), fags, and whipping-boys!
End-notes
* A little game called Thirteen Degrees of Archery.
** Although he did much work on what he came to call Nineteen Eighty-Four, it is a common misconception, amongst those who know about his connection with Jura, that he died there.
*** Were Pamela and Billy made for each other? (No, I don't mean anatomically - not even in a Ken-and-Barbie sense!) Well, one was a welder, and the other was born in the Anderston district of Glasgow, and both have disguised their natal history, by, eerily, electing to speak with the accent that really belongs to the other.
Yet for all that Billy says cock and fuck, Pamela was far more genuinely provocative, even in just a few seconds, with her well-known American Express gag. (Plus beautifully amusing in taking off the quiddities of how the news was read at that time.)
**** On both counts, according to Wikipedia®.
***** Concerning which I owe all my knowledge to Blackadder the Third (1987) (as do some students theirs of The Great War to Blackadder Goes Forth (1989).
****** Palin and Jones******* collaborating to great effect in many of the Ripping Yarns
******* Yes, Bridget and Sarah!
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)
30 April
Well, let's see where this goes*:
1. Cameron is a Scottish name
2. David is a Biblical name
3. Blair is a Scottish name
4. Eric Blair (also known as George Orwell) made Barnhill, on the Isle of Jura, hame**
5. Brown actually sounds Scottish, as well as being it
6. As did John Smith, at rest on the Isle of Iona
7. In both cases, certainly with less affectation than Billy Connolly*** in Mrs Brown (1997)
8. Osborne, whose first names were originally Gideon Oliver****, first had paid employment, with the NHS, in a way reminiscent of Defoe: he had to make computer entries of the names of the dead of London****
9. In rotten Boroughs*****, votes cast by those actually dead may have exceeded those of the living
10. Which inevitably brings us, once more, to the question of Gogol and Dead Souls (1842)
11. But, in the UK, we pride ourselves on knowing The Government Inspector (1836 (revised 1842))
12. Apparently, a bit like the origins of Tomkinson's Schooldays****** (1976), Pushkin was supposed to have told Gogol an anecdote, from which Gogol then derived his play
13. Which takes us neatly to Public Schools, judges (again!), fags, and whipping-boys!
End-notes
* A little game called Thirteen Degrees of Archery.
** Although he did much work on what he came to call Nineteen Eighty-Four, it is a common misconception, amongst those who know about his connection with Jura, that he died there.
*** Were Pamela and Billy made for each other? (No, I don't mean anatomically - not even in a Ken-and-Barbie sense!) Well, one was a welder, and the other was born in the Anderston district of Glasgow, and both have disguised their natal history, by, eerily, electing to speak with the accent that really belongs to the other.
Yet for all that Billy says cock and fuck, Pamela was far more genuinely provocative, even in just a few seconds, with her well-known American Express gag. (Plus beautifully amusing in taking off the quiddities of how the news was read at that time.)
**** On both counts, according to Wikipedia®.
***** Concerning which I owe all my knowledge to Blackadder the Third (1987) (as do some students theirs of The Great War to Blackadder Goes Forth (1989).
****** Palin and Jones******* collaborating to great effect in many of the Ripping Yarns
******* Yes, Bridget and Sarah!
If you want to Tweet, Tweet away here
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