It took me a long time to realise that the opening notes of the Madness song Cardiac Arrest sound like a heartbeat.
Nor did I notice the clock strike midnight at the start of Danse Macabre.
If a map is a creative work …
A friend of mine was bitching years back about how the Japanese were “taking over Hawaii.”
I said it was understandable that it’d be a popular destination for Japanese tourists since it was a close to Japan as it was to the U.S.
He called me an idiot and got out a map … which clearly showed Hawaii just off the coast of Southern California.
In a handy box
Lethal Babydoll, while your friend may have been an idiot for not realizing that places in boxes on maps are not actually at that location, you are incorrect when you claim that Hawaii is as close to Japan as to the U.S. It’s distinctly closer to the U.S. The distance from San Diego to Honolulu is 4195 miles, while the distance from Tokyo to Honolulu is 6196 miles.
I once read a short story called “Carol Oneir’s 100th Dream” by Diana Wynne Jones. Years later, I was in the middle of and English Lit exam when I described a novel as ‘oneiric’ (dreamlike). “Hey, that was a pun! Cool. I wonder if there are any more of those in her stories? … Oh, right, the exam.”
When I was younger, I saw an ad for a Tshirt depicting two vultures sitting on a branch and one say’s to the other, “Patience, my ass, I’m gonna kill somethin!’” I just never understood it at all.
It was years later when, probably watching something involving vultures, that the penny dropped and I just giggled to myself for about 10 minutes. Not 'cos the joke was so funny, just my not getting it.
Just in case you don’t either, here’s why…
Vultures usually wait for things to die…
The big reveal about the last line of “Do-Re-Mi” (the “Do, a deer” song) from The Sound of Music hit me sometime in my 30’s:
“Do” is a pun not just on “doe”, a female deer, but “dough”, hence the connection with “bread”. 
:eek: :smack: D’oh, so to speak.
Its only when I recently bothered to Google it that I found out that Pink Floyd’s Piper at the Gates of Dawn takes its title from a Wind in the Willows chapter.
So I am watching Kimba the White Lion with my son, and I hear the names of two of his friends: Bucky and Dodi (sp).
BLAM! Buck (Male Deer) y and Doe (Female Deer) dy…
I will defend the Wizard. Well, sort of.
The Wizard knew that the Wicked Witch of the West had genuine magical power and that he did not. He also knew that the safety of Emerald City depended on the Witch not realizing this. Therefore, since he had no power to defend Dorothy if it came to it, but dared not be exposed as impuissant or pusillanimous, he had to send her and her fellow questers on a mission which would result in the WWoE killing them, but nonetheless still thinking him too great a power to oppose. Remember, as the Wizard does not have genuine magical knowledge, he probably doesn’t realize that he’s sending the WWoE a mystic totem she covets greatly.
That’s one interpretation. Another, of course, is that–since portions of the movie in color are all a dream–it is Dorothy’s subconcious conjuring up the obstacles in the first place.
Most worrisome of course is the erotic fixation Ms Gale seems to have had with straw. About that, I got nothing.
The Wizard could also be hoping that they’ll just give up because the quest is too difficult. It isn’t necessary that they die, just that they go away.
Well, defend him, but we agree that he’s sending them on a suicide mission.
The dumb part is it never occurred to me. How could I watch the movie where they do what he says, and then when they come back he can’t help them, and it not occur to me his request of them was so mean? He’s even got Dorothy calling him a humbug over and over - maybe because I think of ‘humbug’ as a Christmas-hating stick in the mud because of Christmas Carol. Maybe because the characters don’t react as angrily as they ought to. Maybe it’s because I’m so used to the pattern of ‘to get X, you must go on this big dangerous journey’ that I didn’t question that there was nothing to gain from it. I don’t know, but they should be screaming ‘You tried to KILL US!’ while beating him with tire irons.
There are better ways to do that. He could have even imprisoned them for a while, then released them, and it would have been nicer than what he did.
Well, yeah. I’m just justifying his doing so.
On the other hand, it could be that he expects them to succeed. Dorothy has killed one wicked witch already, and has crossed paths with another and survived. The team has shown themselves to be brave, brainy, resourceful and lucky, so he thinks they have a good chance of success.
I don’t think I posted this before, but I’m not searching for it right now.
My Wizard of Oz ‘can’t believe I didn’t catch that’ thing is that my mental image of the map of Oz was reversed. I always pictured the witch of the wests castle as being the eastern side of the map and Munchkin land as being to the west. I really don’t know why except that I have a vague recollection of seeing a map of Oz that way…though I could very well be mistaken.
Hah, I’d missed this one the first time around. Glad I’m not alone.
In my defense though, English isn’t my first language, and I had no idea “down” had another meaning.
Then some day a book I was reading mentionned a character enjoying her “down comforter” very much. I went :dubious:, thinking it was some kind of euphemism for a dildo or something :o. So I looked it up. A few minutes later, a cog went “click” and “oooooh, Phoenix down, all riiiight ! So it wasn’t Engrish after all.”
“Down” has several meanings in English. One of them is "not very happy. " Could this possibly be the meaning in down comforter? Something that cheers you up when you are not very happy? Without seeing the context it’s hard to tell.
Actually, I think Tim is full of shit on this.
I’ve seen “Hot Fuzz” about 100 times. I thought I knew just about everything about it. But my boyfriend had to point out all the Village of the Year awards visible in the background of several scenes. Somehow I’d just never seen them before.
Maps of Oz have often been printed with east and west swapped, deliberately or accidentally. I think it had something to do with a backwards projector slide that had been used in the stage plays.
Nope, from context it was clearly the blanket kind.
:smack:
And now I just got that! Even though I inspired that example in the first place.