Isn’t the English Language Great?

This is a statement of fact not a query. This a love song to that all encompassing, trade-promoting code that enables communication, commerce and chagrin (when you say something really embarrassing and people just stare at you blankly, or worse, you say something stupid and people understand and think you’re as stupid as what you’ve just said).

English is a brand of the British Isle’s inadequacies and overcompensation for small parts, like the amount of land they got out of the deal when continental drift happened. Their raft kept getting smaller and smaller. And as they watched arable land drift toward America and Africa and the icy wastelands of Russia, the pale angry people with small genitals decided that they would get their own back.

Step 1, learn to share this slighted feeling (as just recently named at the time) through the spoken word. Step 2, refine previously aforementioned word into a language. Step 3, make said language one of the most difficult languages to learn. Make words have meaning depending on their position in a sentence, make up other sentences that have no relation to those meanings. Confused? So is a Czech-y when you’re trying to explain that cats and dogs are not actually precipitating. Step 4, take this farcical mess on the road. Superimpose it on the rhythmical tongue of the uneducated savage, thrust it upon the natives and reform them so that you can borrow bits of the land you formally had, or at least your homo-ancestor with knuckles dragging.

Once civilized, the world will bear the brand of the British inadequacies. We will dilute it and bring to it such words as: babbelas (hangover), howzit (hello), moegoe (George W Bush), redonkulous, bootylicious etc. These words are wonderful, a vast improvement and make our yoke easier to bear. Just ask the people of Jackson, NY, all 1700 of them have just declared English their official language. After this much time one would think that ship had sailed... AND we know the Americans don’t really speak English, but let sleeping dogs.

This feels a bit like intellectual masturbation, so I will take a coitus hiatus.

The Greeks know best... Clash of the Titans

Everyone loves a hero… everyone except Hollywood. The insecurity of movie producers is starting to clash with the art of story telling. Thanks to focus groups and too little therapy to deal with issues with their parents, they manage to ruin one of the oldest stories told.

In 1981, it wasn’t enough that poor Perseus (and I say “poor” in a yes, fine, but not really because he’s a demi-god and all) should go face the unface-able Medusa but the producers and script writers of the original had to invent two new gods, Calibos and mommy/sister-dearest to meddle in his journey. What? Is there not enough hardship and struggle to face the Gorgons, monster siblings who included the three-headed Hydra (Medusa’s sister), the Chimera, and so on? This is obviously so concerning that present day, Perseus was hunted by Hades. I know Hades, and he isn’t concerned with a silly village or feeding off fear. Hades is happily sitting at home, lording it over the souls of the dead, with wife Persephone, who takes a holiday every year to bring us Spring. Bitter and grudging, I think not.

The tale of Perseus has been remixed with the attempted coup of the Titans, for no good reason and doesn’t do them justice. Originals gods should always be given their due respect, the Atlantians found out the hard way. The so-called Clash of the Titans, doesn’t even feature a single Titan, and the Kraken is Scandanavian.

During the latest version, gifts appear ubiquitously all over the show, which eventually aid Perseus in his quest (but its not actually a quest because focus groups must think that’s lame and they all have daddy issues, so let’s make it an act of revenge), and they couldn’t even get those right. The real Perseus never rode a Pegasus because he had winged sandals from Uncle Hermes. And Hollywood-Perseus would’ve been embarrassed should he have realized that he had been jipped. The shield is supposed to be a gift from Athena, not some crackly scorpion shell. Poor guy. To be fair though, Hollywood was too busy undermining the heathen panoply of Greek Gods to get their story straight.

Perseus, who actually dug being godly (and who wouldn’t) was actually taking the Medusa head back to the guy (Mommy’s new boyfriend who challenged him to bring the head) who had asked for it. Yes, Danae is actually alive and well in Greek mythology and not aiding Sam Worthington’s daddy issues. En route, he sees Andromeda tied to a rock, ready for sacrifice to Poseidon. And as one does when one sees a damsel in distress, takes up her cause. And they all lived happily ever after. So happily, in fact, that Heracles (better known as Hercules) is Perseus and Andromeda’s great-grandson.

I like to think that the film producers set out originally to climb a mountain of epic-ness, which went horribly awry. They had a training montage, with epic close-ups. They had an epic before shot with a mentor, followed by a crescendo in epic musical tones. Epic monsters and epic actors shielding a bastardisation of culture, story and daddy angst. I like to think this because if Clash of the Titans is actually a stab at cheap Christian propaganda, I would laugh at the irony of damning faith and belief at the altar of Dionysus.

If you’d like to know how wrong it went, click here or here for the facts.