TriumphAnt

Well poop, here’s a long-held illusion shattered.

In the movie, “Birdman of Alcatraz”, convict and central figure Robert Stroud is given an enormously sympathetic portrayal by Burt Lancaster (not to mention the film-makers). It’s actually a wonderful movie, and as you watch what supposedly is based on a true story, you can’t help but wonder why this gentle bird-lover was kept in solitary for so many of his prison years, and refused parole time after time.

Recently, I saw the movie yet again on TCM (Turner Classic Movies), a network that follows each of its showings with a brief biographical or historical note. In this case, the note was to inform us that the real Robert Stroud was not exactly as portrayed by Mr Lancaster. Not even approximately as portrayed. In fact, we hear, one of the reasons he was repeatedly turned down for parole was because his attitude left a little something to be desired, including one memorable hearing where he is supposed to have told the parole board that he would appreciate a swift and positive decision because he still had some killing to do and was running out of time.

In some follow-up reading, I also found descriptions of how his original, relatively modest prison sentence of 12 years for manslaughter was ramped up, after a series of further crimes committed as a prisoner, into an eventual sentence of death and decades in solitary when he fatally stabbed a prison guard who had revoked Stroud’s visitors privileges because of a minor rule infraction.

His eventual prowess as a bird doctor was true, and he did author a textbook on avian diseases that he wrote while in prison, but even that, it seems, hid in part some less than altruistic behaviour. In the movie, we see him distilling alcohol in an effort to create sterile treatments for sick birds. But it seems the still was actually used to create a product entirely for his and other prisoners’ consumption. (Lancaster is shown getting blind drunk on “Leavenworth cocktails” in one scene, but it is presented as an emotional reaction to a grossly unfair bit of mistreatment.)

Although some of what is written about the real Stroud is couched in “it is generally believed” language, even the body of known fact paints him not at all as the gentle near-philosopher that Hollywood made him out to be in their 1962 movie, but rather as “a violent and unruly inmate and a threat to both the guards and other prisoners, [who was]… ordered [by the warden] to be held in segregation for the complete duration of his imprisonment”.

(More – where else? Here.)

Dangnabbit! Time to find another positive role model. Back to Wally, I guess.

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This recently from a blog called The Vanity Press:

“I just discovered that I can connect to the internet wirelessly from my local pub, more easily than I can from home. This won't end well.”

On the other hand, maybe it vuden’t hoyt!

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Speaking about movies, our recent family enjoyment at watching “Bride and Prejudice” led me to one of those “If you liked this, you might also like this” links at an online movie service to “I Have Found It”, another movie that offspring and I did indeed greatly enjoy. (I’m leaving out my other half not because she felt differently, but rather because she was out of town when offspring and I watched it.) Where B&P is an anglicized take on traditional Bollywood movies, IHFI is a genuine, contemporary Bollywood movie. It’s three hours long; its actors are given to breaking out in song and dance – in some cases displaying some remarkably complex choreography set in awesome settings – at seemingly random points in the movie. (For one of the song & dance sequences, the production actually shifted to the rugged grounds and parapets of a stunning old castle in the Scottish highlands – duly acknowledged with thanks in the movie’s opening credits.) And it is a lavish visual treat in screen-flooding colour.

“I Have Found It”, like “Bride and Prejudice”, has Jane Austen roots. The cover note on the packaging acknowledges “Sense and Sensibility” as its primary storyline source. It is also given to moments of high comedy – in one scene a woman is lamenting that one of her daughters has been tarred with a “bad luck” label simply because her fiancé’s body was returned home from America in a casket, with a photo of another woman in his pocket.

Later, a suitor who wants to make a successful action film before courting one of the daughters describes his plot outline. His movie will be called “Speed” and will feature a runaway train whose velocity can’t drop below a certain speed or else it will blow up and if that isn’t enough to make it nothing at all like that American “Speed” with a runaway bus, his “Speed” will feature a male lead, thus ensuring there is no danger of plagiarism. (Later, he is forced to re-tool the script to accommodate a female lead because the male lead has proven impossible to work with, but setting it on a train still means it’s a completely different movie.)

The only problem I have with watching an actual Bollywood film, where the English is subtitled below the image, is that it doesn’t take too many minutes for the sheer alien-ness of Punjabi to start to grate on my non-attuned ears. Add to this the fact that they have a puzzling tendency to dub the actors, when they are singing, with really high nasal voices. Men and women alike. Maybe the higher pitch carries more cleanly from front to back in a typical Mumbai movie house, or maybe it’s just what makes Bollywood Bollywood. But whatever mandates the sonic pitch on Bollywood movie soundtracks, I’m not yet entirely convinced that their visual lavishness is worth the aural pain.

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I’m sure you, like me, have awakened more than once from a sound sleep only to find that you are still pestered by the great questions of the Universe, such as, “Just how specific and complicated can you make the business of selling submarine sandwiches before you start to look a little ridiculous?”

Our intrepid crack blog research team recently took just that question to the Toasted Subs Franchisee Association website and…

A website exclusively for toasted subs? If that means you like the bread untoasted, do you have to take your internet browser somewhere else? Are there fillings exclusive to toasted subs that are taboo once the bread has been browned? Inquiring minds demand an answer!

And here’s something really odd about this site. In paragraph 2, we read the enthusiastic endorsement, “The TSFA firmly believes in and supports the Quiznos concept, its products and most importantly, the brand. Our goal is to protect, preserve and promote the Quiznos brand and help raise Average Unit Store Volumes (AUVs).”

Then, if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you meet this:

“This website is not associated with the Quiznos Corporation. If you are looking for the Quiznos corporation, please go to www.quiznos.com.” That’s the home page of the Quiznos Subs AND bread bowls company.

(I hope you’re not waiting for an explanation. I’m still not sure what’s going on here.)

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Air traffic control humour.

Again with the “If it’s on the internet, it must be true!... maybe” qualifier, these are presented first because they’re funny. Whether their claimed of being “actual” conversations between air traffic controllers and pilots is true or not doesn’t lessen their humour value:

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A military pilot called for a priority landing because his single-engine jet fighter was running "a bit peaked." Air Traffic Control told the fighter pilot that he was number two, behind a B-52 that had one engine shut down. "Ah," the fighter pilot remarked, "The dreaded seven-engine approach."

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Tower: "Delta 351, you have traffic at 10 o'clock, 6 miles!"
Delta 351: "Give us another hint! We have digital watches!"

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"TWA 2341, for noise abatement turn right 45 Degrees."
"Centre, we are at 35,000 feet. How much noise can we make up here?"
"Sir, have you ever heard the noise a 747 makes when it hits a 727?"
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And this classic:

Allegedly the German air controllers at Frankfurt Airport are renowned as a short-tempered lot. They, it is alleged, not only expect one to know one's gate parking location, but how to get there without any assistance from them. So it was with some amusement that we (a Pan Am 747) listened to the following exchange between Frankfurt ground control and a British Airways 747, call sign Speedbird 206.
Speedbird 206: "Frankfurt, Speedbird 206 clear of active runway."
Ground: "Speedbird 206. Taxi to gate Alpha One-Seven." The BA 747 pulled onto the main taxiway and slowed to a stop.
Ground: "Speedbird, do you not know where you are going?"
Speedbird 206: "Stand by, Ground, I'm looking up our gate location now."
Ground (with quite arrogant impatience): "Speedbird 206, have you not been to Frankfurt before?"
Speedbird 206 (coolly): "Yes, twice… but it was in 1944; it was dark,... and I didn't land."-

Several more, and related categories, here.

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Two months ago, senior bureaucrats in our department were wondering why a great many of their news releases routinely fail to receive the hoped-for coverage… or all too often any coverage at all.

Well, this was the head on a transcript I read of a recent “Media Event”:

PRINCIPAL(S)/PRINCIPAUX: Lynne Yelich, Parliamentary Secretary…; Michael Fougère, President, Saskatchewan Construction Association
SUBJECT/SUJET: [Parliamentary Secretary] Yelich makes an announcement on the Government of Canada's commitment to help employers and communities recognize youth as the workforce of the future…

“to help recognize youth as the workforce of the future”

Picture yourself as the assignment editor at, say, the Regina Leader-Post and a Media Event Advisory lands on your desk telling you that a Parliamentary Secretary will be winging in to “announce” the federal government’s “commitment” to “help recognize youth as the workforce of the future”.

Now, do you:

(a) Leap to your feet, screaming “Hold page 1! Get me re-write! Parker! Get over there and get me pictures!”

(b) Bury your head in your hands, weeping, as you realize that your just-about-to-published weeklong series of special reports on “Recognizing Youth as the Workforce of the Past” has just been made meaningless by that so much more on-the-ball, forward-looking Government of Canada communications machine?

(c) Ensure that the closest this announcement gets to your “Day Assignment” basket is the slight ripple of air above the tray as the crumpled ball of paper whirls past it en route to the wastebasket on the floor beside your desk?

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How much are we paying psychologists, anyway?

A study* published in the Journal of Applied Psychology found that employees who work in “abusive workplaces” experience “reduced satisfaction with their work”, higher levels of job stress and more tension.

Do you think?

* Nope. Not making this up: Lim, S., Cortina, L. M. [2005] Interpersonal Mistreatment in the Workplace: The Interface and Impact of General Incivility and Sexual Harassment. Journal of
Applied Psychology. Vol 90(3), 483-496.

Funny thing though, a study published in the Journal of Applied Sadism found exactly the opposite. Go figger.

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And finally, from the “Some things are their own satire” drawer:

This headline showed up in the online edition of Macleans (March 15, 2007; 21h11):

"Police arrest demonstrators after violence breaks out at anti-violence demo"

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À la prochaine.