"Who's colourless?"
"What! Whoa? That's harsh."
Two little seven-year-old girls giggled in the backseat of the car.
It was kids' silly hour, after a long day of tigers leaping, feeding kangaroos, watching crocs open their eyes, falling from 90 feet up and swinging 90 feet up on The Claw - "Oh, yeah!"
Almost Heaven is ... for my niece ... boarding The Claw while singing along to Taylor Swift's Love Story playing in the background.
A day at a theme park with cousins, aunts, uncles, parents and your best-ever friend who you knew even before you both were born because your mothers were friends.
"They knew each other when they were pregnant with us," the girls happily declare.
Swift thoughts. Smiling eyes. Gleeful shouts. But not quite fearless.
Fear didn't stop her from riding The Wipeout.
She sees this demon as we walk into Dreamworld.
Lucky she had me because no one else would've gone. I'm a cool aunt. Smug.
This is no aeroplane ride that goes around in circles I'm talking about here.
She has a moment of doubt as her mum walks off to take the other kids on tamer rides and we wait in line.
But our turn comes and she runs along the gangway and plonks into a seat with a broad grin.
"Are you OK?" - I scream as The Wipeout flips and twists and spins, rises and falls.
"NO!" she screams.
"Close your eyes!" - I scream, the whole of theme park hears it all ... I keep my eyes closed to keep the panic down.
"Are you OK?" I repeat.
"NO!" she screams.
"Hang on!" I scream, knowing the little daredevil would be just fine.
The attendant gives us a look of concern.
I ask her if she closed her eyes.
"No." No tears. No problem. Next ride.
We end the day on a playground swing except this swing, The Claw, arcs up into the wide blue yonder, swivels and dives down towards the ground from a very great height - higher than old-growth forests I think.
Better than The Wipeout, we agree.
So I'm offended, puzzled, hurt when the backseat rappers stop rapping and start talking about: colourless, overweighted, old lady?
Euphoria dies and paranoia takes hold. Who are they talking about?
"C"-"o"-"o"-"l" - that's what it stands for : colourless, overweighted, old lady.
It's an acronym the little friend had made up at school. It's a word game. Silent relief, thankfulness and amusement.
Cool doesn't mean cool ... interesting.
From Taylor Swift to gangster rap: Yo! Dawg! This Place Is Rockin' ... Yo! Dawg! This Place is Rockin'..."
No R-rated lyrics. Lot's of things to be thankful for.
Ok, here's the theory.
Rosario Dawson, this hot chick who played Mimi in the musical Rent
directed by Chris Columbus in 2005, she'll play a character called
Climate Change in a movie called Two Degrees 2 Dooms Day.
She needs a hero, of course. Who's the hero?
(Columbus directed Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
and Harry Potter and the Sourcer's Stone.
He's also produced the Night in the Museum flicks.)
So Harry Potter? The museum attendant?
Obama will do, I suppose.
But he doesn't have much time to save the girl.
But here's why he'll try....
If only there was a way. Wait!
Gamer. Mind control. Never send a man to do a boy's job.
Gamer comes out in September.
But here's the link for the trailer:
A boy controls an avatar in a first-person shooter, called Slayer,
where the avatars are real people.
Now, if children and young people were controlling the
players at Copenhagen who were deciding their future ...
they'd save the girl - wouldn't they?
But to win they'd have to beat the system ruled by the
Castles of the world (Castle is a character in Gamer
played by Dexter's Michael C Hall - interesting casting, isn't it?)
Dexter is a TV show about a serial killer who's a cop.
Game over.
Ok, here's the theory.
Rosario Dawson, this hot chick who played Mimi in the musical Rent
directed by Chris Columbus in 2005, she'll play a character called
Climate Change in a movie called Two Degrees 2 Dooms Day.
She needs a hero, of course. Who's the hero?
(Columbus directed Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets
and Harry Potter and the Sourcer's Stone.
He's also produced the Night in the Museum flicks.)
So Harry Potter? The museum attendant?
Obama will do, I suppose.
But he doesn't have much time to save the girl.
But here's why he'll try....
If only there was a way. Wait!
Gamer. Mind control. Never send a man to do a boy's job.
Gamer comes out in September.
But here's the link for the trailer:
A boy controls an avatar in a first-person shooter, called Slayer,
where the avatars are real people.
Now, if children and young people were controlling the
players at Copenhagen who were deciding their future ...
they'd save the girl - wouldn't they?
But to win they'd have to beat the system ruled by the
Castles of the world (Castle is a character in Gamer
played by Dexter's Michael C Hall - interesting casting, isn't it?)
Dexter is a TV show about a serial killer who's a cop.
Game over.
Sad. They are demolishing the chairlift at the Ekka.
Took my godson Alex last year to the Exhibition.
And the best part was the chairlift at night.
He remembers it - my dad took us on the chairlift
when I was about Alex's age too.
The traffic moves slow and redevelopment moves fast
in this damn world that destroys heritage and
memories without thought for what people love.
I was reading this blog from a 21-year-old designer named Dustin Curtis. I read it to the end.
You need to set aside a good 20 minutes to enjoy this experience - he covers a lot of ground, from behavioral science to the compatibility of creativity and large companies.
Apparently, working for a bureaucracy is no excuse, just don't take no for an answer. Easily said. Only the brave, the chosen, or the incredibly naive or stupid that way go.
I was captivated by the discovery of a designer who can write!
He's put together a compelling series of 13 pages of seemingly unrelated articles except, like Socrates, he was constructing an argument, a logic.
If you swallow his premises, you'd sign up to follow him on Twitter.
It is an experiment.
It followed a simpler language experiment he'd conducted testing the effectiveness of asking, as opposed to telling people, to follow: be forceful, just tell them to follow by clicking here.
You'll get almost 13 per cent better results if you say "You should follow me (click) here", Curtis says.
He makes this revelation in 13th chapter.
Somehow I read the last chapter first so I knew the end of the story - though I didn't realise it.
So when I read "You should follow me here" (at the bottom of his webpages), I was willful. I didn't. He was making me jump a lot of hoops here.
I wanted to know if it was worth it.
I was waiting for the pay-off - not realising that I'd already read it.
I'm the kind of person who waits until the end of the film before I make up my mind on whether it's good or whether I like it - one exception: Portrait of a Lady.
A good ending makes everything OK in my books.
But this rule doesn't apply to novels which are infuriating if you reach the end only to discover it's a dud!
Sometimes, I'll listen to a door-to-door salesman just to hear what he has to say and then I'll say no.
But sometimes I'll even say yes - this is extraordinary to anyone who thinks that actually know me.
When I was about Curtis's age, I too learned about Pavlov's dogs, in Psychology 101 - along with the fact that conformists use footpaths.
From that moment every time I was confronted by a footpath, I consciously chose my path ... sometimes the footpath (if I feel conformist) or not.
I like choice. Except when I'm standing in front of the porridge section of the supermarket looking at a trillion flavours and I just want the plain, dependable porridge.
So as a consumer I want to be surprised, I want to be entertained, I expect to benefit from the experience and I want it to work - that goes for websites or supermarkets.
So why didn't I follow Curtis on Twitter?
Don't know. I didn't chose that footpath I guess.
You should read Dustin Curtis's blog, here : http://dustincurtis.com/index.html
Following written instructions my nine-year-old nephew makes a paper toy: the Monster in a Box.
I was more of a hindrance to him - I just helped by reading out some basic rules of construction from the front of the manual.
Glue this tab to that tab with the same number - fold here etc...
He learned his ABCs at two - from a computer program.
Now, his favourite author is Roald Dahl.
"You Can't Switch The Brain Off" - Dr Michael Rich : http://www.news.com.au/couriermail/story/0,23739,25076980-5018793,00.html
http://abduzeedo.com/40-cool-paper-toys-samples
Paper art animation: Very entertaining : http://www.bitrebels.com/geek/paper-art/
