Sleeping Beauty's flaws

My daughter Kira (age 3) is pretty much obsessed with Sleeping Beauty these days. As such, I wind up reading the story A LOT, and in many forms. And to that end, I have become a bit of a Sleeping Beauty scholar so to speak. And the more I read it the more I realize all of its horrific flaws. To wit:

1) The whole mess starts because the King and Queen decide to invite every person and fairy they can think of EXCEPT for Maleficent. She is understandably ticked off. Sure she probably would have given an ugly green or black baby blanket as a gift, but it sure would have beat a curse o' death, brought on by touching a spinning wheel.

2) When Maleficent puts the curse of death on Aurora and leaves, Meriwether (a good fairy) steps in to try to help things. She modifies the spell with s/death/sleep/ (sorry, perl creeping in, I always saw programming as a sort of witchcraft). Fine, sleep is better, but then she appends this horribly complicated condition that the spell must be broken by "love's true kiss". If I was the King I would be thinking "Geez, thanks a lot! Couldn't you have made it something like 'when the sun next rises' or 'when you smell fried bacon' or something a little less obtuse!"

3) Now that the curse is set, the curse has an expiration date of sunset on Aurora's 16th birthday. So the fairies hide her with them for 16 years. Good idea. But then they bring her BACK to the castle on the last day before the curse is up. WTF?! They couldn't wait 24 more hours?!

4) In the Disney version, While Aurora is hiding in the forest with the fairies, she is stumbled across by Prince Phillip. He decides the best way to meet her is to hide in the bushes and then reach out take her hand while she is distracted. Not the best strategy I would think. Yet, somehow she falls for him anyway.

5) Later she goes back to the castle and finds a spinning wheel. Not knowing what it is, she decides to touch the sharp spindle. Don't you think her parents or the fairies would have shown her a picture of a spinning wheel each day and say "If you ever see one of these, DON'T TOUCH IT!" Even my daughter brought up this one.

6) Seeing what has happened, rather than alert the castle and try to find help in the form of someone to kiss the princess, the fairies put everyone in the castle to sleep (I am starting to think 'sleep' is the only spell Merrywether knows. I also think they really do this to keep the King from executing them when he finds out they have screwed up again). Depending on the version, it takes anywhere from days to over 100 YEARS for anyone to find her as a result.

7) Finally Prince Phillip comes across the castle. Finding it he decides to creep around for a while and check it out. Eventually he finds the sleeping princess and decides "Cool. Sleeping girl. Perhaps I should take advantage of her state and make out with her."

8) She wakes up and thinks "Hey, there is a stranger leaning over me and kissing me while I sleep. My hero." instead of calling for the guards.

9) The prince goes to the King (now awake) and basically says "Hey, I just found your daughter sleeping and decided immediately to have my way with her. She woke up before I got very far. Can I marry her?" and the King says "Sure."

Am I wrong here? This is one of the most ill-conceived narratives I have ever read. And I thought Van Helsing was bad.

Parenting advice from my 5 year old daughter

So I get home from work and Brynna says to me "I was pretty good today. Mommy was pretty good too, but she messed up a bit. At lunch she told Kira 'no happy meal'. Then she got her a happy meal. Later she told me 'no cookies'. Later, I get cookies. I mean...WHAT'S UP WITH THAT!"

Boundries

Ok, can someone back up this idea I am trying to get across to my wife? It's this whole concept of heterosexual male boundries. Basically, it's that they EXIST. It's not just me. Heterosexual males, for the most part, try very hard to look very heterosexual. They don't 'check each other out' in the men's room (you look forward, or down, THAT'S IT!). They don't hang out naked around the campfire at all guy camping trips. It just isn't done. It's not that I am homophobic. I could care less what other guys look at. But in general heterosexual males are trained early on to go out of their way to 'not look' or not see other male nudity. She just does not believe that other guys think this way.

Now, on the other hand, all 'guys' know that all women are in fact bi-sexual, especially if they have twin sisters.

Superbowl Halftime Not Edgy Enough?

So here is an article from Tim Goodman in the SF Chronicle on 2/7, titled "Morality police threw wet blanket on broadcast". My only question is why? What was the wet blanket? Was it the fact that we did not get to see Janet Jackson trying to boost sales on an upcoming album by exposing herself? Was it the fact that we did not get to see Justin Timberlake grabbing himself and simulating humping dancers from behind? Why is this a bad thing? I am no prude, and I enjoy my share of porn. But why is that crap what makes an entertaining half time show. Paul McCartney got up there, played some popular music, had some cool staging (with the projections on stage), and was backed up by some fireworks. What more do you want? A few years ago, that's all any half time show was. The only reason for the show at all is for the network to try and get you to stay while most people are going to the bathroom or refilling their chip bowls. Mr. Goodman states the show tried to avoid any sense of controversy.Yes. And? Sounds fine to me. The only controversy I need in my SuperBowl is whether or not some player kept his toes in-bounds on some critical catch.

And no, the commercials were not as shocking either. Again, so what. I honestly could do without seeing a flatulent horse pass flaming gas on some poor woman. I chuckled some here and there.

This escalating need to shock more than the last time finally crossed the line for many viewers last year and triggered a backlash. Oh well, now you are just forced to actually do something entertaining without resorting to cheap shocks.

The SuperBowl took a few steps back in time yesterday. Thank you to all involved.

Kids photos

The kids

Caelen striking his best pose.

Here goes my first attmpt at posting some photos on this blog.

Reality backlash... why?

So I am reading yet another article on the hell of reality television and how the backlash is coming soon and I just don't think people get it (just for the record, I like Tim Goodman, I just think the end of the article misses the point of why reality TV is here). Sure, it is hip and PC to say how reality TV is some sort of unwanted scourge forced down our throats by network execs, but I think that misses the point entirely. Reality TV is not some sort of monster about to face a backlash. Reality television IS THE BACKLASH. For the last few decades the tv viewing audience has be fed a diet of crappy derivative sitcoms and even more derivative dramas. One guy puts up a court room drama and suddenly there are 10 of them out there. Hell, Law and Order and CSI have several versions of themselves alone. "News Magazine" programs do little but promote all this junk. So someone comes along and puts out something like Real World or Survivor and viewers say "Well that is different than what I have been watching" and the ratings rise. So now that is the new trend. And to all you arrogant writers out there, the viewers KNOW it is not "real". Viewers did not coin the term "reality tv", you guys did. People do not watch because they think it is "real". They watch because watching a bunch of average joes do stupid things is currently more entertaining than watching a bunch of second rate "actors" read stupid lines from bad scripts. As for the backlash, why should it come so soon? We had the sitcom and drama garbage (with the occasional M*A*S*H or Seinfeld helping us come up for air) for decades. Reality is not going anywhere until someone puts up something better. And as for the cries that this is putting 'creative' writers and professional actors out of work...GOOD! I SHOULD HOPE SO! Perhaps this purge will get a new breed to come up with better programing. (Ask HBO, finding decent actors and writing talent is not impossible). THEN, reality will give way to whatever is better.

Google IPO concerns

I was reading the article "IPO Anyone remember Pets.com? Webvan? Apparently not" (read it here if you have not yet and wish to do so). It is another article warning us that investing in Google is frought with certain doom, and I have to bring up my own take on some of the author's observations. Google is VERY different than all those dot com failures. Google is extremely profitable. Pets.com never was and never could be (there is no way to sell and ship very heavy bags of cat food for less than one could simply buy it while shopping for groceries. You get killed by the high cost comparison or the cost of all that subsidized shipping). Google should be more closely compared to Ebay, and to a lesser extent Yahoo, and the like. Second, just because Yahoo and Ebay are off their one time over inflated highs does not mean Google is destined to rise to hundreds of dollars and then plunge. Those days are over as there is no dot.com boom and economic fervor to drive the inertia of that kind of trading. Again, they will probably perform more like Ebay and Yahoo today, which is just fine as an investment. Third, Google has more life than "search engines" or other "navigation" products because it is not one of them. Google stopped being a search company a long time ago. It is an advertising company. It makes virtually all it's money on selling very successful ads (AdWords) and these ads run on thousands of sites that have NOTHING to do with search (SFGate for example). Orkut is just another way they gather profile information to be able to charge higher ad click through rates. GMail is all about targeted ads and gaining more profile info as well. So, search is just one way to bring in eyeballs and serve ads, and they need search less and less as they expand their product line. I am not trying to jump all over the article, I like much of what this columnist writes, and I do think one needs to keep a level head in investing decisions. But I do think the concern I keep hearing that "Google is the second coming of the dot.com implosion" is not as well founded as people seem to think.