Tintin

I was absolutely obsessed with Tintin as a kid. My dad started reading them to me when I was 5 or 6. I remember bring copies of Tintin to more than one 1st grade show and tell and insisting they weren't comic books. They were books with pictures!

Tintin and his friends went places that were both real and a fantasy to me (The Blue Lotus was in China and Japan, The Broken Ear was in South America, The Cigars of the Pharaoh was in Egypt, Prisoners of the Sun was in Peru, etc.).


The fact that Tintin was a roving boy reporter of indefinite age traveling the globe with his talking dog, snowy and his friend, the crusty, Captain Haddock, never seemed the least bit odd to me. His adventures were thrilling to me. My dad would read them to me at night before I went to bed. Then I would look at them over and over, memorizing the pictures long before I could read any of the words. I brought them with me everywhere and my copies showed their wear (remember finding a corn flake in on once from a hurried breakfast, reading at the table or in the car).

Like lots of things we love innocently as little kids, reading Tintin now is a lot more complicated. I had no idea that it had originally been published in French in 1929 or that it was translated into over 50 languages. All I knew was that my dad had read them as a kid. He liked that there were fast cars, realistic motorcycles and adventures at sea. I liked the colorful pictures, exotic locations and cute doggy side-kick. But reading them now I can't help but feel conflicted about the colonialist racism that pervades Tintin's travels (Tintin in the Congo is a particularly creepy example. I didn't actually have it when I was little, since its offensive depiction of the Congolese is so blatant that it wasn't widely available. But I tracked it down in High School and had no idea what to think).

But like a lot of things it can be understood as something out of its own time, while not excusing its flaws.

All this is why I'm cautiously optimistic about the up-coming Tintin movie. Jamie Bell from Billy Elliot will play Tintin; Daniel Craig will be playing the villain. The first and, theoretical, second films will be directed by Steven Spielberg and produced by Peter Jackson. The first movie will be based on The Adventures of Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn.


It tells the story of how Tintin meets Captain Hadock for the first time. Hadock is a down on his luck, alcoholic, former ship captain. They end up discovering that an ancestor of the Captain left maps hidden in replicas of his ship, which lead to his hidden treasure. They don't end up setting off to get the treasure until the next book, making the sequal a resonable idea. The movie is due out in 2010 and is filming now. I am a geek for this stuff so I have high expectations. Everything about the movie seems very promising, but we will have to see how it turns out.

The Fuchsia And A Cool SIte I found

Fuchsia by CallMeNora

So ever since I went back to having brown hair I've been kind of obsessed with colors I couldn't really wear when I was a redhead. Thus the fuchsia collage you see.

As much as I love fuchsia, I'm actually more excited about the web site that I used to put this collage together. A few days ago I read about polyvore.com about on some blog. I had just written my last post and was filled with enthusiasm about my resolutions when I found this site. I immediately thought about using it for this blog. Here is how the site describes itself says:

Polyvore is a free, easy-to-use web-based application for mixing and matching images from anywhere on the web. Polyvore lets you create sets composed of individual images using an easy to use, drag and drop editor. After you have created a set, you can publish and share it with your friends and the Polyvore community.

To me, it is an easy way to import and save images I come across while looking at blogs or shopping. As I have played with the site's tools I realized it really was easy to use and if it was easy for me maybe it would be easy to just about anyone. I should also mention that I've spent months looking at collages that focus group participants did as homework before coming to speak with us. Organizing, labeling, and analyzing all of these collages! If they'd already been done on the internet, wouldn't it be easier if some/all of those collages were electronic? So I'll show it to the folks at work and see if we could learn anything or use it. Sometimes I can be such a work geek.

New Year's Resolutions

It is that time of year again: New Year's Resolution time. I've been asked if I'm making any this year. The quick and dirty answer is no. But, as always, the truth is a bit more complicated.

I don't believe in them. Invariably, people's resolutions seem to be vague and self loathing ("I will lose weight," "I will spend less money" etc). In fact, in my random internet wanderings I discovered that our government has a page on its official site devoted to common resolutions, which illustrates my point perfectly.

http://www.usa.gov/Citizen/Topics/New_Years_Resolutions.shtml

I'm all for self improvement, but most resolutions seem way too broad with any concrete steps that might actually help the person accomplish their goal.

So, rather than make a trite and disingenuous resolution, this year I will be declaring the following intentions:

-Sing Everyday. While I am not a serious crooner, singing taps into all sorts of positive little kid memories. Whenever we'd drive anywhere with my dad, my sister and I would sing things like "This land is your land," do rounds of "Row row row your boat," and the sea shanty version of "The itsy bitsy spider" (which might sound weird to you but it actually translates perfectly to a work song appropriate for hoisting sails or an anchor to). I've already made my first volume of the commuting sing-a-long mix of songs I know the words to, there will be more to come. Also, Karaoke will factor in this plan.

-Read Everyday. Now this is something I'm already kind of doing. But now I've decided that I have to read something that is not on the internet at least once a day. There are things that I simply need to unplug to experience. The first book of 2009 is "Freak: The pig-faced lady of Manchester square & other medical marvels" by Jan Bondeson, which is a medical, historical and cultural look at freaks through the ages. Very rad and starting my new year just right.


-Blog More. Now this one is certainly vague, but I've made peace with it since I was railing against vague resolutions and this is an intention. I think this is a neat forum that I'm not fully taking advantage of to express my creative juices. This has the added benefit of being writing practice that I need if I am ever going to advance my career goals.

I feel this list of intentions is both realistic and will help me have an implausibly fabulous 2009. I admit to being freaked out about the dire state of: the economy, our country's moral standing in the eyes of the rest of the world, our many alliances and military engagements, the environment, etc. But there isn't a whole lot I can do about any of that, so I might as well turn up the music and sing as loud as I can.

Happy New Year!!!!!!