Crushed Dreams and New Hopes

On the heels of discoveries about Abraham Lincoln's watch and Shakespeare's portrait, CNN reported today that one of the great mysteries of the twentieth century has now been solved. In typically dry fashion, buried far under a story entitled "Hot dogs lead cops to burglary suspects," is an article saying that DNA testing has definitively proved that princess Anastasia Romanov died at the hands of the Bolsheviks. All I could think about was the children of the future who will watch Disney's Anastasia with the knowledge that it's all a romantic falsehood; the princess is dead and there are no such things as talking bats.



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In personal news I just ran karaoke at the Student Center. Maggie got me find a pirated version of Photoshop, so now I can do everything I want.
I listened to Beck's Modern Guilt finally and decided it's ok. Everything else is going fine. I have a revised list of birthday gifts that I need but never got:

• A black knit hat to replace the one that was stolen from me when I went to see Coraline.
• A dead animal to replace the one that disappeared.
• More Secret Chiefs 3 albums.

"You Forgot Not To Kill Me, Mummy"

Let it be known that my favorite type of commercials and billboards are, by far, public service announcements. Let it also be known that my favorite movies are horror movies. Therefore, maybe it's no surprise that I absolutely love PSAs that play out like gritty, fucked up horror movies. I love them! A prime example of this at it's best are the amazing Montana Meth ads and billboards (thanks for the tip, Ian D-T!).

Here in Northern Ireland there are a few issues that seem to warrant advertisements that trade completely on shocking your pants off. Among these are: not walking alone at night (you'll get raped!), not carrying a knife (you'll accidentally stab someone!), changing the batteries in your smoke alarm (your child will die and reprimand you!) and almost every law pertaining to driving.
Some of my favorite PSAs:

I. CAN'T. TAKE. MY. EYES. OFF. YOU!


I'm not sure why this version of the commercial is in Hebrew. You can tell it's European because the lyrics on display ("Body to body, funky to funky, we know how to rock the party") are British songwriting at it's best:




But it's not just Northern Ireland! All of Europe loves making you throw up a little while watching TV:

This comes courtesy of Denmark. Ever see the French movie Irreversable? It's kind of like this, but nobody makes a face as funny as when the lady side-ends the car.


These are from Mainland Britain, where playing in traffic is a national pastime:





Maybe if they're not surrounded by fiberglass, bikes should take longer to look for me:


Stop copying me! Stop copying me!


I couldn't find the smoke alarm one, which is easily the most quotable, but I did find Nathan Franklin's seminal short film, "The Happy Smoke Detector," which is about as disturbing: