Sensei Presents: THE FASTEST BLOG IN THE WORLD!

Current time 11:20 am. Time of departure for work: 11:40. Time in which to blog? TEN MINUTES TOTAL!

(cue William Tell Overture)

The phone line was down for two days because it’s been rainy. Two of my students are going back to Turkey in a month, which means I get a little change of pace with some new students, InshaAllah. I spilled hot coffee on my foot in a most novel way which I don’t have time to type up at the moment. I have two bruises on my right knee, a Fajr bruise and an Asr bruise. At Fajr I (sleepily) banged my knee while bringing my foot UP to the sink for wudu. At Asr I (sleepily again) banged it on the way OUT of the sink. North and South bruises. All I need is East and West to complete the look.

Aaack! Five minutes left! What DOES one type in under five minutes? A vignette. Here I sit in a pastel green shalwar qameez (it was a gift, the khandaan is always gifting me with pastels…hmmph) drinking non-Turkish coffee. There are oly two kinds of coffee you know, Turkish and non-Turkish. To the North of me is the ironing board, to the East, a pile of books and CD’s I pretend to use (only the video games really are). To the south, a dirty dining table covered in grammar books and flash cards and lessons. Apparently my briefcase has suffered some sort of local explosion and its contents were scattered all over the place. Or maybe I’m just a slob. The world will never know. Quiet, Aniraz. To the West is the refrigerator. Lotta good that does me, it still has the same stuff in it it had two months ago, just condiments and 60 pounds of restaurant grade mozzarella cheese. They ran out of storage space at Chez Daddy. Time up! Here’s Thursday’s blog too.

***Thursday's Blog***

For the first time in a long time I sat down and watched afternoon cartoons today on K-World (South African kid TV). All I can say is, cartoons ain’t what they used to be. Case in point:

The Miss Mallard Mysteries: A bunch of ducks with shirts and no pants solving mysteries. Miss Mallard appears to be an indirect rip-off of Ms.Marple, the famous fluffy old British lady detective by Agatha Christie. In today’s episode, Ms.Mallard and her nephew go scuba diving in the Great Barrier Reef. While scuba diving, Ms.Mallard notices that an entire section of the coral reef is dead, and warm to the touch. She swims back up the boat (after narrowly escaping a shark) and tells her nephew of her findings. Together they go off to find their friend who’s a marine biologist, the duck-version of Jacque Cousteau (sp?). He brings his boat and crew, and they all dive down together to check it out.

While down there, they find a metal gear (hehe..Metal Gear. Snake? Snake? Snake!) with a company name on it and at this point in the episode, it is assumed [by unassuming viewers like me] that Ms.Mallard is an environmentally conscientious duck and this cartoon has an environmentally-friendly theme, not unlike Captain Planet. (the dweeb)

They swim back up to the boat to share their discovery, but while Ms.Mallard is climbing into the boat the gear is dropped back into the water. So she dives in by herself to retrieve it, and then the same shark chases her again. She doesn’t get the gear, but one of the shark’s teeth does fall out and Ms.Mallard brings that up with her instead. She hands it to her nephew and says, What do you think of this? And the nephew of course goes, Why, it’s plastic! (Duh, a plastic shark. Why didn’t I think of that?)

So the nephew is told to get on the internet to find whatever company in Australia makes…plastic sharks. (Boy, you can find anything on the internet these days!) In the mean time, Ms.Mallard and Duck Cousteau go down to the reef yet again, and while there, inexplicably get sucked into a vortex, which leads into an underground city, Duckopolis. It is learned (after about thirty seconds of investigation) that Duckopolis is ruled …not by an evil industrialist whose company is killing the reef with pollution, nor a profiteer who’s selling off the reef to tourists, but the evil Dr.Decoy whose plan is… drum roll please… to take over the world by destroying all the barrier reefs.

One thing leads to another, and Duckopolis collapses, everyone swims to safety where the police boats are waiting. The evil Dr.Decoy is arrested and we all live happily ever after. Yay.

I know that cartoons are made for children, I just wasn’t aware that they were also written by children. Sheesh. Now you say, Abez, you non-genius, if you want intelligent programming, why are you watching kid shows? You know, there are shows for really young kids that are done well enough for me to watch. Like Little Bill, and Sesame Street. They’re both meant for six-year olds, but at least they’re not an insult to your intelligence. (unlike Barney, :::shudders:::)

You know, back in my day, the ThunderCats and the SilverHawks and GI Joe and the Transformers battled absolute evil to save the world/galaxy/universe/dimension. And if I remember correctly, they were decently written and animated according to the standards of the time. Even before animation was good, there were still well-written cartoons like George of the Jungle and SuperChicken, even Bugs Bunny, cartoons that had the cheeky sense to poke fun at themselves and throw in some jokes that kids weren’t meant to get. (Gotta love the Biker Mice from Mars, hehe)

There are still good cartoons now, like the CGI Transformers Series (can’t remember what it’s called), Batman, Superman, and for comedy the Angry Beavers do a pretty good job. And Tick! How could I forget Tick? Nuts, even Spongebob Squarepants has more crea
tive writing put into his porous, yellow toe than all the cartoons I watched today: Kong (as in Kong, King Kong), Billy the Cat, Ms.Mallard Mysteries.

Now I’ve aired a bit of my brain that perhaps shouldn’t be aired.

Yeah, I’m a grown-up and teacher, but I still like my cartoons! (and video games, and novelty toys from gumball machines and sugary breakfast cereals…)

Hmmph!

Ps: One new pic on the fotolog.

(ThunderCats, HoooOOOOooooOOO!)

posted by Abez @ 7/11/2003 04:02:00 PM