Mark’s Media Melange 30/09/08
The Great - Pirate Facebook
I know i’m slightly late once again, but September plays host each year to a day of piratey ramblings, on September 19th facebook launched a new language option in there settings menu of ‘English (Pirate)’.
Whilst a bit confusing to start with, its actually amazing how much of facebook can be translated into pirate slang, so the ‘wall’ becomes the ‘plank’, ‘being in a relationship’ is now ‘getting hooked’ or ‘got himself a wench’ and ‘Thursday’ is now ‘ThARRRRRsday’
Pure. Genius.
(click the picture to link to a blog all about it)
The Good - Banned Books Week
Apparently, the last week of September every year is ‘Banned Books Week.’ The week when participating libraries and bookshops all around the world either have offers on a selection of books which have previously been banned from countries, or extra large bonfires where they’ve capitalised on all the banned books which are on offer and ceremonially burnt much more than they usually would’ve!
Amongst the list of bound and printed culprits are: the ‘Harry Potter’ series, ‘Lady Chatterley’s Lover’, ‘Huckleberry Finn’, ‘The Chocolate War’ by Robert Cormier, which i can personally highly recommend, and ‘The Colour Purple’ the Pullitzer Prize Winner, by Alice Walker. Read a banned book, be a rebel!!
The Bad - Blood giving restrictions.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people knew this already, but just to spread the word to its limit, you’re disallowed from giving blood at a donation clinic in the UK (and most other countries) if you’re a man who has sex with men. Frankly, I think this is terrible and a throwback to the 1970s which has been overlooked.
Whilst I can understand that the National Blood Service don’t want to be accepting and distributing blood which is infected with HIV, I can’t see why sexually active homosexual men who know they are clean can’t give blood. (Or why men who know they are infected would give blood).
Not to mention the fact that AIDs is more widely spread amongst heterosexual people these days than homosexuals.
This is a link to the blood service’s statement on exclusion, which you are free to peruse at your whim, there’s also a large online following for revoking this exclusion on the internet, i’ll post a link to that once i’ve found it.
The Ugly - US Congress
The US Congress have rejected the proposal for the government to give the US economy a £385bn boost to try and reverse the current recession. Bush revealed that stock market losses showed a drop of 777 points, more than the first day of trading after September 11th ’01.
More detail and succinct delivery can be found here
Also interesting to note. The Independent jounalists seem to be jumping the gun slightly by addressing Bush as ‘Mr Bush’ rather than ‘President’ - don’t forget the man is still in charge of one of the most powerful countries this side of mars.
The Queen - Is Lesbianism lethal?
Miriam Margoyles explained in an interview on Radio 4 that she believes coming out to her mother caused her death. The actress, famous for roles in Harry Potter, Blackadder, Vanity Fair, and the voice of the Cadbury’s Bunny, told the presenter that she came to terms with it herself in 1967 in her late 30s, but with the benefit of hindsight understands that there are some things she could not say to some people.
Tis a bit discouraging…i didn’t want to put anyone off ‘coming out’ or being their true selves, but praps theres a lesson to be learnt that you might be happy and adjusted to who you are now, but to others it will still come as a shock :S I found the story here
