DPchallenge | The World According to Me…

Weekly Writing Challenge: Mind the Gap | The Daily Post.

Our blogs are platforms from which we share our experiences and opinions views. For Mind the Gapchallenges, we want to hear what you think about a divisive issue. Each challenge includes a poll where you can cast your vote along with fellow Daily Post participants. After you vote, expand the topic in a blog post. Be sure to visit other participants’ posts to get some healthy discussion going.

This week’s challenge

“…Miley Cyrus, the 20-year-old singer who began her career as squeaky-clean star of the Hannah Montana television series, seems to have ditched that goody two-shoes image for good with her recent Video Music Awards (VMAs) performance. Cyrus performed with Robin Thicke wearing a nude bikini, made suggestive overtures to a foam finger, and caused legions to break down and Google twerking. Did Miley’s performance cross the line, are we making too much of it, or are we missing a chance to have a more important conversation about race and sex? You be the judge….”

miley

Well, to be honest, the music awards or almost any other similar bloated over-hyped form of ‘entertainment’ are not something that I would go out of my way to watch so long as I still had a good supply of pointed sticks to push into my eyes…but, yes, when this challenge came up, I did go and look at the clip in question online…

My first thought was that she needs to get a decent tailor and not some refugee from the Para Rubber cutting room: I mean the damn thing doesn’t even fit properly and looks more like a 1930s attempt at a incontinence nappy. If the intent was for Ms Cyrus to given the impression of being naked or close to it, then she could have gone a lot further and then, only then, perhaps have justified some of the massive outpouring of shock/horror…

My second thought was that this is all business and Ms Cyrus is an adult – if the measure of success for this exhibition was hits on various websites and possibility consequent sales of sponsors’ products, the I would assume that this diversion was wildly successful.

Thirdly I was reminded of Paul Henry’s comment, I think in response to yet another surge of Kiwi outrage over something not doubt important to those with nothing better to worry about, that ‘the people’ today seem to think that they have a moral right to be outraged.

Being on a roll with this thinking thing this afternoon, thought #4 was that all these extravaganzas are so hideously scripted and controlled that there was no way – perhaps unlike the accidental Jackson boob at the Super Bowl – that the producers and organisers of the award show – can’t really call it a ceremony after Ms Cyrus’ display – were not totally in on this from the start and thus if any one is to be held responsible, it is they…

And finally, the big missed opportunity…my fifth thought was that President Obama missed a major opportunity here: while Ms Cyrus was gyrating around the stage holding onto herself (maybe she had just over-hydrated and need ‘to go’?) he could have nuked Syria, sunk the Russian fleet (such as it is – remove the shiny paint and there’d be nothing to hold the rust together), bonked half the Senate and no one would have even whimpered…now he can’t even justify lobbing a few time-expiring missiles into another sovereign nation…

Ooops, one more thought for the Weekly Writing Challenge people: “…wearing a nude bikini…” Huh? Isn’t that just a teeny-weeny bit (clearly not polka dot) oxymoronic? She is either nude or wearing a bikini – I don’t think that you can have it both ways…

The bottom line is that the world will not end because Miley Cyrus grew up…all I want to know now is whether I can use ‘twerk’ in Scrabble…?

This is a toughie…since this popped in my inbox ~~early this morning~~ a couple of weeks ago (have been dillydallying – yes, it IS a word – over a simple thing like taking the two photos), I have been keeping an eye out as I have drifted around the house, an eye out for a few of my favourite things…well, there’s Kirk and Lulu, of course, who follow me all around the house…except for when Kirk disappeared ~~this morning~~ a morning a couple of weeks ago after breakfast: we got a possum on a couple of Sundays ago and so I think he’s kinda hopeful of getting another – I don’t know if he’s noticed yet but Lulu and Deeda have already stolen Sunday’s possum from where he buried it – tarts! – and there’s not much left of it now… (nope – Lulu was last seen with a bit of possum snout sticking out of her mouth and that was all she wrote)…

So…favourite things…I’m always rapt to acquire another book to replace one of the many that went missing or were ‘borrowed’ while I was on the move in the 80s and 90s…I now have all the Airfix Annuals again less #3 and thought it was a real coup to score a full set of the short-lived (all four!) Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine from the late 70s, complete with the posters…this was the one that, in each issue, analysed a modern (70s) science-fiction movie, one from the 60s and one from the 50s and merged themes from each into a poster in each issue….I still smile when I think of the article that tried to calculate the physical size that the Enterprise’s computer would have to be to hold all the information retrieved from it during the Original Series of Star Trek, drawing the conclusion that it would be impossible by virtue of its sheer bulk for any computer to hold that much information…meanwhile 35 years later…

I still have odds’n’sods from soldiering days…my Gerber ‘letter opener’, various bits and pieces of web gear that might be useful one day – Carmen was quick to commandeer my secateurs and folding tree saw pouches onto a belt for her forays into the Lodge’s garden/forest – and I still jealousy guard the original day park and vest webbing we developed in 1 RNZIR…oh, yes, and of course, there’s the hat collection that graces the big beam running across the study, acquired from here and there…thirty odd years of military head-dress…less the warmer stuff that has found its way into the cold weather front line of hooks by the back door…

But the thing is, I’m not really that attached to any of it…sure, I don’t want it to just be binned because each represents memories…my favourite cup when I was in Waiouru was the classic ‘cups’ canteen’ partly because it held a lot of coffee but also because some fairly brutal attrition and experimentation showed that, of all cup types, it was the absolute least likely to be stolen…I don’t think that I have any one thing (non-breathing anyway!) that I would be desperately cut up about if I were to loose it…I’d be hacked off to loose my photo collection but I’d get over it, and ditto for the book and movie library and my still growing model collection (although I am getting better and slowing down on acquisition)…