Monday, May 14, 2007

Star Warsian Mother's Day

Recently, I re-watched Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back with a friend. She kept her silence until the dramatic scene when Luke faced Vader in a lightsaber combat.

Darth, of course, cut off Luke's arms and said, "Luke, in case you didn't understand Germanic, I'm your father." Luke's expression showed disbelief.

And my friend broke her silence, "I think that wasn't an expression of surprise."

"What do you mean?" I asked, more curious on how could she have read my narrative beforehand.

"Maybe he just felt lucky."

I frowned, "Lucky for what? Knowing that there will be a sequel?"

"No, knowing that Vader was just the father. Look, if someone ever raised a lightsaber against his own mother--believe me--she wouldn't have stopped at just cutting off a single arm," said the mother of two.

"Uhm, Happy Mother's Day," I said with a gulp.

Monday, May 07, 2007

Environmentalism Redefined

Recently, The World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Indonesia successfully demonstrated how lack of concerns can blow up things beyond normal proportions. On April 29th, 2007, WWF Indonesia and Aksara Bookstore held an environmental-awareness event for kids. One of the kids' parent wrote to a national newspaper (in Bahasa) how he had already had bad premonition about the event because the event preparation was amateurish; delays, LCD and computer not functioning, and so on.

Then finally it happened: Trying to switch video CDs, one of the crew accidentaly played an X-rated video clip. Everybody was taken aback that the video got aired for tens of seconds before the crew finally shut the computer down. By then, every single kid had watched the footage with various reactions.

Key quote:

...some kids screamed in horrors, but some others applauded.


The event was named "WWF-Aksara Goes Green." The parents, however, went red.