Censorship and media hype

Tourism Australia has recently released what I think is an inspired TV ad marketing the many pleasures of Australia to potential tourists. When I first saw it I got so homesick it was ridiculous and it has just the right blend of cliched images of "Awstraylya" and authentic humour to satisfy the most eager visitor wannabe. I particularly love the images from Bronte pool as the waves come blasting up over the edge. Just perfect.


Snapshot from their website

Whether it is a fiendishly clever marketing ploy or the world has truly gone mad, it appears as if both the UK and Canada find this ad unacceptable or offensive in some manner. It's been banned from TV in the UK for using the word bloody and will be restricted in Canada for using the word hell and for showing a beer(with no brand).

To be fair to the CBC they are only going to be restricting it during family programming timeslots Be The Creature and The Wonderful World of Disney, which air late Sunday afternoon. And it also won't be allowed in family Easter specials. Which I guess I can agree with in theory, however it does make me wonder what is allowed to be aired during those programs. Is it OK to encourage the kiddies to become nice little consumers and pester their parents for the latest use-once-then-move-on fad toys? Is it OK for them to see ads promoting in nice bright colours the sorts of fast- and processed-foods that are going to lead to them becoming part of the obesity culture? On the other hand for the rest of the timeslots when the ad will be allowed to show, we're not going to be able to see the part where some bloke offers us a beer because "...implied unbranded alcohol consumption (a part-empty beer glass) is unacceptable,". That's just bloody ridiculous.

The UK censors take the cake though, "bloody" is apparently too risque for their delicate tastes. This coming from that wonderful land that has inflicted upon the world such luminaries of taste and decorum as Benny Hill, The Two Ronnies and Little Britain. Not to mention the strangely long lived trainwrecks that are Coronation Street and East Enders. C'mon. Pot please see the kettle, he's calling you and he's got a generic unlabelled beer for you.

All kudos to Tourism Australia though who are riding the extra PR wave with enthusiasm. Controversy, no matter how silly, encourages more exposure and they've probably got millions of dollars of free publicity out of the whole thing. It's almost enough to make me wonder why the bloody hell I'm wandering around a city with a foot of snow on the ground. Almost :-)

Bucketing down

I reckon there's been at least 6 or 8 inches of snow fall in the last 24 hours. I'm certain of the fact that this is bad news for anyone out driving on the roads because I was out there in the car earlier today and there's no way I'm leaving the house again until the graders have taken a couple of thousand tons of snow and moved them so that they're not in my way anymore. The only thing worse than this much snow on the roads is freezing rain so thank heavens for small mercies! So far this is taking the cake as the biggest dump of snow in Edmonton that I've experienced so far, even the native Edmontonians are a little surprised. Our balcony snowman is looking a little worse for wear.

Plenty of fresh white stuff

Curling

Last weekend I had a chance to do some curling with the folks at Telus for a team building evening. For those of you who haven't rabidly followed the Scott Tournament of Hearts (women's nationals) or sat glued to the telly when the Briar is on (men's nationals), curling is a national obsession in Canada not far behind hockey (all hockey in Canda is ice hockey, if you're playing on a grass pitch - unlikely - it's called field hockey). Like hockey it's one of those sports that looks like fun but is a little difficult to actually just go out and play, more so with hockey because of all the equipment like skates and pads and sticks etc. and the fact that you need to be able to skate backwards which I absolutely cannot do.

Curling on the other hand seems to be one of those sports that you can continue to play right up until you kick the bucket or break a hip, whichever one comes first. And it looks easy. Just throw a rock down the ice, brush the ice in front of it when it's in motion and try and get closest to the button. Kind of like lawn bowls on ice. Well it looks easy on TV. In reality it's really actually a lot of fun, just like lawn bowls, but also quite energetic, sweeping the broom in front of the moving rock is not as simple as it sounds and takes a lot of energy as well. As for being able to keep the right amount of weight on the rock as you push it down the ice and impart just the right amount of spin, well it's obviously one of those things that's easy to learn and nigh on impossible to master.

So I am now a curler, in that I have made it out of the hack (the foot blocks that you push off from) wihout falling over too much and landed at least two rocks approximately where I wanted them to go, which for a first time out is not too bad out of about 16 or 20 rocks thrown. And I want to try it again. Which is always a good sign for a sport if after one try at it you think you can do better next time round and also think that you're going to enjoy the process of learning how.

Book signing

I attended my first ever book signing on the weekend which surprised me for a number of reasons. Firstly I am a book fiend (ask anyone) and often get fixated on particular authors, desperately searching the bookstores trying to track down that hard to get out of print copy of one of their early novels. For this reason alone I should have been to at least one book signing by one of these people whose output I adore so much. Secondly I often see notices in bookstores (I spend a lot of time in bookstores OK!) for book signings by authors I know of, and never seem to manage to get to the event. Thirdly, I spend a lot of time in bookstores and surely would have stumbled across one even inadvertently at some stage, but apparently not. Fourthly this book signing was not only by someone I knew and am now related to but Ruth is also the only author I know personally who has published a book, in fact this is her second. I have to qualify this by saying that I only know one other author personally and he's still finishing his magnum opus.

It was a very informal gathering, Ruth signing books (A Cottage Clue) for people as they arrived and all of the proceeds were donated to the Alberta Council for the Aged which was a great idea as well. I got one for us and another for Mum and Dad to send home. I had the luck to get the chair across from her at the signing table to take some photos for posterity and am really happy with how they turned out.


Ruth Maclennan


A Cottage Clue

There's another photo that I just love that I haven't managed to upload yet but will do so later on tonight. I am also going to have to make it to some more book signings in the future, especially now that I am on the right continent to get a few more chances to see some of my favourite authors.

UPDATE:

Hands

All about the food

Weekends seem to bring out the best in us food wise - we make better food, we enjoy it more and subsequently I end up taking a lot more pictures of food on the weekends. Especially when it's cold outside and you can see the steam rising off the newly baked yums. This morning we decided to pull out Anne's excellent popover recipe that we first sampled at their place in LA on the way through from Australia to Canada. We woke up a bit jetlagged and the scent of popovers emanating from their kitchen is still a vivid memory of ours to this day. Such a simple thing to bring such incredible satisfaction and well worth the mouth-watering wait for them to arrive still hot in the muffin pan.

Popovers

Texture

I just recently bought my first ever photography book by a fairly well known Canadian photographer called Freeman Patterson. In it he talks about making photographs, not just taking them, by incorporating elements of visual design when framing the shot or adjusting the camera's settings. These elements are Light, Shape, Line, Texture and Perspective. I think this one is probably my first explicitly "made" photo in that I was thinking about texture when I took it and also afterwards when I cropped it to remove the ugly railings and dark background. Here's the original which had the intent of capturing the texture of the fresh snow against the afternoon sun.

Original shot for snow golf

I was pretty happy with that photo, but after reading parts from this new book, decided that there were too many distracting elements and that I could do better. iPhoto cropping to the rescue and what I've ended up with is a nice simple photo that really captured the way the snow looked and the sunlight hitting it the way I wanted in the first place.


Snow Golf

Cold winter's morning remedy

The best thing to do when you wake up on a lazy Sunday morning and it's freezing outside (literally, we're talking -16C here) is to combat the outside environment with a warm comfort food breakfast. There's nothing better for indulgent breakfasts than Eggs Benedict and after trying out an experimental Hollandaise sauce recipe from Lex Culinaria and thowing in some fresh sourdough and prosciutto we came up with a pretty good version. We are going to be seeing a lot more of them around here. Divine flavour and texture all rolled into one big yummy filling comforting warm breakfast. Heaven.


Eggs Benedict and OJ