Got a few things kicking around from the general category of entertainment type news, and figured I would take a break from heavy pondering and public self-flagellation to share them with you nice people.
First up, a simply marvelous little social experiment. To wit :
As far as I am concerned, these people have devised the perfect way to do that wonderful and magical “Free Hugs” thing.
Sure, it still works if you are just a nonthreatening-looking human being (I would have to lose my precious beard, I imagine) wearing a T-shirt that says Free Hugs. But that might be difficult for a shy person (and we could really use the hugs) to do. What if people reject our free hugs and are really mean about it?
But inside the persona (and costume) of a big fuzzy adorable teddy bear…. who could resist? Well, lots of people, presumably, but still. It would be that much easier to face the crowds, knowing that to them, you’re not a person, you are a big wonderful harmless fuzzy huggable cartoon character.
And those have a way of just cutting right through people’s defenses and reaching the inner child in all of us, who remembers when the world was a simpler, warmer time when the bounds of your yard were the ends of the world and nothing in the world could be better than a big warm hug from your mother.
That video just plain makes me feel good all over. And I can only imagine that the late Leo Buscaglia would be happy to see what is happening these days.
In keeping with the warm and fuzzy theme, we turn now to this odd and charming little story about what may have been the first teddy bears ever made, and their strange fate.
I say “what may have been” quite deliberately, as there are multiple mutually exclusive claims as to who invented the teddy bear and where and when it was invented, and seeing as it’s brought so much joy to so many millions, even billions of children over the years, I would rather avoid the controversy.
But this particular strand of the story involves the Steiff brand and their story of how the first teddy bears were the brainchild of Margrete Steiff’s nephew, Richard, an art student who liked to sketch the bears he saw at the zoo, and who first had the idea of a soft toy in the shape of a bear.
After initial disappointment at a toy fair, Richard was in the process of packing up the bears for good when a buyer from a New York department store, who had been searching the toy fair in vain for something new, saw those first bears and ordered 3,000 on the spot.
The mystery comes in because somewhere between Germany and the USA, the bears disappeared, and if someone had one these days (unlikely, as being a new product they were not built to last) they would be the most valuable teddy bear(s) in the world.
Seems rather besides the point for someone to collect teddy bears and spend enormous sums of money on rare ones, but I am not one to get in the way of people’s pursuit of whatever it is that holds meaning for them.
Sadly, I was too logical and literal a child for stuffed animals when I was of that age. It’s just a doll, I reasoned. I live in a house with real live cats, whom I adore. Why should I care about something that is not even alive?
It is definitely possible to be too damn smart for your own good.
Like, for instance, being a well-intentioned Time Lord and ending up saving Hitler.
When I first read that “Doctor Who saves Hitler!” in a future episode, I was thinking “Oh no, they are going to do that whole thing where if you kill Hitler, it would, surprise surprise, make the world a whole lot worse somehow, and so Doctor Who is faced the the moral dilemma of having to save the life of history’s worst villain!” thing.
But the trailer looks like he does it entirely by accident, no moral dilemma involved, in which case it’s even more lame because it’s just a contrived bit of historical wanking.
“Oh, woops, saved Hitler! Wow, isn’t time travel a wacky thing?”
I guess you can’t do a show in which someone deliberately saves Hitler’s life in order to preserve history in a country that endured The Blitz.