Phone calls in films

To enjoy a film, you have to suspend disbelief and get absorbed in the story. One sure way to destroy that feeling and take you completely out of the film is having a character dial a phone number that starts with 555, which are never given out to customers. They do this because apparently viewers often will note the numbers and call them (I have no idea what drives people to do this) so that if a real number is used, the owner of that number gets tons of annoying calls.

In the 2003 Jim Carrey comedy “Bruce Almighty,” God’s phone number (776-2323, no area code) appears on the Carrey character’s pager, so of course moviegoers called it and asked to speak to God. That’s kind of funny, unless you happened to own that number in your area code.

The Associated Press reported that a Florida woman threatened to sue Universal Pictures because she was receiving 20 calls an hour on her cellphone. The phone number also connected divine-seeking callers to a church in Sanford, N.C., where the minister, who happened to be named Bruce, was not amused. The BBC reported that even a man in the Manchester, England, area was receiving up to 70 calls a day from folks seeking help and forgiveness.

At the time, Universal explained that the number it chose was not in use in the Buffalo area, where the movie was set. The studio subsequently replaced it in TV and home video versions with, yes, a 555 number.

I have wondered why, with their multi-million dollar budgets, film companies don’t simply purchase a few dozens of real numbers that are sufficiently varied and nondescript so that no viewer would likely remember that they have seen them before in other films.

So I was glad to see in the above article that some films are purchasing real numbers where, if you should call it, you receive a recorded message, maybe promoting the film.

Bradley Manning protest

While Obama was giving a talk at a fund-raising event in California for his 2012 re-election campaign, one of the attendees interrupted him by taking off her jacket revealing a t-shirt that said “Free Bradley Manning” and singing a song denouncing his continued detention. It should be noted that this was not some hippie protestor but occurred at an event for wealthy campaign contributors who had paid up to $35,800 to attend.

According to a BBC report, witnesses said that Obama was ‘visibly displeased’ and the woman was escorted out of the room and two of her fellow protestors left with her. Poor man. It must be so annoying to be reminded of one’s hypocrisy while dispensing campaign pieties and pretending to value high principles.

Although the government commits many violations of human rights that are even worse than what is happening to Manning, his treatment has become a potent symbol and I hope it dogs Obama wherever he goes.

The 27% Crazification Factor

The number of contenders courting publicity by publicly flirting with the idea of running for the Republican party’s nomination for president seems to be growing exponentially, ranging from those who are crazy to those who are pretending to be crazy in order to attract the crazy base of the party, though it is hard to tell the difference between the two groups. Me, I am waiting for the King of Crazy, Alan Keyes, to throw his hat into the ring to indicate that the craziness has reached a critical mass and we are truly off and running.

Some observers are bemused that Donald Trump has been leading the other contenders in some polls and is able to garner support in the mid-20% range, purely on his crazy birther shtick. His performance does not surprise me in the least because we now have, thanks to Keyes, a benchmark that says that the craziest of candidates can get 27% of the population to vote for him or her. It is only when candidates crack the 27% mark that I start to take them seriously.
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Shaming people for being poor

Sometime ago, in my series on how poor people have dignity too, I praised the recent adoption of debit cards instead of food coupons as a good way for them to purchase food without others knowing that they were down on their luck.

But some people want to deny even that minimal level of dignity and label the poor with a scarlet, or rather orange, letter. An Arizona Republican legislator wants the debit cards to be a bright orange color. Of course, his stated reason is to prevent ‘fraud’, that useful word that disguises hateful motives as noble ones.

Chris Hondros and Tim Hetherington

US photographer Chris Hondros, along with British photojournalist Tim Hetherington, were killed in Libya yesterday.

Hondros was the person who took the iconic photographs of what happened to an Iraqi family, especially a terrified little Iraqi girl, just after her parents were killed by US soldiers at a checkpoint in Tal Afar in 2005.

I cannot see that picture without the sickening brutality of war being brought home to me once again. I wrote about war and death and the impact such photos before.

Journalists like Hondros and Hetherington take great personal risks in order to remind us that was is not a video game but that real people, ordinary people, innocent people, suffer and die unnecessary deaths because of the ambitions and power lusts of a few.

And now they have become the latest statistic.

Imagine there’s no hell

20110425_107.jpgThe latest issue of Time magazine has as its cover story the question “What if there’s no hell?” which focuses on a 40-year old evangelical preacher named Rob Bell who is head of a megachurch in Michigan called Mars Hill Bible Church that boasts 7,000 members attending its services each Sunday. He is described as a ‘rock star’ in the evangelical movement and has just published a book titled Love Wins: A Book About Heaven, Hell, and the Fate of Every Person Who Ever Lived that is causing consternation in evangelical circles by arguing that hell may not exist and that heaven may be open to everyone, not just those who accept Jesus as their personal lord and savior, the usual standard for admission among evangelicals.
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