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(Date Posted:04/06/2003 06:29:59)
Well, I had an exciting weekend at the Russia and Chechnya symposium and Film Festival put on by the Russian department. This story sort of slid under the radar after Sept. 11th, but it seemed really timely in light of the situation with Iraq. But I just posted it here to mention a few amusing things that happened related to the event.First off, we had serious difficulty getting the posters for it hung up around Williamsburg. One place said they only hung up posters for events related to arts. Nevermind that this was a film festival as well. Guess film isn't a viable art form anymore!One lady looked at the poster andsaid "Oh, no, we support our troops, please get that out of here," without even reading it. One store refused to put it up because it was about Russia and Russia supported France, and my personal favorite was the man who looked at the poster, said "We don't like the French. Please leave." We think he thought the Russian flag (which has one white, one red, and one blue horizontal stripe) was the French flag... We gave up after awhile. It's hard to explain this to people who aren't willing to listen. And most of the movies were pro-Russian perspective, too.Then at one of the lectures I attended, the speaker made an offhand mention of the bill to turn French Fries into Freedom Fries. She pointed out that we weren't nearly as bad as Russians, who instead of merely changing names, like to take things and claim that they created them. She also pointed out that if we take the whole "banning French things" to its logical conclusion, we're going to have to ban things like Beauty and the Beast, which, despite being Disney, is set in France and shows France in a positive light. But at least we didn't claim to have made up the idea of Beauty and the Beast. The Russians did that.I just felt like sharing the excitement and fun, but now that I read this, it doesn't transfer as well....
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"There are three topics which are taboo as far as Americans are concerned...[and one is] the total atheist who lives a happy and useful life and dies in his sleep at the age of 106."
- Vladimir Nabokov, introduction to Lolita
"Perhaps we should focus on the positive aspect of video games. For example, children can pick up real world experience in the event that the earth is taken over by monsters and the only thing that can save humanity is magical swords, rocks, and...playing cards."
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