Look, a butterfly!

I’m going to post my super easy, super yummy cupcake recipe soon, but in the meantime, I wanted to link to this fantastic recipe for a mini chocolate cake in 5 minutes. I admit that I haven’t had the chance to make it yet, but it looks great and makes me laugh.

On October 1, 1993, comedian, social critic and my personal hero, Bill Hicks was scheduled to appear on The Late Show with David Letterman. For the first time in the history of the show, the whole of a segment was censored and Hicks’ footage never made it to television. Hicks died 5 months later of pancreatic cancer.

15 years later, David Letterman invited Bill Hicks’ mother, Mary Hicks, to appear on the show. Last Saturday, he apologised to her for the incident and for the fist time ever, they aired the censored footage. On the show, he keeps proclaiming that he doesn’t know why he made the decision to pull the segment, but I don’t buy it.

It is interesting to have a read of the letter Bill Hicks wrote to John Lahr with a full account of the events leading up to, and after, the cancellation of his set. It is quite long, but I think it is worth it. It includes a transcript of his account of the segment, which he had to write down since Letterman’s people refused to give him a copy of the tape, stating, “Um. I don’t know if we are legally allowed to send out a tape of an unaired segment of a show.” Here is an excerpt from the letter.

And now, the final irony. One of the “hot points” that was brought up as being “unsuitable for our audience” was my joke about pro-lifers. My brilliant friend Andy posited the theory that this was really what bothered and scared the network the most, seeing as how the “pro-life” movement has essentially become a terrorist group acting with impunity and God on their side, in a country where the reasonable majority overwhelmingly supports freedom of choice regarding abortion.

I felt there was something to this theory, but I was still surprised to be watching the Letterman Show (I’m still a fan) the Monday night following my censored Friday night performance and, lo and behold, they cut to a - are you ready for this? - pro-life commercial. This farce is now complete. “Follow the money!”

Here are the videos of last Saturday’s show with Mary Hicks.

And here is the censored set.

A lovely beat poem about a dinner party, by Australian comedian, Tim Minchin.

David Attenborough talks about his upcoming BBC documentary entitled “Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life”. The documentary screens today in the UK. I’m not sure if it is going to screen in Oz anytime soon, but I look forward to getting my hands on a copy. Check out the giant flower in the clip!

I wish you all a wonderful Australia Day! In celebration, I hope you enjoy this classic offering from Men At Work.

I only recently found out that the flute part was based on the “Kookaburra sits in the old gum tree…” song. Now it’s so obvious!

Picking up a hard drive from U-Mart this morning, where the clientele is significantly more geeky than even the average physics department, I saw a guy wearing a shirt that said:

Roses are #FF0000
Violets are #0000FF
All my base are
Belong to you

I wish I didn’t think that was cool.

I recently stumbled across a fascinating 4-part BBC documentary entitled The Century of the Self. The first episode, entitled “Happiness Machines”, follows the history of public relations in the earlier part of the 20th century.

According to the documentary, it all started with Freud’s nephew Edward Bernays, who lived in the US. He was a Press Agent for a number of opera singers, theaters and the like. In 1917, he was hired by President Woodrow’s Committee on Public Information to try and convince the public to support America’s participation in the World War. This proved to be successful, and after the war was over, Bernays, being pretty chuffed with his ability to control the opinion of the masses using propaganda, thought to himself “I wonder if I can make money out of this”. Since by that stage, the word “propaganda” had been given a bad name due to the Germans’ use of the word, he coined the term “Counsel on Public Relations”.

Up until that point, all marketing was done under the assumption that people’s purchasing choices were based on their needs and an informed and rational decision making process. Influenced by his uncle’s work on psychoanalysis, Bernays suspected otherwise. He believed that people’s purchasing choices could be influenced by linking the purchase of mass produced goods to their unconscious desires. Bernays didn’t want to convince people that they needed products; he wanted to convince them that by buying these products, they will feel better about themselves. This turned out to be very successful.

Among other things, he was the first to introduce product placement in movies. He got celebrities (who he represented) to wear and promote products from companies which he also represented. He hired experts to endorse products and then passed them off as independent studies. He even discovered that he could market the automobile as an extension of male sexuality.

Probably his most notable “success”, however, was to convince women to take up smoking. At the time, smoking in public was considered taboo for women. This made tobacco companies sad. They approached Bernays to win over the other half of their potential clientele. He consulted a psychoanalyst and based on his insight, he launched a campaign that equated cigarettes with “torches of liberty”. Cigarette sales consequently went up.

The documentary goes into much more detail, including how PR and marketing was later employed by governments to keep the public docile…and much much more. I strongly endorse this product

Here is some nostalgia for those of you who were JJJ-listening teenagers in the 90s.

Happyland was a side project for Quan Yeoman of Regurgitator and Janet English of Spiderbait. Incidentally, both Spiderbait and Regurgitator are going to be playing in Brisbane next Sunday at the Hear and Now festival.

I find it disappointing that SBS thinks it appropriate to disguise blatant advertising as news. Earlier today, an article entitled “How to watch the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games on your Telstra Next G mobile” made it’s way to the latest headlines section on the SBS World News website. Now it sits in the most popular section.

Within the article, it is made clear that this is a sponsored feature, but only once you follow the link to the article and start reading it. When viewed in the headlines section, it is indistinguishable from other legitimate pieces of news. I wonder whether the article’s new status as most popular is in fact legitimate, or whether that space can also be bought.