There was a thing on Twitter where Bell.ca decided to raise money for mental health awareness by donating five cents for every use of the hashtag "BellLetsTalk". Author Guy Gavriel Kay turned this into an excuse for puns, since he has a long-standing love of punnery. He solicited puns on the hashtag, and he got a lot of fun, creative ones in return.
That was the hashtag someone unleashed upon the world last night, and it resulted in a lot of fun tomfoolery as you tried to sum up film plots, in 140 characters, in ways that don't really do very good justice to the movies. Here are my submissions!
Guy with awful taste in meat helps FBI catch a guy with awful taste in clothes. #ExplainAFilmPlotBadly
If you've lived beneath a rock of late, you may have missed a viral fundraising activity that's going around the social media sites. I'm not even sure of the exact "rules", but it's all voluntary anyway, so it's not like the rules matter all that much. It involves dumping, or having someone else dump, a bucket full of ice water over your head, after which you challenge a few other folks to do the same, whilst making a small donation to the ALS Assocation. ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) is a particularly awful way to go, and like all awful diseases, its defeat is a worthy goal. There's been an awful lot of tut-tutting over the thing, and to my way of thinking (along with Roger, who as always has some good links), that all pretty much misses the point. Donations are way up, and people are having fun doing it, so what's the problem? Why be such a Muggle? Fuhgeddaboudit!
Anyway, I received my challenge/nomination last week, and I finally got 'round to doing the deed. Aside from the efficacy of this as a fundraiser (yes, I did kick in a few Quatloos!), what are my thoughts on up-ending a bucket of water over my head? Well, it actually felt good! Luckily I got a fairly warm day. This particular summer hasn't been all that hot in my neck o' the woods, but I imagine this would have felt awesome on a 90-degree scorcher in July. It was over quickly, and if it had been really hot, maybe I wouldn't have even bothered changing afterward -- I could just hang out outside and air-dry. Alas, it wasn't quite that warm.
So yeah, I got my challenge done. I'm not challenging anyone else, seeing as how I think I'm coming to this bit at the tail end of its potency (most folks I know have already done it, anyway). But my friends should be warned: if a similar fundraising challenge starts making the rounds that involves a pie in the face, oh, there will be some challenging going on!
It's funny, because I can definitely attest to the vexing thing this video addresses. When I tell people I went to college in Iowa -- going all the way back to when I was a high school senior and I hadn't even left for Iowa yet -- I would occasionally get asked something along the lines of, "Wow...lots of potatoes there, right?" I'd then have to say, "No, that's Idaho. Iowa has a lot of corn."
Imagine the confusion that arose when I started dating a native Iowa girl whose family had since relocated to Idaho!
I never quite understood why so many people over here in the Northeast got that wrong. It's tempting to think that this is a symptom of the whole "Flyover country" thing, when it's assumed by folks not on one of the coasts that the people on the coasts pretty much view everything in between as just the stuff you "fly over" on the way from NYC to LA.
But here's the thing: when I actually got to Iowa, people would ask where I was from. Even though my hometown was sixty miles south of Buffalo, I found it easier just to say "Buffalo, New York". This would almost always get a response along the lines of, "Wow, all the way from Manhattan to Iowa!" or "Why would you leave NYC to come to Iowa?" I'd have to explain that not only is Buffalo not one of the Five Boroughs, it's actually far enough from NYC that I could drive to Cleveland and back in the time it would take to drive one-way to NYC.
I suspect there's not a person alive in this big country of ours who doesn't have a story like this. We've got a lot of geography and a lot of unique place names. For instance, there are almost two dozen places named "Pittsburg" in the United States, but only two that spell it "Pittsburgh"!
And since I went from Buffalo, NY to study at a school in Waverly, IA -- there are both a Buffalo, IA and a Waverly, NY.
