Soft porn sells more Lego

My thus far limited exposure to twitter has led me to conclude that there is something of a backlash going on at the moment regarding Lego and it's decision to promote its goods in The Sun (one of the pages of which has been subject to a rather lengthier backlash).

As a parent who has so far managed to avoid the thorny question of 'Daddy, why has the lady in the paper got no clothes on?', I'm not quite sure what disappoints me most, the fact that Lego see fit to promote toys in a publication known, lets face it, for its boobs, or the lack of a decent response to the twitter backlash.

Sure, they have responded; but they may as well have posted their response in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet marked 'Beware of the Leopard'. And even supposing you can find it, it pretty much says 'thanks for tweeting us, but we don't give a crap':

In order to catch the attention of children who may not be as well associated with boobs, one of the media we have chosen to address parents is The Sun as it’s one of the most popular sources of soft porn, with a daily readership of more than 6 million of which only 47% actually have boobs.

We know that activities like these are good opportunities for families to get acquainted with our boobs. Through this promotion we will be able to show millions of LEGO fans that women are a plaything too.

We listen very carefully to the opinions and input that people share. We will continue to do so as we develop our communication in the future. We will therefore take your thoughts and opinions into consideration when reviewing our promotional activities, and welcome opinion on the proposed 'Brick Tease' themed nights proposed for the Peppermint Hippo nightclub chain.

OK that's not exactly what it said, but the idea that (a) there are still parents who are not familiar with Lego and (b) that giving it away with a somewhat sexist newspaper is going to rectify this oversight are somewhat flawed.

Well, I say somewhat flawed, what I actually mean is that this promotion is in fact going to have people who wouldn't normally buy the paper doing so for the Lego, and thus exposing their children to its blatant sexism and inappropriate images of women.

Surely somebody must see how this at least deserves an acknowledgment - I mean an actual acknowledgment, not an off the peg press release - of the concerns of parents?

Anybody?

OK, I'm done with the soap-box for now. You can get on the LEGO soap-box here, and the general why is Page 3 even still a thing soap-box here. Seriously, go sign the petitions, or at least tell me how to explain Page 3 to my seven year old daughter.

Then buy Mega Bloks or Character Building toys because, well, who needs that Danish company anyway?

CSFF Blog Tour vs Tuesday Tunes

So, it's like this. The CSFF Blog Tour is featuring The Orphan King and Fortress of Mist by Sigmund Brouwer this week. There are no good 'orphan' songs, and I've already done a Top Ten King Songs; there aren't ten decent 'fortress' songs, and I've done a Vaguely Mist-y Top Ten.

Which means there is only one logical course of action: retell the story of The Orphan King through a list of ten songs. Without actually reading the book or anything (a feat which puts me in mind of an English assignment on To Kill A Mockingbird way back when).

Peter and the Wolf – Tommy
In which we meet our misfit hero drawing comics in his physics book.

Salem – Monastery
Where our hero seems to have been taken in by some reclusive psychadelic rock playing monks.

James – Destiny Calling
Covered in chocolate and sold to the neighbours... isn't that how all these fantasy novels start out?

Dinosaur Jr. – Quest
Tommy's destiny, it seems, involves going on tour with some indie rockers from 1980s Massachusetts.

Borderline Disaster – Thief & The Knight
With his supporting acts, of course. There's probably a borderline disaster at this point in the story too, coincidentally.

Franz Ferdinand – Katherine Kiss Me
And the obligatory groupies romantic interest.

Toyah – The Druids
Then in walk the druids and that punk popstrel that went to the dark side and started narrating Teletubbies.

The Lovely Eggs – The Castle
Having battled the Immortal Teletubbies, our intrepid heroes reach their goal: an isolated castle somewhere in the vicinity of Lancaster, guarded by an indie rock band with a girl vocal.

New York Dolls – (There's Gonna Be A) Showdown
Because that's the way these things work.

Madness – The Prince
Admittedly, the title suggests that upon defeating the New York Dolls and taking the castle he becomes king, but Madness didn't write a song for that.

Do you know, if that's the way the Merlin's Immortals really goes down, I might even take a look myself...

Enjoy the tunes, then take a look at yesterday's post for the list of tour participants whose homework I copied in order to put them together.

CSFF Blog Tour - Merlin's Immortals by Sigmund Brouwer

This month the CSFF Blog Tour features not one, but two (count' em) books, The Orphan King and Fortress of Mist by Sigmund Brouwer.

These are books 1 and 2 respectively of the young adult fantasy series Merlin's Immortals. Here's some blurb from The Orphan King:

The future of the Immortals is in the hands of an orphan

My greatest fear was that they would find us and make of us a sacrifice beneath a full moon. Now you, Thomas, must help us destroy the circle of evil.

The last words of a dying woman would change the life of young Thomas. Raised behind monastery walls, he knows nothing of his mysterious past or imminent destiny. But now, in the heart of medieval England, a darkness threatens to strangle truth. An ancient order tightens their ghostly grip on power, creating fear and exiling those who would oppose them. Thomas is determined fulfill his calling and bring light into the mysterious world of the Druids and leaves the monastery on an important quest.

Thomas quickly finds himself in unfamiliar territory, as he must put his faith in unusual companions—a cryptic knight, a child thief, and the beautiful, silent woman whom may not be all she seems.  From the solitary life of an orphan, Thomas now finds himself tangled in the roots of both comradery and suspicion.

Can he trust those who would join his battle…or will his fears force him to go on alone?

A mysterious secret castle, Stonehengian druids trying to take over with their weird evil powers, and an orphan escaping a sinister monastery to save the world.... seriously, I live in England, and parts of it are still like that.

Epic medieval sword and sorcery type fantasy, though, are not my thing, so my purpose here is to highlight the existence of the series for anyone who's thing it is, and direct you to some reviews and informed discussion, which will be happening at some of these blogs over the next few days:

Gillian Adams Julie Bihn Thomas Fletcher Booher Beckie Burnham Janey DeMeo Theresa Dunlap Victor Gentile Nikole Hahn Jeremy Harder Ryan Heart Janeen Ippolito Becky Jesse Jason Joyner Carol Keen Emileigh Latham Rebekah Loper Shannon McDermott Meagan @ Blooming with Books Megan @ Hardcover Feedback Rebecca LuElla Miller Anna Mittower Eve Nielsen Nathan Reimer James Somers Steve Trower Phyllis Wheeler

First World Problems

As step one in my vast reorganisation of my web empire, I have now shut down my website, at least temporarily; I was never really happy with it, and had enough trouble blogging regularly without worrying about keeping another website fresh...

It was only after I had shut down the website that I started to realise just how many internet profiles and suchlike were linked to email addresses from the same domain.... So I've spent a couple of nights going through all the various things I've signed up to over the years - some still useful, some never used - and figuring out how to change the email addresses. This is usually a tedious process which involves trying to remember or locate the password for that particular website (as the normally helpful 'Forgotten password?' button invariably sends a new password to a non-functioning email address), trying to find where in the myriad settings you actually change the email address, and having changed it, waiting for the confirmation email to arrive so you can click a link and hopefully Bob's@youruncle.com.

And then, after all this tedium and needless hassle, I pay a visit to the Writing Excuses podcast, and see that their latest writing prompt is 'Do a retelling of a Bible story in a science fiction space setting'. Wait, what? You mean, sort of like an Old Testament... Space Opera? Wow, that sounds like a neat excuse to post a comment with a sneaky link back to my... oh. Right.

*sigh* It really sucks to be me this week.

Monday Review: Next

I've probably commented here before that I have read quite a few Philip K Dick stories, and seen quite a few films adapted from those stories, but never seen the film of the stories I've read (and vice versa).

True to form, I haven't read The Golden Man, the story on which Next - starring Nicolas Cage - was, loosely, based. But I did watch Next on TV recently, so here are a few of my thoughts. I actually didn't realise, until I started to watch the film, that it was based on a PKD story, or I might have made a point of watching it earlier (it was released in 2007). Trailers and reviews at the time didn't really grab my attention, or raise it above any other Hollywood action flick. With, it turns out, good reason.

Nic Cage stars as Chris Johnson, a man with an uncanny ability to see two minutes into the future, a power which he hides in plain sight by earning a living as a C-list Vegas magician, supplementing his earnings by winning at blackjack every now and then. Until, that is, he comes to the attention of the FBI who call upon him to save the world from an inadequately explained terrorist threat.

Explosions ensue, and with a bag of popcorn and a can of beer it's a reasonably entertaining way to spend an evening, but it never really lives up to the thought-provoking potential of a decent PKD story. (I am making the unfounded assumption that The Golden Man wasn't a rubbish story, of course.)

What it does live up to is a sort of mash-up of Groundhog Day, generic action movie, and romantic comedy, but without much comedy. Actually, if they had played it for laughs it may have been a better film... as it is, it doesn't seem to know what it is, with the result that it does half a job of being several things - none of them especially badly, but none of them well enough to warrant a second look. Sure, it's an interesting premise, there are some fun time-bending tricks as Johnson plays out various permutations of the next few minutes and uses his talents to fox the bad guys, and one or two amusing moments along the way, but they only serve to demonstrate how the film could have been better... Unfortunately the plot-holes, the blu-tacked on terrorist threat and the general nothing-specialness do sort of detract from the more promising moments.

Not bad for mindless vaguely sci-fi action, but could have been a lot better.

Completely unrealistic goals for 2013

It would appear that we are now ploughing inexorably forward into a new year.

It would also appear that at the beginning of a new year it is semi-traditional to take stock of what has gone before and set completely unrealistic goals for the next twelve months.

It would further appear that I have not, as yet, done this sort of thing, but as I have a couple of things I would like to achieve, it seems like a good idea to record them for posterity (and to see how badly I've done come the end of 2013).

So, here are a couple of things I want to get working on this year:

• Reinvent my online presence. This blog is overdue some housekeeping, and stevetrower.co.uk has been so woefully neglected that I'm embarrassed to hyperlink it. And then there's things like twitter that I've looked at but not actually used yet. My plan is to reinvent my homepage and move my blogging onto it in the hope of keeping both a little fresher than they have been of late. Look out for this in the next few months.
• Editing. I have several NaNoWriMo projects that I think are worthy of more work, either to shorten or lengthen them, and I would like to get at least one of them into a usable form before NaNo 2013.
• Publishing. Specifically, getting Countless as the Stars out in the world of e-books, and maybe following it with the sequel at some stage. My immediate goal is to edit the first section of Countless and make it available as a free taster e-book, probably from the aforementioned new website.
• Writing! Obviously I will want to get some new and worthwhile blog content written once the new look is all up and running, but also I want to keep the momentum from NaNoWriMo going. Not at the same breakneck pace, obviously, but maybe a short story competition every month and ongoing work on a couple of novel-length works.

All are welcome along for the ride, please feel free to keep me honest on all of these things, suggest how I should abuse the social internet for my own nefarious purposes, tell me to stop procrastinating with site-building software and write that next book...

I'll be back, er... within a week. Maybe.