April 03, 2008

• Almost...They don't produce Disney Caskets. You always hear the debunking the freezing of Walt's Head, but I'm convinced that sculpture of him holding Mickey's hand in the Magic Kingdom is no sculpture but Walt frozen in Carbonite.
• I remember either reading or hearing on the radio a story about the Stepford-like "one of us" experience that is Celebration. It was a good piece, but damned if I can find it. Corporate hate's cheap and easy, but there's something about targeting your cash vacuum guns so relentlessly at children that brings a come-into-my-van-for-some-candy level of sleaze to their entire enterprise
• I do rather like the Celebration Post Office, though. I have a vague recollection of a 1980's SNL skit about an unfrozen Walt taking over the world. M-I-C, See, it's useless to resist! K-E-Y, Why? Because I'm all-powerful!
• this is all well and good, but it is meaningless until you can explain the following: If Donald is a duck, Mickey is a mouse, Goofy is a dog, what the hell is Pluto? The answer to THAT, my friends, will open the door to the power that is Disney!
• What's weird is that those "princess" bridal gowns don't really look like anything other than typical gowns.
• I've been bothered for many years by the major disparity between Goofy and Pluto. I guess the latter has wandered into the Disney universe from ours.
• Disney snark is cheap and easy. But halfway through the first article, the author riffed on "Disney = religion," and put his finger right on it. Suddenly so many things about Disney make total sense. For many people, Disney isn't just their surrogate parent or long-time companda, it's their religion.
• Just don't say that within earshot of Cory Doctorow or he might get uspet, mecha.
• 'Upset'. Damn. Pluto made me do it!
• Let me say it first: Disney SUCKS D I S- N E Y S U C K S!!
• For many people, Disney isn't just their surrogate parent or long-time companda, it's their religion. #2 and I went to Disneyland in 2000 -- my first time ever, he'd been when he was 7. We got on the shuttle from the hotel to the park along with a woman and her daughter. The woman was telling her daughter how excited she was about going to Disneyland, how many times she had been, and topped it off with a wistful "Disneyland is my happy place." At the time she sounded like someone who has very few happy moments, and what few she had were provided by Daddy Disney. It was very creepy.
• Flag, people do get irked when you criticize their religion, don't they? I've always wondered how Cory reconciles his Disneyphilia with his open source-itude and stance on DRM. After reading the linked article, I suspect he does it the same way that many religious people reconcile their dissonant beliefs. (Which is to say, I have no idea, but I find the process fascinating.)
• After swiping my pass-card and getting my fingerprint scanned (a new security measure), I enter through Epcot's gates. Is this for real? They're scanning fingerprints for entry to Epcot? *bows to Ossama* Just don't order the General Tso's chicken.
• Fingertip biometrics at Disney turnstiles Guess it is for real. Wow.
• Why is it hard to believe that Pluto is also a dog?
• Because how come he acts like a dog but Goofy doesn't?
• I postulate a two-caste dog species. Much like the gargoyles in Ultima 6, the non-speaking dogs are a slave race, while the speaking bipedal dogs are their ridiculously clumsy, retarded masters. A-hyuk!
• Different breeds, is all. Or maybe Goofy was a trained show dog or something in his puppyhood.
• If you ask me,* they both act Goofy. *and I know you didn't.
• IIRC, the tired old joke is, "If Donald is a duck, Mickey is a mouse, Pluto is a dog, what the hell is Goofy?" It's pretty clear that Pluto is Mickey's pet dog, since he's always on all fours and barks. Goofy is more ambiguous.
• And let's not even get into the Clarabell Cow Conundrum.
• Alot of these comments feel like hipster anti-corporate statements for the sake of hating. This is one of the rare times I was disappointed by a mofi thread. Thread lacks win.
• Sorry, Loki, I think a lot of monkeys just don't like any private enterprise that seems to be attempting to remake culture in their own image. Not to mention plenty of more concrete reasons to denigrate the Great Eared Empire. Heck, even those who admire Disney must take issue with the way they've tarnished their legacy.
• And, of course, those of us who are hipsters simply can't help it.
• I'm hardly a hipster by any definition, but I have two children and I hate that they can make associations between almost anything and a huge corporation like Disney. I feel the same about McDonald's: sure they sponsor sports events and road safety programmes here in New Zealand, but it doesn't disguise the fact that they treat employees like shit, manipulate the law for their own benefit, and make crappy food. Plus those Disney bridal things are just what's in fashion with a Disney Princess name slapped over them. Ew.
• Also, I think the Pluto vs Goofy thing appeared originally (to my knowledge) in Stand By Me.
• Baroooo?
• I'm so hip, two bandoliers keep my pants up. And I curse the Mouse for retroactively buying Winnie the Pooh out of my childhood. These are stories and drawings I grew up on. They were rough and imperfect and appealing. Now Pooh and the gang are very glossy and a little bit crap, but they appear everywhere.
• Pixar roolz.
• Werd.
• I IS A PINCESS
• I'm hardly a hipster by any definition, but I have two children and I hate that they can make associations between almost anything and a huge corporation like Disney. Seriously. I went to pains to try to stress how cheap and easy corporate hate are before voicing my opinions (and there have certainly been a couple of cheap drive-bys here), but if you sit down and watch a Disney DVD with a four year old and watch the nine hours of ads they'll bombard this kid with before getting to the menu, or if you go to a live Disney event like Princesses on Ice and see the fifteen-dollar slushies in the commemorative plastic wossits that they're hawking directly to the kids, you begin to feel like you're surrounded by brightly-colored cartoon pimps. I credit Disney for making some goddamn fantastic animated films, films that delight me every bit as much now as they did when I was a kid, but they are one big bunch of lockstep hammer-to-the-head media assault fuckers, and their primary target for all that promotion is a group of people who are at least a decade away from forming anything resembling self-restraint. Honestly, I think there should be laws governing how products are marketed to children. Scientology could learn a thing or two from Disney.
• I am so dissapointed that NONE of you posted this. The judge looks down on Mickey and says, "I'm not going to grant you a divorce just because Minnie was having and affair." Mickey replied, "I didn't say she was cheating, I said she was f@*king Goofy!" You're all fired.
• I don't get the joke because I don't know what "f@*king" is.
• Fatsterisking is a Nordic winter sport involving chucking huge, sharp chunks of ice at your opponent. It's currently banned from the Olympics.
• Competitors are notorious for combining steroids with antifreeze.
• L O L Well done, guys.