Up, Up and Away

This past Saturday I managed to FINALLY persuade my friends in accompanying me into seeing the Pixar animation Up. Though guided as a child-orientated movie, its content was, definitely, much deeper than what lay on it's exquisitely generated 3D surface.

Now this is quite normal for animation studios to have adult-humour in their movies (Animaniacs is a famous example) but Up definitely had a much more adult-orientated nature than any other film I've seen from the 'Toy Story'-famed production studios. From its portrayal of a couple's miscarriage/inability to produce children, and constant mention of the retirement village 'Shady Oaks' right to a true WWE moment where, after a shot to the forehead, the showing of blood ('OMG blood in a Pixar animation?!', you say? Believe it...). But the most prolific adult-themed message in the movie was not delivered in controversial fashion at all, instead it was put-forward to provoke thought in us: Are our own fantasies/beliefs really worth hanging on to, and are they really what we think they are?

The movie centres around the adventures of a brusque elderly man, Carl Fredricksen, and Russell, the Wilderness Explorer who's never explored anything passed his own living-room. Both share many characteristics and backgrounds as both are trying to overcome familial issues (For Carl, the death of Ellie, his wife, and for Russel, his estranged father), but the most striking is the way Russel portrays the younger, more ambitious Carl (seen at the beginning of the movie) in the sense of working tirelessly in making his childhood dream - of finally attaining the rank of 'Senior Explorer' - his life.

For Carl, however, his lifelong ambitions have varied due to his maturation. The younger Carl is portrayed as an avowed fan of the movie's antagonist, famed explorer Charles F. Muntz. It was through this admiration that led for him to find a bond with Ellie and later marry and give birth to a shared lifelong goal; to live in Paradise Falls (The area where Muntz re-departed for, after claims of his skeletal findings being fictional, to capture a living creature and restore his reputation).

After managing to fly his house (and accidentally Russel), with the aid of balloons; Carl's dream is shortly dashed as a storm brings his house down barely short of Paradise Falls. With only a few days left of helium, Carl must, at any cost, reach his goal and get his house exactly where Ellie had pictured it in her childhood. On his journey to pull his house the rest of the way, Carl must overcome many distractions brought on by Russel's overactive and childlike mannerisms. None, however, would affect it quite so much as the integration of Kevin (the very species Muntz hunted) and Dug - the talking dog - with our two main characters.


Suffice to say - as to not regurgitate the entire plot of this epic movie - Kevin would lead Muntz into the equation as well, and the thought of finally mingling with his childhood hero was just too much to pass-up for Carl. But his idol was not as he had envisioned... After many years in isolation - save for his trusted dogs - Muntz had grown both greedy and paranoid. A far cry from the heroic and admirable explorer the press had portrayed him to be.

It was because of this that Carl would be torn between helping Kevin reach her (Russel believed her to be male) young or finally attaining his goal. Selfishness prevailed and Carl returned to his house, losing both Russel and Russel's respect because of his decision. Thankfully, however, Carl would later leave his dreams and rescue Russel, forming a lifelong bond.

Our lives are exactly the same. Though we might not live in a house suspended by thousands of balloons, we all have dreams and perceptions. Dreams we grow-up with and always seek to fulfill, even if they're unattainable. The want to have a dream and to pursue it is only natural, and there's nothing wrong with that, it's just we should never choose these things above the welfare of another. Just like Carl, when we finally attain the thing we've always longed for, we've hyped it up so much that it greatly fails to meet our own expectations. The same cannot be said, however, for the euphoria we feel when helping another. So sure, it's nice to dream, but there's a vast difference between the possibilities of our imagination and reality; and we cannot let our dreams (attainable or not) overshadow what we can do to help those around us, no matter how estranged the connection to us is, because THAT is what our lives were meant for.

Your Life Really Is A Lie

My (probable) week-long Sexual Innuendo counter is currently sitting at: 52. Weak, I know, but I haven't had much time - or actual sexual innuendo thoughts/jokes for that matter either. It's a sad day for us all... Hopefully it'll pick up in the days to come. But back to the blog post of the day! Which seems to break continuity as posts now come few and far between of late, which is disappointing to myself, and of course it must disappoint you too... It's another short one and I know, dear Reader, that this must disappoint you further and my blog is probably making you border on suicide, but never fear! My normal rant-obsessed, controversy-creating self will be back shortly, I promise.

So, here it is, I'm basically copy-pasting it straight from my Facebook status (seeing I first wrote it there). I might elaborate on it, I might not. Either way, enjoy:

"Life is a lie, this is all a fabrication of my imagination. No one else exists, the universe is what my own mind perceives things to be, and is not influenced by anything but myself. Nothing you tell me can disprove my theory. Have fun trying though."

I've had one person try to discredit my 'theory' by saying they can kill me and thus prove I'm wrong. But, dear Reader, if you killed me... How could you prove the universe lived on? It would be completely dead to me, you cannot prove through my death it carrying on and thus, my point is still valid.

Conception Of New Ideas

We think long and hard to rise to the occasion. We've all done it, a little bit of head-bashing. Ideas going back and forth but no substance. Until that sudden rush, with ideas coming to the tip of your head and then gushing out. Until the two aspects meet and you finally can hold your greatness in your hand.



Sexual Innuendo counter: 11

Dignity Is But A Black Girl's Name

Today's 3Talk showcased the winners of a leading South African magazine's Sexiest Person Awards, both male and female. In my honest opinion, the female winner (Jeannie D - host of Top Billing) is far from fit to win such an award. Though she is pretty, the title is 'Sexiest Person' and facing facts, she is definitely not the sexiest. While I do understand the awards are based on personal opinion, and subject to the judges' personal tastes in what characteristics make someone 'sexy', the thought on how she won is still beyond me. Personal opinions aside, though, let me rather get back to the point of this blog post: Dignity...

Call it what you will - self-esteem or self-respect - it still boils down to one flaw in our human nature; pride. Whether you agree with me or not on that aspect, we all need to agree that pride is a negative feature all human beings have within them. It is this aspect to our self-beliefs that has caused us to be so physically conscious - not in terms of looks but in accepting what is legally and socially right. If we could view ourselves in dignity, as a whole (both spiritually and physically), there would not be a problem with it, but it is our human flaws that limit us from seeing the true, underlying negativity we have created for ourselves and for our societies.

Rape is considered a serious issue worldwide, but is it really? It is true that every day thousands of women deal with haunting memories of the horrific ordeal from their past, but look at what I just did there. I said women, and not one person can honestly say that that comment did not stick out in their mind as sexism. It is because of this idea of physical self-worth that is brainwashing us into an opinion on social etiquette that is both sexist and immoral.

Each day millions of men and women are subjected to the adverse effects of abject poverty and malnutrition while a small percentage of the world's population live in grandeur, with a mansion situated on that proverbial greener grass on the other side of the fence. Is this not a raping of a 'dignified life' every person should enjoy? A 'dignified life' you probably lead, adorning your body with designer clothing and expensive jewelery. The 'dignified life' that is only accessible through capitalistic living and economic promotion of companies that continue to degrade the lives of the already struggling poor community. But while you clothe yourselves in such physical luxuries, it is the poor that have enriched their lives, emotionally, to the point of true dignity that any city-dwelling socialite will never reach.
So is it not them, that have learned to live life for it's true meaning, that should benefit from the luxuries you and I take for granted?

Role-reversal ideas aside, surely it is these people that we should feel sympathy for. That our hearts should yearn to save, that our prayers should be directed at. I'm not denying the emotional damage caused by rape, it is truly a traumatic experience, but we cannot (because of our personal attachments to physical things) denounce all human emotion towards those affected by capitalist greed while pouring our hearts out to a circumstance only because we have no personal loss in speaking against it.

We have created a world where inanimate items have a higher worth than that of human life, and unfortunately we will continue to stagnate further and further into a state of emotionless existence until we completely lack the ability to show compassion completely. It's time society, as a whole, stops living for the moment and starts making the moment live for them. When you do a crossword, you don't attempt a guess before reading the clues. But, in life, mankind has begun to do the opposite, we've portrayed societal images without looking at the deeper meaning of life and it is only when we reverse that, will we truly be able to live in dignity, with a compassion for ourselves and society as a whole. When we will truly understand life's true meaning and be able to live accordingly, and not in a world of sexist hypocrisy.

Time: The 'Fourth Dimensional' Lie

The creation of the universe and its existence, is about as infinite as its arguments within the scientific world. Or is it?

The Fourth Dimension (Spatially, the fourth dimension is a tesseract - a cube of a cube, of having 8 sides within a 4D environment - and in the Spacetime principle, time itself) is the missing link between logical reason and scientific theory that is often overlooked when the creation of our heavens is debated. Both Dimensions need to be elaborated further, individually, as each principle contains its own flaws within scientific understanding, Universal Creation and the Time Continuum.

Time is most probably the only scientific principle the everyday citizen understands; well in it's basic form. Digging a little deeper, however, the laws of Time surpass the understanding of even the greatest scientific minds. In layman's terms, for an object to exist it must contain each of the 'four' dimensions (We perceive our world in 3D but the universe itself is 4 Dimensional), 4+1 - where +1 is the dimension of time. Without any ONE of these dimensions any object cannot exist. The same rule must then apply to the Dimensions as well, as a Dimension cannot exist without it's pertaining parts. An example for this theory is in the existence of shadows; within a 4D world, light reflects off our 3D bodies and is portrayed within 2D. (Interestingly enough, for the possibility of a true hologram, scientists would have to invent a 5 Dimensional environment for light to be able to create such a projection)

If this is the case, then Time would have to always be of a fixed nature. It cannot suddenly exist as entities within the other dimensions would need to be present as well. Thus the theory of a singular Big Bang creating the universe is disproved by science itself, as each catalyst within the Big Bang would have to have been in existence for eternity and somehow didn't react until, what scientists believe is the creation period, 14 Billion years ago. The creation of these catalysts would also have to have been done at the beginning of time itself (which would be circular logic as you would need a new Big Bang to create this Big Bang) OR by an omnipresent being. The latter seems more plausible, scientifically, and what do you know, such a theory exists; Religion.

Spatially, however, scientists believe in the M-Theory. Basically, this theory is the belief that the universe is made up of 11 Dimensions in total that explains the reason for infinite space, and for all cosmological anomalies. These 7 Dimensions - known as hyper-dimensions as they exceed the perceivable dimensions - are so infinitesimally small (according to theory that they curve too sharply - I, personally, don't understand their logic either) that they almost do not exist themselves.

Going back to the Shadow Principle (and the Hologram 'Theory'), if 11 Dimensions did exist, then the earth has to be void of these hyper-dimensions and is still 4 Dimensional as our shadows are 2D (so are those of the moon, but you could argue the moon is close to the Earth and thus shares the same characteristics, so I won't elaborate on that being proof these hyper-dimensions don't exist). The nail in the coffin of the M-Theory is, once again, The Big Bang Theory. If all objects within the universe were created by the same gases, then that means the Earth must have the same principles as the rest of the Universe, thus eliminating the possibility of extraterrestrial hyper-dimensions.

The answer to these cosmological anomalies lies in the most obvious of places, the Fourth (Spatial) Dimension. This known dimension is completely invisible to our own eyes as we only perceive things around us in 3D, and thus we cannot explain what possibilities are visible within this unknown dimension. We cannot begin to understand what even ourselves would look like in 4D (would this be the dimension our souls and emotions are visible in?) let alone what wonders the universe above us must hold. Logically, though, this 4th Dimension would hold the key to the 'infinity' of space, and be the realm of all knowledge. Suffice to say, if we could comprehend within this fourth dimension, we would be God, Itself.