Eggs?

I often wondered why we have eggs and rabbits and fuzzy fuzzy chicks to symbolise Easter. The easy answer is that eggs and fuzzy fuzzy chicks and rabbits all have something to do with spring, rebirth, fecundity, and the newness of life. Eggs and fuzzy fuzzy chicks – natch. Rabbits have, like, a billion bunnies a year. Dirty little death machines.

Once, I went to a Roman Catholic Easter service and the priest, in Very Broken English, explained that the reason eggs are a symbol of Easter is because they are the perfect metaphor for the Trinity:  yolk, albumen, and shell – three things, yet a single egg. This is analogous to the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost. I doubt anybody really put that much thought into it when they were purloining existing fertility symbols for their own “new religious Holy Day”, but it’s an interesting suggestion.

On a completely unrelated note, His Nibs and I saw the movie Avatar last night. It is the perfect example of why I HATE hearing anything at all about movies before I see them. I’d heard so many things about this movie being the Best. Movie. Evar.

It was Very Pretty. It reminded me a lot of the Myst games, which are my favourite video games (and the only ones I’ve ever actually played from start to finish). And it was nice to see that one of my Edmonton friends had one of the major roles in the movie. But I wasn’t stunned by it. The story is not new; in fact, if you know anything of the history of colonisation, you will see any number of stories in this movie: aspects of Roots, Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, and countless other stories, from the Maori in New Zealand, the Polynesians of Hawaii…I mean for pete’s sake, just follow the destruction left behind in the wake of folks like James Cook, Christopher Columbus, and Balboa (no, not Rocky). These are all all-too-common stories about what happens when people with advanced technology encounter a resource they wish to capture, and the less-technologically-advanced peoples they are willing to exploit or kill in order to get it.

Anyone  who knows anything about North American history will watch this movie and, if they’re like me, will shake their head and say: “the Sky People will betray the Na’vi because they don’t care how many women and children they kill. The Sky People will lie and cheat and desecrate everything they can until they get what they want. I’ve seen this movie before.” Anyone who *didn’t* know the plot of this movie within half an hour of it starting ought to be ashamed of themselves, and should go and read some Canadian history.

And, of course, Avatar II will be the one in which the Sky People return with a neutron bomb to detonate in space above Pandora and kill everything on the planet so they can just waltz in and take however much….get this…UNOBTANIUM as they want.

UNOBTANIUM!? Seriously? I hope the writer(s) meant to be funny with that, because I can’t even think about it without snickering. I mean, you could have come up with something like “Fratoniclenium” or “ilieudrium”. Unobtainum? *snort*

Very Pretty.

Poor writing. Nice to look at, though.

*Almost* worth the ticket price, but not quite. I’d have been just as happy to see this in the cheap theatre.


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8 responses to “Eggs?”

  1. mrgod2u Avatar
    mrgod2u

    I swear that unobtainium was some kind of placeholder in the script “I don’t know just put in Unobtanium for now, we’ll get a better name later”, then they just forgot and by the time they went to rewrite it, they realized that they had already printed the boxes for the toy dragon-bird (with unobtanium nuggets”

    1. shaedofblue Avatar
      shaedofblue

      That is sort of how it happened, only in-universe. Unobtainium was what the substance was jokingly called when first discovered (which makes sense, since in the real world it is the name aerospace engineers use for a hypothetical substance with unique properties that would be perfect for a project/thought experiment), but that name stuck instead of anything more scientific.

      1. cenobyte Avatar

        That’s just *even more sad*.

        1. shaedofblue Avatar
          shaedofblue

          Sad that instead of being merely silly or a mistake, it was an engineering joke that went over most people’s heads? Or sad that a similar substance would likely end up being called this IRL?

          I don’t really see how you could have heard so much about “this movie being the Best. Movie. Evar.” and not heard it described as Pocahontas/Dances with wolves in space. It was the first I heard about it.

  2. cenobyte Avatar

    Unobtainium.
    **sigh**

  3. Coyote Avatar

    And I’ll say it again; Cameron made one good movie and now we have to suffer through the rest of the crap he has decided to inflict on us. Even when he DOES come up with a fantastic idea, he somehow manages to ruin it.

    1. cenobyte Avatar

      Un. Ob. Tanium.

  4. Cori May Avatar
    Cori May

    One of your Edmonton friends?

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