"Romantic Comedies Ruin Your Love Life"

Reuters Life! - Romantic comedies might provide 90 minutes of light-hearted fun but the happy-ever-after movies are also impacting people's real love lives, according to an Australian survey. A poll of 1,000 Australians found almost half said rom-coms with their inevitable happy endings have ruined their view of an ideal relationship. One in four Australians said they were now expected to know what their partner was thinking while one in five respondents said it made their partners expect gifts and flowers 'just because'.

"It seems our love of rom-coms is turning us into a nation of "happy-ever-after addicts." Yet the warm and fuzzy feeling they provide can adversely influence our view of real relationships," said Australian relationship counselor, Gabrielle Morrissey. "Real relationships take work and true love requires more than fireworks."

The survey was released by Warner Home Video to mark the movie Valentine's Day going to DVD.

In 2008, the BBC reported:

Rom-coms have been blamed by relationship experts at Heriot Watt University for promoting unrealistic expectations when it comes to love. They found fans of films such as Runaway Bride and Notting Hill often fail to communicate with their partner. Many held the view if someone is meant to be with you, then they should know what you want without you telling them. Psychologists at the family and personal relationships laboratory at the university studied 40 top box office hits between 1995 and 2005, and identified common themes which they believed were unrealistic.

"The problem is that while most of us know that the idea of a perfect relationship is unrealistic, some of us are still more influenced by media portrayals than we realise." -Dr Bjarne Holmes, Heriot Watt University

The movies included You've Got Mail, Maid In Manhattan, The Wedding Planner and While You Were Sleeping.

Edit:




"The Bechdel Test is a simple way to gauge the active presence of female characters in Hollywood films and just how well rounded and complete those roles are. It was created by Allison Bechdel in her comic strip Dykes to Watch Out For in 1985. It is astonishing the number of popular movies that can't pass this simple test. It demonstrates how little women's complex and interesting lives are underrepresented or non existent in the film industry. We have jobs, creative projects, friendships and struggles among many other things that are actually interesting in our lives... so Hollywood, start writing about it!"

Thanks to Jennifer LoveGrove for sharing the video.

I Love You Summer Oooooooooooooooo

Well, Donna Summer. But July is turning out to be loveable too.

Wondering...

...when "activist," became a dirty word.

"Us, rebel? So exiled have even basic questions of freedom become from the political vocabulary that they sound musty and ridiculous, and vulnerable to the ultimate badge of shame -- 'That's so '60s!' -- the entire decade having been mocked so effectively that social protest seems outlandish and 'so last-century,' just... another style excess like love beads and Nehru jackets." -Laura Kipnis

I Still Love You, Toronto

"Torontonians shouldn’t feel ashamed about their city — we never asked for this to happen to us, but if we ask enough questions we can find out why it did." -Matt Blackett

"You cannot control an ecstatic person; it is impossible. You can control only a miserable person. An ecstatic person is bound to be free. Ecstasy is freedom. When you are ecstatic, you cannot be reduced to being a slave. You cannot be destroyed so easily; you cannot be persuaded to live in... See more a prison. You would like to dance under the stars and you would like to walk with the wind and you would like to talk with the sun and moon. You will need the vast, the infinite night, the enormous. You cannot be seduced into living in a dark cell. You cannot be turned into a slave. You will live your own life and you will do your own thing.

This is very difficult for society. If there are many ecstatic people, the society will feel it is falling apart, its structure will not hold anymore." -OSHO

(maybe it's more appropriate to substitute "awake" for "ecstatic)

"We don’t need laws and people with guns to live in harmony. Ain’t this ironic : people with GUNS try to create PEACE. The moment a society accept people with guns it’s an evil society." -Jan Siemaszkiewicz

I Love You Is In The Air ...

Apologies for my lack of posts, but my blog slows down every Spring! It doesn't mean I don't love you. It means it's easier to feel that love is in the air, so I'm mostly outdoors. Meanwhile, here is a container I planted with Iboza, Bronze Fennel, Hyssop, Zuta Levana, Ginger Geranium, Curry Plant, Silver Licorice, and an Uknown Plant Gift From A Neighbour.

I hope you're having a beautiful Spring. Gotta go! The kids wanna play outside...

The I Love You Virus Keeps On Loving...

A week after its tenth anniversary, the I Love You Virus infects my computer!

The ILOVEYOU Virus Turns Ten

On May 4th, 2000, The ILOVEYOU computer worm attacked millions of computers when it was sent as an attachment to an email message with the text "ILOVEYOU" in the subject line. It was the first "socially-engineered" malware. IT folk everywhere complained that it took advantage of weakest link in the security chain: the human sitting behind the keyboard.

PC Mag asks, 'I Love You' Virus Turns Ten: What Have We Learned? and the BBC looks back with A Decade On From The ILOVEYOU Bug, but I wonder: if the same thing happened today, how would we react? We grow up hearing that there's not enough love to go around, we don't deserve love, and we're not good enough. It's the same message that advertising sells us along with its products that are supposed to make everything better.

There is a love interest in this story that mostly goes unreported. It seems that its creator, Onel de Guzman, and fellow student Michel Buen both fancied one of their teachers. Buen, jealous of the relationship between de Guzman and the instructor, broke into her email account. He configured de Guzman's own trojan (a project he was developing) to work against him, added the enclosing script, and sent the message—from Madame Bautista at Hotmail—to de Guzman with the subject line, 'I LOVE YOU.' De Guzman, of course, opened the message. The virus replicated, sent itself to everyone in his address book, and the rest is history.

The act of virus writing might not seem like an art, but their creators call themselves "virus artists." To hear what the source code "sounds" like, check out Franco Berardi's performance. Digitalcraft presented an art exhibition about computer viruses named after ILOVEYOU. Oddly enough, most art that features an I Love You element does so in series (graffiti, Post-it notes, Jacques Perconte's I Love You Campaign). Here's a little ditty from 2005, from the "Virus" section in my first book, Avatar.


I LOVE YOU WANTS TO BE FREE

It is suspected that a 23 year old man living in Manilla created I Love You.

Over a five hour period, during May 4 2000, I Love You spread across North America, Europe and Asia.

One DJ in Texas received I Love You 1500 times, but I Love You will most likely come from someone you know.

I Love You was blamed for shutting down the website of Florida's state lottery.

An alias of I Love You is Very Funny.

The State Department, the CIA, and the Defense Department said they had been hit by I Love You, but top security had not been breached.

I Love You affects your machine.

"People think of I Love You as an invasion from Mars," one researcher said, "my aim is to change people's attitudes, to cut down some of the fear."

Don't execute I Love You. You will be fine.

May The 4th Be With You ...

Happy Unofficial Star Wars Day. To celebrate, Your Tango presents 10 Things Star Wars Taught Us About Love. I am the right age to be amused. Even though I was in love with Han Solo (heck, I secretly thought I was Han Solo -- it's all a little confusing), the most appealing aspect of the film series for me was The Force.

I am also the perfect age to write, "Ten Things I Had To Un-Learn About Love Thanks To Heavy Metal Videos."