Just packing to head off to Hobart for three days of discussions about Second Life and my research, and don’t have time for more in-depth posting, but

1. Kathy Oleszczuk on FB sent me this Pixar video. As she says,

Pixar so totally ROCK! Here is yet another great little movie along the lines of “For the Birds” and “Geri’s game” …
“Lifted”

2. Meg Tsiamis and I are having a fabulous discussion about statistics and ranking systems over in FB — just wanted to let her know publicly that I really appreciate her taking the time to discuss this issue.

3. Jared Madden contacted me; he’s a part-time lecturer in Visual Communications and also the CEO of Emersive. He’s gaining some traction on Tune-Out, a new way of looking at the music industry Vs consumer debate (hopefully with ‘real’ conversation going on, rather than just ranting and rhetoric). Let’s hope Tune-Out achieves its goals!

—————

Right — back to the packing!

More posting soon, promise! (The Meg/Stats discussion on FB has occupied a lot of my time, in a very positive way!)

Filed under: Second Life & 3D virtual worlds, humour, miscellaneous, tools
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A little known secret amongst the BusComm community is that the REAL brains behind the rather wonderful Inside PR podcast, Terry Fallis, has just won $10k as a humour author.

We ALL knew he had to have a sense of humour to work with the ‘dark side’ (aka Dr. Jones) but now his genius is finally being recognised.

Says the Globe and Mail,

A debut novel, self-published by its author after he couldn’t interest an agent or a Canadian publisher, has won the $10,000 2008 Stephen Leacock Medal for Humour.

Toronto’s Terry Fallis, who is president of the well-known public-relations firm Thornley Fallis, received the medal and cheque yesterday for The Best Laid Plans at a luncheon in Orillia, Ont., the hometown of Sunshine Sketches creator Stephen Leacock and 100 kilometres north of Toronto.

In an interview, the 48-year-old rookie writer described winning Canada’s most prestigious annual prize for a humorous book as “a head-on collision of shock and joy.” Previously, “it was not even on my radar screen to be nominated,” he said, and when he was, “I was pretty close to having an aneurysm.”

The man is far too modest. Anyone who has ever listened to the sublime podcast that is Inside PR will know that it is the interaction of the TWO of them, Jones and Fallis, wherein the magic is created. Terry’s magic comes from his ability to step outside of what we immediately see, and to tap into what unconsciously resonates in us but we don’t know why.

And should anyone think I’m ‘dissing’ David Jones, far from it! The man has my sense of humour — black, dark, underground. He and I make ‘Addams Family Values’ [and here — one of my favourite movies) look like ‘Barbie Plats Her Hair 7‘…

Filed under: PR, blogging, humour, miscellaneous, podcasting
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Well, you are in for a surprise if you are a male who happens to be visiting the Congo on business.

According to well-placed sources (a friend of mine who reads the ‘bizarre’ sections of news websites), men in the Congo are having their ‘private parts’ either amputated or shrunk.

Says the Reuters article:

Purported victims, 14 of whom were also detained by police, claimed that sorcerers simply touched them to make their genitals shrink or disappear, in what some residents said was an attempt to extort cash with the promise of a cure.

Joe Bavier, Reuters’ man in the street down in the Congo, says that rumours of penis theft began circulating last week in Kinshasa, quickly dominating radio call-in shows. Listeners were reportedly advised to beware of fellow passengers in communal taxis who were wearing gold rings.

Apparently, reports of penis snatching are not uncommon in West Africa, where belief in traditional religions and witchcraft remains widespread, and where ritual killings to obtain blood or body parts still occur.

“It’s real. Just yesterday here, there was a man who was a victim. We saw. What was left was tiny,” said 29-year-old Alain Kalala, who sells phone credits near a Kinshasa police station.

Don’t say you haven’t been warned!

Thank goodness I’m receiving all of those penis enlargement adverts in my emails these days — very timely, indeed! I feel bigger better already!

Filed under: humour
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