Warm Climates

My holiday excursion for the weekend begins tomorrow, so I won't be around during that period. If you have anything you want to ask me or tell me, drop me an e-mail at siroccothemod@gmail.com or go knocking at all the hotels in Fort William. I'd recommend the former option though as I may think you're a crazy person and beat you to death with a dirty stick.

Things are looking interesting in NationStates for the upcoming August... there's going to be a MaxChat on the 6th at Midnight (British time), there'll be lots of new issues as soon as the new code's in place, and then, of course, a few weeks later Max Barry's going to become a father! Phew! I can only heartily congratulate him and Jennifer, his wife, and hope there's no complications.

On a tiny non-NationStates-related note, there's a children's film coming out called Madagascar. It's about four talking animals that wind up there and... well, I don't really know. As far as I could tell from the advert they meet a bunch of lemurs and go "Gosh, what odd little creatures!" There doesn't appear to be any villian or plot or anything that I can discern. But that's not the thing that got my attention. The thing that got me was that the film had been called Madagascar, as if this film encapsulated everything there is to know about the place. Madagascar, as we all know, is a gigantic island off the coast of east Africa. It's a country! Seventeen and a half million people live there! Had someone brought out a film called "Great Britain" or "USA", we'd be expecting something a bit more than animated lions and giraffes being surprised at everything wouldn't we? The film should have been called "Lost in Madagascar" or "Marooned in Madagascar" or something. Even "Gadzooks! Madagascar!" would have done, though that brings up images of mediaeval knights trekking through the jungle undergrowth to me.

What would the Madagascans think if they saw this movie? We don't know, and I don't imagine we care, either. I thought the world was becoming more globalised, but things like this make me think that perhaps we're not. It seems to me that most of us still think of African countries being as exotic and remote as an alien planet and barely being real at all.