Unadulterated comsumerism.. and what do you get?

I again had a feeling of oddness in my life today, they are quite regular now. I was sitting in a fibre glass menhir about to go down a waterfall in a theme park based on a French cartoon that my maternal Grandparents collected the comics of, wondering what on earth my grandparents would have thought of the whole thing. This was quickly followed by, damn its bloody cold and I’m about to get very very wet. I did too.. to the point that I was actually laughed at by a very small boy for dripping.. have to say I laughed too.. I looked ridiculous. But it was amusing.. which is all worthwhile.

It was all pretty random.. the French have decided to make a theme park based on the Asterix and Obelix cartoon/comics. It was actually pretty good, it was the last day of the season too, so there was practically no one there. There were signs for rides saying 90mins from here, and half the time we got to stay on the ride because there was no one else waiting. That bit was totally awesome, so much better than the Gold Coast where there are always ques because the weather is always good. It was cold.. and wet (not that I can blame anyone else for that) and there were some pretty cool roller coasters. The best was a Zeus one, made from wood.. that was pretty cool.. this is closely followed by the scoobie doo one at Movie World, that’s the best ‘scary’ one ive yet to go on. But the Zeus one was pretty awesome.. and no ques makes it even better.

There was also an amazing amount of commercialisation, (which one should expect from a theme park I know) but it was weird to see that you could buy pretty much anything Asterix and Obelix. (and no matter what you brought you HAD to be given a bag.. there was do option, even if you already had one of theirs) there were at least 20 designs of Mug, similar number of different pens, dresses, dress ups, lots of dolphins (which I didn’t really get), bags, jewlerry (of dogmatix.. ), plush toy oblexisi, towls, a bikini, etc. I think they were having a fair shot at competing with Disney. (Better than Disney all the way though.. not that I can really compare.. but I can imagine)

But the parc was awesome.. even by yourself, in the cold. There was a lot of weird daggyness.. the actors in some of the performances were the characters come to life… they were 3D cartoons. I had trouble following the play about, well I think it was about, a new recruit into the Roman army. There was a lot of disappearing tricks and possibly the army looking for fleas in the audience.. not 100% sure though. It was all in French but still very amusing and everyone had fun.

I even managed to get a present for some relatives.. talk about a successful day.

In my Paris re-visited I have also visited le Louvre and the musee de Orsay. The weirdest thing is that you are allowed to take pictures in the Museum. Although you aren’t supposed to take them of the Mona Lisa people still were.. considering how many times I have got into trouble for taking ‘unallowed’ pictures (we aren’t even allowed to photograph inside the State Library) I thought it was brilliant, and as such I have a few hundred pictures of statues, people drawing said statues.. and lots of Egyptian stuff. I saw the Mona Lisa from a distance.. it wasn’t nearly as disappointing as I was expecting, it was as one would expect, looks exactly like all the copies of it. Lots of people were having a pretty good look though. There was a lot of angsty Italian art of horrible things happening to other people. The Egyptian stuff was really good, much better than the stuff that visited the Melbourne museum, but its kinda weird to see what is basically a dislocated wall behind glass. Someone went into Egypt, ripped out the wall then brought it back to France for people to look at. Kinda odd. There were also a lot of small children, not the best thing, about on par with the Americans I think.

But the old stuff was cool.. and the Caravagiggo sketches were also awesome. Totally worth while. Art is such a personal thing as to who likes what and why.. although considering how much of the stuff there is out there I think there's something for everyone. Although whether everything has its someone im not too sure.

And that’s all I feel like writing.. cant think of much more intelligencia to add.

Oh, I am currently not sure what i should think about Starbucks. well thats not true.. i know what i SHOULD think about Starbucks (ie. that they are evil bastards killing local coffee people.. etc. etc. pure evil globalisation) but im not sure that thats what i actually think about them. I know that they are evil, but they are soooo good at it. They are soo brilliant at globalisation and evility.. its beautiful.. but i know i shouldnt be looking at it that way.. its a bugger..