On Yahoo today there was a news story about this guy, Mark Rudov, who hates this Cheerios ad (I don’t know anything about the guy except that he hates the ad and therefore do not necessarily otherwise endorse him). And may I say? FINALLY. I hate this ad and have been saying to anyone who happens to be sitting near me whenever it airs – usually and probably only ever my husband – that the woman is an abusive bitch who deserves to smacked. If a man were talking to a woman like that everyone would be crying domestic abuse. But we’re supposed to think this is funny? I dunno. That just seems so very wrong to me. Here’s the ad.
She’s awful right? Interestingly, in Canada it airs without the dubbing and with the original British accents. Maybe people in the United States are confused or put off by accents in the same way that they are confused or put off by the word “philosopher” which is presumably why Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone was released in the U.S. as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone.
But really. Why was that? Not being a student of the All Americans Are Idiots school of thought, I’ve often wondered who decides these things and what the reasoning is behind them. So, it turns out it was the American publisher who changed the book title. Did they do a market study? I can’t find out. I did stumble across an explanation of what the philosopher’s stone actually is though, something that had – probably surprisingly – never occurred to me to wonder about.
According to (the oft erroneous) Wikipedia it’s a “legendary alchemical tool, supposedly capable of turning base metals into gold; it was also sometimes believed to be an elixir of life, useful for rejuvenation and possibly for achieving immortality. For a long time, it was the most sought-after goal in Western alchemy. In the view of alchemists like Sir Isaac Newton and Nicolas Flamel familiarity with the philosopher’s stone would bring enlightenment upon the maker and conclude the Great Work.”
Nicolas Flamel is mentioned in the Harry Potter books as a pal of Dumbledore and said to have lived to 665 thanks to the stone. In real life he was apparently a medieval scrivener and crack alchemist. Though his dates are given as approx. 1330-1418, word is that he and his wife achieved immortality. But they no longer live in the same house they occupied in the 14th Century. It’s now the oldest house in Paris and the ground floor is a restaurant, L’Auberge Nicolas Flamel. The décor is ghastly but the porterhouse steak with morels sounds awesome.
