According to the Washington Post, Polish government appointed childrens rights watchdog, Ewa Sowinska, is concerned that the BBC childrens telivision show promotes homosexuality. Although she’s not the first, I am not suprised that Poland’s right-wing government has come under fire by human rights groups, especially when, and I quote:

“Polish Education Minister Roman Giertych has proposed laws sacking teachers who promote “homosexual lifestyle” and banning “homo-agitation” in schools.”

Becuase homosexual propaganda is obviously what we should all be worrying about these days. Not global warming, child literacy rates, corporate advertising aimed at children, but fuzzy purple human-television hybrids. Poland, as a EU country, needs to rethink its attitude towards LGBT rights, especially when it only removed homosexuality from its list of diseases in 1991.

Maybe they should be concerned about the Teletubbies Cocaine bust back in September, although to be honest I believe that to be more of an homage.

I attended the MCM LondonExpo on Saturday, and thought I might share some pictures of the event.

Flickr Set

Slideshow!

The event itself wasn’t as amazing as last October, mainly because Nick Frost and Simon Peg weren’t there. The organisation wasn’t so great either, it was difficult to know what was going on, especially due to some issues pushing everything back an hour. However, there was still a robot wars style battle, and some absolutely amazing costumes, far better than I noticed last year.
I will mention a couple of my favourites; Master Chief from Halo, the Stormtroopers, the Night Elf from WoW, Princess Zelda and Link, Ulala from Space Channel 5 and Spongebob Squarepants. Most original in my opinion was Shonen Bat from the little known anime Paranoia Agent. There were many very good Final Fantasty character costumes as usual. I was distraught that I underestimated the poor lighting in the expo some of the photos I took for use by a University society were nowhere near as good as I hoped.

Overall, it was a fun event. Even if I had to get up at 6am to pack all of my material possesions into a car, as I was moving out of my rented university accomodation, and then head to London on the train.

I’m beginning to feel however, that it has become far too much about selling overpriced items, rather than what it should be, a media expo - which is a great shame.

The DoD on Flickr

Greater London House in Camden displays quite vibrant Art Deco plinths. The cats, and the overall architecture remind me of the Film Noir LucasArts adventure Grim Fandango.

The building used to be home to the Carreras tabacco company and factory, but is now offices for many other companies.

From Wikipedia:

The building was built on the crescent’s communal garden in 1926 to designs by M.E. & O.H. Collins and is one of the best known art deco buildings in London. It is 550 feet (168 metres) long, and is mainly white. The exterior was said to be inspired by the Egyptian temple of the cat-goddess Bubastis. When the factory was converted into offices in 1961 the Egyptian detailing - which included a solar disc to the Sun-god Ra, two gigantic cats flanking the entrance and colourful painted details - was lost, but it was restored during a restoration in the late 1990s. Greater London House now houses offices for the Young & Rubicam advertising agency and other companies.