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The Frisky: Humans have been predicting the end of the world since the very beginning of human consciousness, but a giant inflatable duck falling on a Scotland highway is probably one of the more simultaneously absurd and convincing prophetic gestures of The End Times™ to date.
Why is this an important article for people to read? I’m not talking about why it is in the “Real World” blog but why is was written in the first place? It is funny that a duck has gotten out of it’s containment and stopped in the middle of a highway but why does it need a whole article about it? Especially one joking about the end of the world. I feel that if something needed to written it can be a small blog with picture notifying what happened and that’s all, nothing more. I feel like there is more important information about what is going on in Scotland that should fill this page rather than an inflatable duck. But I also go and write all this while taking up my time to say all this and not reading a more substantial article on this blog, so I am at fault too.
I LOVE THE DUCK! I am so happy that the giant duck that once beautifully and elegantly graced the rivers of Pittsburgh is no floating its way around the world enjoy all of the luscious bodies of water that our planet has to offer. I do not see this friendly giant yellow duck as a threat, but more of a loveable creature enjoying the natural beauty that is out there. I would be intrigued to see where our ducky friend travels next. However, I am very curious about how it (I was not sure of the gender, but if anyone knows it please let me know) travels from location to location. Does it just float with the wind or does he die a little inside when some sad human deflates it before packing it in a box to be shipped around the globe. These are important questions that I need the answer to.
We have a contender for best green page headline of 2016 right here. The author clearly hasn't done a lot of research, though. Claiming that the duck is Godzilla sized is quite the insult to Godzilla. The duck, at best, could be a Godzilla hatchling, but a full-sized Godzilla? I think not. Godzilla, in his most common iteration, is 164 feet tall. This duck, on a good day, is MAYBE 12 feet tall. Not to mention, Godzilla is a monster of destruction. This duck only looks like he could slash car prices or maybe a windshield, not Mothra himself. Plus, one of Godzilla's main claims to fame is that he has two feet, and can walk, stomp, or dance his way into the hearts of millions. This duck, as he is inflatable and not Godzilla, can do none of these things. He can only blow around while children look on with joy spread all over their faces. You know what the children have spread all over their faces when Godzilla goes on a rampage? Terror, and the blood of Godzilla's victims. Overall, I think the author should have looked more into what Godzilla's life was like before using his name in vain for such a click-baity article. Try harder next time, The Frisky.
Wow that was an incredible article from the title all the way to the end. I am not really sure what this had to do with theatre, but I guess since that duck was in Pittsburgh once, we have some sort of connection. I am glad no one got hurt by the wrath of this vicious creature and also sad that I missed its great journey through Glasgow. Andrea McCall had an incredible tweet and I am very sad that she did not get more recognition for her quality writing. I hope that they paid for the damages to her car, but who else is able to say that a giant duck flew across the highway and hit their car? It sounds like it was one crazy car quack. I guess if I was going to picture the end of the world it might involve giant ducks attacking people in their cars in Scotland. I really hope someone makes a movie about this monstrous attack because it will probably be better than any Sharknado movie.
Everything about this article was amazing. If you need something to make you laugh at the end of a long day, this is truly it. Can you imagine driving down the road and seeing a giant duck rolling toward you? ROFL! In the midst of all of the awful media coverage about the election and terrifying news about the state of our world, I have to say that every once in a while it is nice to read about an incident that is both funny and no one got hurt. I honestly thought that the article was satirical in its ludicrous-ness. In the end, I think that the overall message of the article as it applies to theatre can be this: sometimes, the totally unpredictable and absurd will happen. The best way to deal with it is to accept the ridiculousness with grace and maybe a little bit of humor, find a solution, and then move on.
In the town that I went to high school in, every summer they hold an event where they float thousands of rubber ducks town the river for a fundraising event. Furthermore, they inflate a giant rubber duck balloon in the parking lot of the library (which is along the river), and this past year it was overturned (though not through a major highway) to the great dismay of the town. I only need one more incident to scientifically correlate the giant inflatable duck with giant inflatable duck related tragedy, and I bet you that due to the coming of the end times that in the next 2 years we’ll have our third case.
In all seriousness though, we build buildings thousands of feet high, we engineer machines that fly across oceans in hours, we create and mass distribute devices that fit in our pocket that allow one to interface with the an amazingly complex and global network of computers, giving us the ability to answer almost any reasonable question with reasonable certainty, and yet in multiple instances, as not only a society but as a species, we have failed to properly tether and anchor large inflatable facsimiles of rubber ducks. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.
I am so glad that this is an actual article that I can comment on and get points for. The only possible connection to our school that I can think of is that the tether on the duck broke and let the enormous duck loose on the streets. If the duck had been properly rigged, by perhaps a man with the rigging skills of Sean West, maybe the duck would not have terrorized all of Scotland. But then, of course, we would have all lost the opportunity to get credit for comments that are all just discussing a giant, inflatable duck that fell into a road and got tweeted about. My favorite part of this article is reading everyone's comments and seeing what meaningless part of the story they get attached to and then proceed to write 150 words about. Like Jacob, for example, writes an entire comment about Godzilla's size. Jason ponders how the duck is moved from place to place. And here I am, commenting on the comments on an article about an oversized duck for a class that I am taking in college.
Truth be told, I just have a lot of questions about the whole situation. Does insurance cover damage for large bird related incidents? Is the duck still on the loose? I suppose whoever installed this was a lame duck. I hope the mechanic wasn't a quack. What the duck was this? In all seriousness though, I hope everyone was okay and also I hope that someone follows up. The tags on the article included "i'm dead," which I hope isn't accurate. That would be quite a way to go. To be honest, this article has inspired me to really make sure my drawings are to scale. I'm pretty sure that the duck was supposed to be that big, but I would hate to be in a situation with something that is just wildly not to scale. Not quite sure what I'd do with that.
I'm not quite sure how a large inflatable duck in the middle of a highway becomes a metaphor for the end of human existence, but it was an enticing lead-in. I'm assuming maybe it has something to do with humanity's constant creation of larger impractical objects that become immensely volatile when Mother Nature rears its head? Or maybe it's about mans need to create and compound chaos until it ultimately jeopardizes our commuting well-being? And let's face it- death would often be preferred to sitting in traffic for hours. Or maybe the writer of this article just wanted to jazz up a story about a huge inflatable duck that escaped its moorings during a storm. With all of the terrorism and racial injustice happening around the world I guess we assumed that slow news days were a thing of the past.
What. Is. This. This whole article is really ridiculous, both in content and the way it was written. First of all, inflatables should really be tied down securely, taking into considerations of all different weather conditions. The lightheartedness in the article is understandable, a giant inflatable duck is really weird, but misguided. A giant inflatable of any animal/thing that is rolling around freely on a road is actually really dangerous. I am surprised that there weren’t any major car accidents either from the duck itself or from people being distracted by the duck. Also, the writer of the article over exaggerated to a point that it is not even funny. An inflatable that was blown away is in no way a depiction of the apocalypse or death. That joke might have been funny the first time mentioned in the article, but the 7 times afterward just really wasn’t.
Pretty scary, might have been more scary if it was an anatomically correct duck, or perhaps, it was alive? Do we know for a fact this was not a living duck? Could a Scottish car dealership be responsible for bringing forth a mutant, living, feeling duck to terrorize the hard working people of this town?
Let's think about this. The auto industry is one of the biggest in the country, and the world. Even with the bailouts that happened under Evil Obama™, the auto industry still racks in a significant profit every year, what power could that give them? Do the leaders of each major car company meet in secret and plan Scotland's demise?
With the profits and the property already owned by the auto industry (each dealership is huge, what is under the parking lots?) there could be a possibility of a military partnership. Like when the military uses jeeps and stuff, but much more sinister. Perhaps, the technology to create one large, living duck and sending it to this town is an attempt to thwart a European terrorism scandal.
Anyways, this is pretty messed up, why didn't you tether your duck down properly, those who cannot keep their duck should not be allowed to own one, if you love something let it go, etc. I am smart, I got into this school, remember that.
I just want everyone to know, in case it wasn't clear in the article- this is NOT the art duck! This, is a fake large duck, copied, and used by the dealership. The majestic art duck that graces cities water systems is properly weighted and much bigger, better and would NOT blow over. So this article needed to be more clear that this is a counterfeit duck! Otherwise people, like some of those who commented on this duck will think that the Art Duck was so poorly constructed and watched, that it would blow over the highway. Wrong! I did some research- not the same duck at all, he has a different colored beak entirely! He is much cuter, and has a different body! This duck who blew over obviously belongs to Peter Vardy, a car dealership owner! This duck is just a duck! However, I appreciate the article, this was important news, and sometimes fluff is good in our sad, sad world. This is news from the real world, because the real world is crazy and wacky and sometimes you just can't make that shit up.
Well, I for one think that this is absolutely hilarious. Truly terrifying, I'm sure, and if I had been in the situation I probably wouldn't have been laughing until later. But in the world we're living in right now, where every day there are several reports of violence, I love the thought that it is an inflatable duck that is predicted to send us all into apocalyptic madness. To those of you who believe this is the duck that once floated here in Pittsburgh: it isn't. It's an inflatable duck used for advertising a car dealership, and is much smaller than the Pittsburgh duck. I also cannot believe you would expect such poor behavior from a duck that once resided with us. No, this duck was clearly younger, a little more foolish. He ached to be released from his tethers, which luckily were not done properly. He flew with the wind just as he always wished, and we should celebrate him, the rogue duck, rather than give all the credit to the one who floated here.
This is the sort of article one should always keep on file the next time that, say your uncle decides that, because he was an eagle-scout, he can be trusted to securely tie four king-sized mattresses to the top of his wife's Honda Civic, which is about to go hurtling down the interstate at speeds in excess of 75mph. In short, this article illustrates beautifully why rigging specialists are needed, and the consequences of not taking the correct precautions when executing projects that may require special resources. While I do not know the exact circumstances under which this display was assembled and loaded in, or what the ratings of the tethers holding this ill-fated advertising campaign to the ground were, (in terms of wind-speed resistance) or even if this was a reoccurring display, I do know a clusterfrick when I see one, and this particular situation looks like quite the doozy. I look forward to any future updates as to the eventual destination of this duck, or its deflated husk, and would love to see if this incident spawns any change in rules regarding the installation of such features.
14 comments:
Why is this an important article for people to read? I’m not talking about why it is in the “Real World” blog but why is was written in the first place? It is funny that a duck has gotten out of it’s containment and stopped in the middle of a highway but why does it need a whole article about it? Especially one joking about the end of the world. I feel that if something needed to written it can be a small blog with picture notifying what happened and that’s all, nothing more. I feel like there is more important information about what is going on in Scotland that should fill this page rather than an inflatable duck. But I also go and write all this while taking up my time to say all this and not reading a more substantial article on this blog, so I am at fault too.
I LOVE THE DUCK! I am so happy that the giant duck that once beautifully and elegantly graced the rivers of Pittsburgh is no floating its way around the world enjoy all of the luscious bodies of water that our planet has to offer. I do not see this friendly giant yellow duck as a threat, but more of a loveable creature enjoying the natural beauty that is out there. I would be intrigued to see where our ducky friend travels next. However, I am very curious about how it (I was not sure of the gender, but if anyone knows it please let me know) travels from location to location. Does it just float with the wind or does he die a little inside when some sad human deflates it before packing it in a box to be shipped around the globe. These are important questions that I need the answer to.
We have a contender for best green page headline of 2016 right here. The author clearly hasn't done a lot of research, though. Claiming that the duck is Godzilla sized is quite the insult to Godzilla. The duck, at best, could be a Godzilla hatchling, but a full-sized Godzilla? I think not. Godzilla, in his most common iteration, is 164 feet tall. This duck, on a good day, is MAYBE 12 feet tall. Not to mention, Godzilla is a monster of destruction. This duck only looks like he could slash car prices or maybe a windshield, not Mothra himself. Plus, one of Godzilla's main claims to fame is that he has two feet, and can walk, stomp, or dance his way into the hearts of millions. This duck, as he is inflatable and not Godzilla, can do none of these things. He can only blow around while children look on with joy spread all over their faces. You know what the children have spread all over their faces when Godzilla goes on a rampage? Terror, and the blood of Godzilla's victims. Overall, I think the author should have looked more into what Godzilla's life was like before using his name in vain for such a click-baity article. Try harder next time, The Frisky.
Wow that was an incredible article from the title all the way to the end. I am not really sure what this had to do with theatre, but I guess since that duck was in Pittsburgh once, we have some sort of connection. I am glad no one got hurt by the wrath of this vicious creature and also sad that I missed its great journey through Glasgow. Andrea McCall had an incredible tweet and I am very sad that she did not get more recognition for her quality writing. I hope that they paid for the damages to her car, but who else is able to say that a giant duck flew across the highway and hit their car? It sounds like it was one crazy car quack. I guess if I was going to picture the end of the world it might involve giant ducks attacking people in their cars in Scotland. I really hope someone makes a movie about this monstrous attack because it will probably be better than any Sharknado movie.
Everything about this article was amazing. If you need something to make you laugh at the end of a long day, this is truly it. Can you imagine driving down the road and seeing a giant duck rolling toward you? ROFL! In the midst of all of the awful media coverage about the election and terrifying news about the state of our world, I have to say that every once in a while it is nice to read about an incident that is both funny and no one got hurt. I honestly thought that the article was satirical in its ludicrous-ness. In the end, I think that the overall message of the article as it applies to theatre can be this: sometimes, the totally unpredictable and absurd will happen. The best way to deal with it is to accept the ridiculousness with grace and maybe a little bit of humor, find a solution, and then move on.
In the town that I went to high school in, every summer they hold an event where they float thousands of rubber ducks town the river for a fundraising event. Furthermore, they inflate a giant rubber duck balloon in the parking lot of the library (which is along the river), and this past year it was overturned (though not through a major highway) to the great dismay of the town. I only need one more incident to scientifically correlate the giant inflatable duck with giant inflatable duck related tragedy, and I bet you that due to the coming of the end times that in the next 2 years we’ll have our third case.
In all seriousness though, we build buildings thousands of feet high, we engineer machines that fly across oceans in hours, we create and mass distribute devices that fit in our pocket that allow one to interface with the an amazingly complex and global network of computers, giving us the ability to answer almost any reasonable question with reasonable certainty, and yet in multiple instances, as not only a society but as a species, we have failed to properly tether and anchor large inflatable facsimiles of rubber ducks. I’ll let you draw your own conclusions.
I am so glad that this is an actual article that I can comment on and get points for. The only possible connection to our school that I can think of is that the tether on the duck broke and let the enormous duck loose on the streets. If the duck had been properly rigged, by perhaps a man with the rigging skills of Sean West, maybe the duck would not have terrorized all of Scotland. But then, of course, we would have all lost the opportunity to get credit for comments that are all just discussing a giant, inflatable duck that fell into a road and got tweeted about. My favorite part of this article is reading everyone's comments and seeing what meaningless part of the story they get attached to and then proceed to write 150 words about. Like Jacob, for example, writes an entire comment about Godzilla's size. Jason ponders how the duck is moved from place to place. And here I am, commenting on the comments on an article about an oversized duck for a class that I am taking in college.
#freetheduck2016
Truth be told, I just have a lot of questions about the whole situation. Does insurance cover damage for large bird related incidents? Is the duck still on the loose? I suppose whoever installed this was a lame duck. I hope the mechanic wasn't a quack. What the duck was this? In all seriousness though, I hope everyone was okay and also I hope that someone follows up. The tags on the article included "i'm dead," which I hope isn't accurate. That would be quite a way to go. To be honest, this article has inspired me to really make sure my drawings are to scale. I'm pretty sure that the duck was supposed to be that big, but I would hate to be in a situation with something that is just wildly not to scale. Not quite sure what I'd do with that.
p.s. kevin sorry for the duck puns
I'm not quite sure how a large inflatable duck in the middle of a highway becomes a metaphor for the end of human existence, but it was an enticing lead-in. I'm assuming maybe it has something to do with humanity's constant creation of larger impractical objects that become immensely volatile when Mother Nature rears its head? Or maybe it's about mans need to create and compound chaos until it ultimately jeopardizes our commuting well-being? And let's face it- death would often be preferred to sitting in traffic for hours. Or maybe the writer of this article just wanted to jazz up a story about a huge inflatable duck that escaped its moorings during a storm. With all of the terrorism and racial injustice happening around the world I guess we assumed that slow news days were a thing of the past.
What. Is. This. This whole article is really ridiculous, both in content and the way it was written. First of all, inflatables should really be tied down securely, taking into considerations of all different weather conditions. The lightheartedness in the article is understandable, a giant inflatable duck is really weird, but misguided. A giant inflatable of any animal/thing that is rolling around freely on a road is actually really dangerous. I am surprised that there weren’t any major car accidents either from the duck itself or from people being distracted by the duck. Also, the writer of the article over exaggerated to a point that it is not even funny. An inflatable that was blown away is in no way a depiction of the apocalypse or death. That joke might have been funny the first time mentioned in the article, but the 7 times afterward just really wasn’t.
Pretty scary, might have been more scary if it was an anatomically correct duck, or perhaps, it was alive? Do we know for a fact this was not a living duck? Could a Scottish car dealership be responsible for bringing forth a mutant, living, feeling duck to terrorize the hard working people of this town?
Let's think about this. The auto industry is one of the biggest in the country, and the world. Even with the bailouts that happened under Evil Obama™, the auto industry still racks in a significant profit every year, what power could that give them? Do the leaders of each major car company meet in secret and plan Scotland's demise?
With the profits and the property already owned by the auto industry (each dealership is huge, what is under the parking lots?) there could be a possibility of a military partnership. Like when the military uses jeeps and stuff, but much more sinister. Perhaps, the technology to create one large, living duck and sending it to this town is an attempt to thwart a European terrorism scandal.
Anyways, this is pretty messed up, why didn't you tether your duck down properly, those who cannot keep their duck should not be allowed to own one, if you love something let it go, etc. I am smart, I got into this school, remember that.
I just want everyone to know, in case it wasn't clear in the article- this is NOT the art duck! This, is a fake large duck, copied, and used by the dealership. The majestic art duck that graces cities water systems is properly weighted and much bigger, better and would NOT blow over. So this article needed to be more clear that this is a counterfeit duck! Otherwise people, like some of those who commented on this duck will think that the Art Duck was so poorly constructed and watched, that it would blow over the highway. Wrong! I did some research- not the same duck at all, he has a different colored beak entirely! He is much cuter, and has a different body! This duck who blew over obviously belongs to Peter Vardy, a car dealership owner! This duck is just a duck!
However, I appreciate the article, this was important news, and sometimes fluff is good in our sad, sad world. This is news from the real world, because the real world is crazy and wacky and sometimes you just can't make that shit up.
Well, I for one think that this is absolutely hilarious. Truly terrifying, I'm sure, and if I had been in the situation I probably wouldn't have been laughing until later. But in the world we're living in right now, where every day there are several reports of violence, I love the thought that it is an inflatable duck that is predicted to send us all into apocalyptic madness. To those of you who believe this is the duck that once floated here in Pittsburgh: it isn't. It's an inflatable duck used for advertising a car dealership, and is much smaller than the Pittsburgh duck. I also cannot believe you would expect such poor behavior from a duck that once resided with us. No, this duck was clearly younger, a little more foolish. He ached to be released from his tethers, which luckily were not done properly. He flew with the wind just as he always wished, and we should celebrate him, the rogue duck, rather than give all the credit to the one who floated here.
This is the sort of article one should always keep on file the next time that, say your uncle decides that, because he was an eagle-scout, he can be trusted to securely tie four king-sized mattresses to the top of his wife's Honda Civic, which is about to go hurtling down the interstate at speeds in excess of 75mph. In short, this article illustrates beautifully why rigging specialists are needed, and the consequences of not taking the correct precautions when executing projects that may require special resources.
While I do not know the exact circumstances under which this display was assembled and loaded in, or what the ratings of the tethers holding this ill-fated advertising campaign to the ground were, (in terms of wind-speed resistance) or even if this was a reoccurring display, I do know a clusterfrick when I see one, and this particular situation looks like quite the doozy. I look forward to any future updates as to the eventual destination of this duck, or its deflated husk, and would love to see if this incident spawns any change in rules regarding the installation of such features.
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