Recreating the Titanic

This made me laugh. We got a CD in the mail which was promotional material for some apparently famous dude who is wanting votes in the upcoming federal election. (I dunno, I sometimes fall off the face of the current events planet, so I'm not all that familiar with him. Apparently he has lots of money.)

One of the bullet points for the contents of the CD was: "Bonus Titanic II video". First of all I just assumed I'd missed the release of the sequel to the 1997 Winslet/DiCaprio blockbuster. I was like, oh well, I've missed bigger things before.

Then I thought, ha! No, wait, it's a joke! I don't think there is such a movie. But the slogan on the front says something to do with this dude being "Fair Dinkum", so clearly this must be some clever, jokey, Aussie way of winkingly enticing you to put the CD in your computer to see what the fuss is about, all the while communicating the message - "I really am a fair dinkum Aussie. See, I even have a good sense of humour. I'm just like you all. Vote for me, 'cause I too am an ordinary Joe who understands the world we all live in."

So, I put the CD in and went to watch the Titanic video. It started out looking fairly serious, with pictures of the original Titanic, and some spiel about its majesty and whatnot. Or maybe it said something else. I wasn't really paying much attention. I was mainly waiting for the punchline. I clicked to a few minutes in. It was still serious. More minutes in - interviews with people on the street, all saying what a good idea they thought it was to make a replica. More minutes - still no punchline. So I clicked to the end - this sure was one drawn-out joke.

And it never came.

I probably don't need to go on about how if a guy is proclaiming how he's wanting to make the next actual real-life not-a-joke copy of an iconic ship as part of his pre-election attempt to win votes, it doesn't come across in a very I'm-just-an-ordinary-fair-dinkum-bloke-who'd-spend-your-hard-earned-tax-dollars-in-a-responsible-manner kind of way.

And so, the lack of punchline was, for me, the funniest thing.