Blatant advertising

I know, I should be ashamed. But a friend of mine has started a new blog and, although it is still in it's early stages, I think it'll be a good'un. Find the Big Book of Nonsense here!

Back for good...

And I'm back. for good this time! We do, finally, have internet! (queue more frequent posts).

In celebration of this momentous occasion, I would like to direct you to the fantastic website http://www.comparethemeerkat.com/
It is amazing, particularly Aleksandr's tv adverts and blooper reel.

Genius bit of advertising really and very funny.


Now I'm off to try and remember how to write proper blog posts....

Quote of the Day

I don't mean to imply, incidentally, that absolutely everyone who takes their clothes off for a living is desperate, miserable or exploited. That's the cliche, but really - can you name a profession in which there aren't people who are desperate, miserable or exploited? Which would you rather do? Strip for a camera now and then, or work full-time in an office sitting beside a perspiring Coldplay fan who spends each lunchtime getting bits of moist cheese-and-onion crisp in his goatee and chortling over his Facebook messages?

Charlie Brooker

Out of the mouths of babes and sucklings

Nine year-old Alec Greven has written a best-selling book called ‘How To Talk To Girls’. Apparently it is great stuff. And it proves, once and for all, that there’s no excuse for getting it wrong. If a nine year-old can do it…

George 'Zombie' Bush

Congratulations to the South African TV station ETV whose news program fallaciously announced a report of George Bush's death. While testing a moving banner headline stating 'George Bush is dead', a technician accidently pressed the 'broadcast for live transmission' button. He is, in fact, still alive. I think. How do you tell?

Further congratulations are in order, however, for their stunning response to the Afrikaans language newspaper Beeld and the media group's website News24.com who broke the story:

"Its unfortunate, because we never comment on their mistakes," said [ETV News spokesperson] Vasili Vass.

BBC News

Somebody give that man a pay rise.

Cotton Wool Culture

My father sent me an email this week (see below) that poked fun at not just modern parenting, but today's litigious society. When I came across this story on the BBC, I couldn't resist a post.
Have a look at this picture (from the BBC website). What would you do? Would you stop the boy from sawing? Or would you let him carry on, knowing that he'd learn his lesson and probably only bang his knee?

I'd let him fall.

TO ALL THE KIDS WHO SURVIVED the 1930's, 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's!!

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they were pregnant. They took aspirin, ate blue cheese dressing, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes. Then after that trauma, we were put to sleep on our tummies in baby cribs covered with bright colored lead-based paints. We had no childproof lids on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets and when we rode our bikes, we had no helmets, not to mention, the risks we took hitchhiking. As infants & children, we would ride in cars with no car seats, booster seats, seat belts or air bags. Riding in the back of a pick up on a warm day was always a special treat. We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle. We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this. We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank Kool-aid made with sugar, but we weren't overweight because:

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING! We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the streetlights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were OK. We would spend hours building our go-carts out of scraps and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes after running into the bushes a few times, we learned to solve the problem. We did not have Playstations, Nintendos, X-boxes, no video games at all, no 150 channels on cable, no video movies or DVD's, no surround-sound or CDs, no cell phones, no personal computers, no Internet or chatrooms....... WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them! We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no lawsuits from these accidents. We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever. We were given BB guns for our 10th birthdays, made up games with sticks and tennis balls and although we were told it would happen, we did not poke out very many eyes. We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just walked in and talked to them! Little League had tryouts and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of. They actually sided with the law! These generations have produced some of the best risk-takers, problem solvers and inventors ever! The past 50 years have been an explosion of innovation and new ideas. We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO DEAL WITH IT ALL!

If YOU are one of them CONGRATULATIONS! You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated so much of our lives for our own good. While you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave (and lucky) their parents were. Kind of makes you want to run through the house with scissors, doesn't it?!

Quote of the day

House: Rational arguments don't usually work on religious people. Otherwise, there wouldn't be religious people.

from House Season Four: The Right Stuff

Simple ways to improve your life

AMAZINGLY SIMPLE HOME REMEDIES:

1. If you are choking on an ice cube, don't panic. Simply pour a cup of boiling water down your throat and presto. The blockage will be almost instantly removed.
2. Clumsy? Avoid cutting yourself while slicing vegetables by getting someone else to hold them while you chop away.
3. Avoid arguments with your partner about lifting the toilet seat by simply using the sink.
4. For high blood pressure sufferers: simply cut yourself and bleed for a few minutes, thus reducing the pressure in your veins. Remember to use a timer.
5. A mouse trap, placed on top of your alarm clock, will prevent you from rolling over and going back to sleep after you hit the snooze button.
6. If you have a bad cough, take a large dose of laxatives. Then you will be afraid to cough.
7. Have a bad toothache? Smash your thumb with a hammer and you will forget about the toothache.
8. Sometimes, we just need to remember what the rules of life really are: You only need two tools: WD-40 and Duct Tape. If it doesn't move and should, use the WD-40. If it shouldn't move and does, use the duct tape.
9. Remember: Everyone seems normal until you get to know them.
10. Never pass up an opportunity to go to the bathroom.
11. If you woke up breathing, congratulations! You get another chance.
12. And finally, be really nice to your family and friends; you never know when you might need them to empty your bed pan.

IMPORTANT QUESTIONS:

• Why do we press harder on a remote control when we know the batteries are getting weak?
• Why do banks charge a fee on 'insufficient funds' when they know there is not enough?
• Why does someone believe you when you say there are four billion stars, but check when you say the paint is wet?
• Why doesn't glue stick to the bottle?
• Why do they use sterilized needles for death by lethal injection?
• Why doesn't Tarzan have a beard?
• Why does Superman stop bullets with his chest, but ducks when you throw a revolver at him?
• Why do Kamikaze pilots wear helmets?
• Whose idea was it to put an 'S' in the word 'lisp'?
• If people evolved from apes, why are there still apes?
• Why is it that no matter what color bubble bath you use the bubbles are always white?
• Is there ever a day that mattresses are not on sale?
• Why do people constantly return to the refrigerator with hopes that something new to eat will have materialized?
• Why do people keep running over a string a dozen times with their vacuum cleaner, then reach down, pick it up, examine it, then put it down to give the vacuum one more chance?
• Why is it that no plastic bag will open from the end on your first try?
• How do those dead bugs get into those enclosed light fixtures?
• When we are in the supermarket and someone rams our ankle with a shopping cart then apologizes for doing so, why do we say, 'It's all right?' Well, it isn't all right, so why don't we say, 'That hurt, you stupid idiot?'
• Why is it that whenever you attempt to catch something that's falling off the table you always manage to knock something else over?
• In winter why do we try to keep the house as warm as it was in summer when we complained about the heat?
• How come you never hear father-in-law jokes?
• The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four persons is suffering from some sort of mental illness. Think of your three best friends -- if they're okay, then it's you.

Quote(s) of the day

Out with the old, in with the new...

"There's no question that the minute I got elected, the storm clouds on the horizon were getting nearly directly overhead."

George W. Bush

"When we have faced down impossible odds; when we've been told that we're not ready, or that we shouldn't try, or that we can't, generations of Americans have responded with a simple creed that sums up the spirit of a people: Yes, we can."

Barack Obama

Quote of the day

Every procedure for getting a cat to take a pill works fine -- once.
Like the Borg, they learn...

Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett

A laugh for the day

Forgive the manic multiple-posting today, but this is just too funny not to share:
Buried with your cell phone from the Scott Adams/Dilbert blog.


Enjoy!

Quote of the day

Ok, so its a very long quote, but I felt it should be seen in its entirety, it is very funny and demonstrates that I am not the only one planning to take over the world. Although I feel Charlie Brooker has been less ambitious with his plans. It is still full of bright ideas though....

Survive 2009 by learning to love and share. Why not start by frolicking in a bubble bath with a neighbour?

Only one thing's going to get us through 2009, and that's romance. And possibly cannibalism. But mainly romance.

In case you missed the bulletin in your post-festive daze, let me bring you up to speed. According to the latest predictions, here's what we're in for this year: MISERY. Yes, not just misery, but MISERY. In capitals. Just like that.

Dim your lights. Here's the highlights reel. The worst recession in 60 years. Broken windows and artless graffiti. Howling winds blowing empty cans past boarded-up shopfronts. Feral children eating sloppy handfuls of decomposed-pigeon-and-baked-bean mulch scraped from the bottom of dustbins in a desperate bid to survive. The pound worth less than the acorn. The City worth less than the pound. Your house worth so little it'll collapse out of shame, crushing you in your bed. Not that you'll die peacefully in your sleep - no, you'll be wide awake with fear, worrying about the situation in the Middle East at the precise moment a chunk of ceiling plaster the size of a flagstone tumbles from on high to flatten your skull like a biscuit under a shoe, sending your brain twizzling out of your earholes like pink-grey toothpaste squeezed from a tube. All those language skills and precious memories splattered over your pillows. It'll ruin the bedclothes. And instead of buying expensive new ones, your grieving, impoverished relatives will have to handwash those bedclothes in cold water for six hours to shift the most upsetting stains before passing them down to your orphaned offspring, who are fated to sleep on them in a disused underground station for the rest of their lives, shivering in the dark as they hear bombs dipped in bird flu dropping on the shattered remains of the desiccated city above.

Welcome to 2009.

So what do we do? Well, as with any scary situation, we could try scrunching up our eyes and wishing it all away, but that rarely works, unless you're driving a bus across a busy junction and couldn't give a fig for convention. Instead, we're going to have to co-operate with one another if we're going to get through this. I know, I know: ugh. The concept of sharing has been knocked out of us. For years it's been all about you, your nice things, your signature dish and your plasma screen, and everyone else can go swing. Now we'll have to knock on doors and swap cups of sugar. But maybe it won't be so bad. Picture yourself sharing a meal with a neighbour. Or maybe a bath. A bubble bath. Look, there are little tealight candles round the edge of the tub. And you're having a glass of red wine together! It's lovely! Assuming you have attractive neighbours. If not, sorry. Just close your eyes and wish it away, especially when they stand up, turn round and bend over to search for the soap.

Actually that whole bath scenario might represent the way forward. It sounds quite romantic, and authentic romance has been in short supply of late. Authentic romance makes life more enjoyable, but more importantly it costs nothing. Buying flowers and
baubles and Parisian city breaks - that's not authentic romance. That's lazy showboating. Authentic romance could flourish in a skip. Prove this to yourself. Invite someone on a date and spend the evening sitting in a skip making each other laugh with limericks or something. Get through that and you've bonded for life. Or maybe a week. It's hard to tell when you embark on a new relationship. Still, if you split up: time for more romance with someone else. Everybody wins.

Mark my words, you'd be wise to practice your romancing skills now, because when, circa October, we're huddled together in shelters sharing body heat to survive, the ability to whisper sweet nothings could prove useful. Come the dawn, you'll need to pair up with someone to go hunting for supplies with, and it'll help if you've been cuddling all night. The world outside will be dangerous, so there'll have to be two of you. One to root through the abandoned Woolworth's stockrooms and another to stand outside warding off fellow scavengers with a flaming rag on a stick.

Obviously if two is better than one, it follows that three is better than two, especially in the thick of a food riot. Rather than forming boring old duos as per tradition, polygamous unions involving up to 30 or 40 participants will emerge victorious, roving the landscape in packs by day, writhing around in obscene configurations in their papier-mache huts by night - strictly for the purposes of generating heat, of course. We can all do our bit. I, for one, am fully prepared to take on 50 wives if it'll help make the world more manageable, provided I don't have to talk to them and I get to wear a crown and issue decrees and everything. We'll create a kingdom in a cave somewhere and kill and eat unfortunate passers-by, like Sawney Bean and his family. Now they had vision. First potential wife to contact me with full Ordnance Survey reference numbers for a suitable location (warm cave, close to major thoroughfare) gets to be Minister of Skinning Trespassers Alive and Sticking Their Heads On Poles as a Warning to Others of Their Kind.

All things considered, this may be a bleak year but at least it'll be more interesting than, say, 2006, during which nothing happened. So grit your teeth and meet 2009 head-on, because it's not going anywhere until 2010 at the very earliest.

In summary: happy new year.

Thank you Charlie.


P.S. Sorry if anyone has seen this twice, it didn't post properly yesterday for some reason.

Entertainment or Education? pt 2

I had to just add, having seen this on the BBC website, how can the BBC justify some of its current content in light of its 6 public purposes?

In order for the BBC to fulfil its mission to inform, educate and entertain, the Royal Charter and Agreement sets out six public purposes.
The BBC Trust has set remits for these public purposes, and BBC management has responded with its plans for delivering each purpose.
Go to the following pages for details of the six public purposes and the BBC's plans for delivering them:
Sustaining citizenship and civil society
Promoting education and learning
Stimulating creativity and cultural excellence
Representing the UK, its nations, regions and communities
Bringing the UK to the world and the world to the UK
Delivering to the public the benefit of emerging communications technologies and services

See the BBC Trust for the purpose remits in full.

Entertainment or Education?

I’ve tried very hard to avoid the controversial topic of the BBC-Ross-Brand row, but having come across not one, not two, but three articles on the subject in Marketing Week, I just couldn’t help myself.

Now I’d like to point out that I don’t read Marketing Week for pleasure (apart from this week) but it is necessary for my job (and a very useful resource). I do read the BBC news website, however, and I have been following the row with interest.

While I agree that the BBC is in part an entertainment service and while agreeing that most of the complaints came from people who didn’t hear the original broadcast, I find myself on the side of the people saying ‘how did this happen?’. How did the BBC, an organisation supposed to entertain and educate, allow such puerile attempts at humour to be broadcast?

Yes, ‘cutting edge’ British humour is expected to push the boundaries. Yes, Monty Python did the same. Yes, by clamping down in a knee-jerk reaction the BBC may be more cautious over the content aired during shows like ‘Have I Got News for You’.

Yes, this is a rant.

But I personally have no problem with the people effectively paying for the BBC to be allowed to have some input as to what their money is spent on. I totally agree with Ruth Mortimer in Marketing Week where she says that

“…anger about Jonathan Ross’ salary – reportedly £18m over three years – has a lot more to do with this zeitgeist rage than anything else. He is employed by the BBC, which is funded by consumers paying their licence fees. People resent someone funded with their millions gratuitously offending old men while they worry about the next mortgage payment.”

I also agree with Iain Murray’s opinion that

“..for humour to advance beyond the naughty things that make children laugh, and to enter the realm of adult wit, you need an educated, literate audience able to appreciate allusion to a wider world that that of the nursery and the potty.”

We obviously don’t have that kind of audience in Britain…

Rant over.

Quote of the Day

"Apparently Baz Luhrmann suddenly said, 'this is crazy, we haven't got the iconic sound of Rolf Harris's wobble board on the music, we must be mad'.

Rolf Harris

Apparently Rolf has recorded a wobble board track for Baz Luhrmann's new film 'Australia'.

Genius.

Carefree sex kittens

I considered making this a 'Quote of the Day', but felt it deserved its own, proper post.
This is another dollop of joy from the genius who is Charlie Brooker at The Guardian.

"...anyone with more than four atoms of cranial glop in their skull already knows that adverts don't provide a realistic field guide to the genders. In adverts, women are carefree sex kittens. In reality, they're just annoying. Especially the ones who whine on and on about gender stereotypes through the strange flapping hole they use for expressing simple-minded notions which is apparently located somewhere above their chests. (The Guardian has asked me to point out that this is a joke. Which indeed it is. Although, cleverly, it's also an optical illusion, because to uptight enemies of fun, it doesn't look like a joke at all, but a heinous slur. Still, at least complaining about it will give them something to do before they all die early of joylessness, leaving the rest of us to swap off-colour gags at their spartan little gravesides.)"

Politics lite

Something to make you chuckle amidst all this seriousness of the U.S. elections. Although unfortunatley reading it at work led to me attempting to snort quietly into my mug of hot water. Unsuccessfully. My keyboard is now damp and my co-workers think I have a problem. Well, we know they're right....