Joygasm: car salesman wants to eat your children

Extreme Expressions Of Joy Beyond All Reason, #2.

First draft: Visa "Running Man"

Old ladies' stuff, part 10

Them glass trinkets - you know, the ones in our old shop in Blackpool - can't shift the buggers. Five artfully arranged glass cats in the store window. The old ladies love 'em, but the credit crunch means their biggest luxury now is cheap toffee from Aldi. Thing is, there's eight more boxes of them round the back.
Brainwave! Call them "crystal". Give the collection a fancy name. Old ladies like card games. No, not Whist, you idiot. Something classy.
And if you squint, really hard, the cats look like big glass willies. Holy shit, the ad writes itself! Find a hot chick! Legs akimbo. A visual Playing With Pussy joke. Dildos are posh now, upper middle-class and the like. I bet that Keira bird has one.
Sorted!


See also:
Old ladies’ stuff - part 9
Old ladies’ stuff - part 8
Old ladies’ stuff - part 7
Old ladies’ stuff - part 6
Old ladies’ stuff - part 5
Old ladies’ stuff - part 4
Old ladies’ stuff - part 3
Old ladies’ stuff - part 2
Old ladies’ stuff - part 1

Yay to the feminists

A slightly off-topic Big Up to a blog that reminds us that advertising talk is not about navel-gazing from within the industry. I stumbled across the Token Feminist by accident.
I was pleased to see someone fighting against the patronising and demoralising way that men talk to women. I did think awww, that's sweet, but it is worth checking out for the blog owner's opinions and her links to similar sites that occasionally rail against female stereotyping in ads.

Joygasm: it's only a bloody cocktail shaker

Introducing an occasional feature that will expose a terrifying advertising concept: Extreme Expressions Of Joy Beyond All Reason.

Clickness will cause embiggage

GB's Olympic haul

This is the final ranking of the top 10-performing countries in the Beijing Olympics (from the BBC):

Firstly, Australia. Yes, we know Brits are sedentary, crippled by competition-averse political correctness, and very fat. And you expected to thrash our pants in Beijing.

Fail.

And The Sun responded in its usual xenophobic manner.

Secondly, George Galloway. Early in August, his radio show on Talksport was the epitomy of gloating cynicism.
In response to a caller optimistic about Team GB's chances:

"I’m sure they’ll do better than St Kitts & Nevis and one or two other smaller countries but as a country of 60 million people with the fourth or fifth biggest economy in the world and with a history of having not only participated well but invented many of the sports being competed for in the Olympics, do you think we’ll be getting a return on the investment we’ve made on the sport?
"I think in fact for the money we’ve invested in sport we’re going to get a miserable haul in medals."

Fail.

See also:
Aussie foreplay: "Brace yourself, Sheila"
We rock too;
Digging Australia;
Missing canoeists

Bank holiday approaches: see you next Tuesday

via

When the turtle shows its head

Am loving this innovative idea featured in Creative Review. It reminds me of my last job. It was in a paperless office, which was fine until I needed a shit.

You won't need a toothpick

Terrifying packaging idea from some propellerhead with a shit-eating grin.

Pic from b3ta

Quack went the snake

You're getting some lazy arse posts over the next few days as I offload some of the weird shit I've collected during my two months off.
This disturbing blog from South Africa records the bullshit medical woo that is foisted upon the gullible and vulnerable. I hate this sort of crap - the more extreme forms of pseudo science that kills, not cures. Good blog though.

FACT! Pianist!

More wisdom in Fuckwitapedia.

See also:
FACT! Throat!
FACT! Hedgehog!
FACT! Femininity!
FACT! Toronto!
FACT! Religious War!
FACT! Rocks!
FACT! Chuck Norris!
FACT! Fornication!
FACT! Pens!
FACT! Kangaroos!
FACT! The 19th Century!
FACT! Dinosaurs!

A bag of gems in the Metro

Naturally, it was the ice-skating chimps that drew me to Metro's website today (Metro: London's freebie morning newspaper). But then, a quick browse unearthed the following epic fuck-up from Birmingham Council.
I can't recall ever having any nice experiences there. Last time I went to Birmingham I was walking through Witton cemetary and spotted some chap sitting behind a gravestone. "Morning", I said. He replied, "No, just having a shit." That's how bad it is.
Speaking of waste, the Council really did send out these leaflets and, get this, included a picture of the Birmingham skyline. Er, not the Birmingham, Warwickshire skyline, but that of Birmingham, Alabama. WTF...?
But the Metro version of the story reminds me that the website's resident picture monkey is still writing the captions. Sure enough, his trite comments also lighten up stories about porn and Bigfoot.

See also: Roadkill

Do No Evil, my arse

The sorry story of the death and resurrection of Scamp's blog is covered in The Guardian. The reasoning behind the suspension seems rather tenuous from an organisation that once prided itself on being a different voice in the business world, but which then suffered some reputation-tarnishing over issues relating to the privacy of individuals in India and China.
I get the feeling that Google has lost it. And actually, I'm a bit jealous because despite my best efforts, this blog hasn't been banned yet, even with the excessive swearing that's a typical fucking feature of life in advertising.

More insanity: medical woo

Hell, I'd almost forgotten about this one. Sent in months ago by one of my spies in Northern Ireland is this piece of witchdoctory woo that'd be right up HRH's street (see previous post). To think, this is supposed to be the 21st century and people still believe this bullshit works, even on animals. If anyone can prove to me that homeopathy is more effective than a placebo, then I'll give up swearing. Yes, I'm that fucking serious.
Even sadder is that there's a FUCKING HOMEOPATHIC HOSPITAL ON THE NHS!!!!! I only recently discovered this and wonder how much money is being spent on a 200 year-old unchanging dogma (where's the progress in homeopathy vs conventional medicine?) invented by a single bloke (versus untold millions of rigorously researched and scrutinised experiments and trials undertaken by hordes of doctors following the ruthlessly effective scientific method) , which would be better spent on something trivial like, oh, cancer or even nurses' wages.
Oh, don't get me started.

Would the Prince please drink a hot organic cup of Shut The Fuck Up

The good HRH Prince Charles has delivered his unsurprising opinion on GM agriculture in today’s Telegraph. GM’s bad. GM’s gonna kill the planet.
No, I’m not a scientist, but unlike some people whose ability to advance an informed opinion is inversely proportionate to their influence, I do like to employ critical thinking. Believe it or not, if you study the arguments presented by both pro- and anti- GM lobbies you will find more scientifically proven evidence favouring the pro- argument. The anti- science doesn’t stand up.
I favour the pro- arguments because I prefer the idea of feeding the masses of poor people on the planet to the idea of salving the consciences of privileged eco-warriors with a sanctimonious streak that’s so strong you couldn’t swipe a credit card down the crack of their arses when they’re in Eco Smug mode. These are people who attach greater weight to imagined or statistically improbable events over the immediate needs of human beings.
Here’s HRH’s science:

Oh, hang on, there isn’t any. It’s just an opinion.
I tried hard to find the evidence that might have formed his opinion, and in the interview with the Telegraph reporter the Prince cites two events.

"Look at India's Green Revolution. It worked for a short time but now the price is being paid.
"I have been to the Punjab where you have seen the disasters that have taken place as result of the over demand on irrigation because of the hybrid seeds and grains that have been produced which demand huge amounts of water.
"[The] water table has disappeared. They have huge problems with water level, with pesticide problems, and complications which are now coming home to roost.
"Look at western Australia. Huge salinisation problems. I have been there. Seen it. Some of the excessive approaches to modern forms of agriculture."

Yeah, well fuck you HRH as you’ve “been to the Punjab” in your dandelion-powered zero emission flying saucer. Being there isn’t the same as understanding if you’re looking at the world via the lens of preconceived ideas.
About the Punjab. The New York Times (22/6/08), the Wall Street Journal Asia (28/4/08), India Today (31/12/07) describe the rocketing demand for food, over-use of land, mismanagement by government and failure to educate farmers as the reasons for the Punjab’s failure, NOT the GM crops.
Secondly, salinisation in Western Australia. What? Unlike the Punjab situation, I can’t find a single reference to GM being a proven cause. The peculiar thing is that in regions where salinisation is a problem, GM crops modified to grow in such conditions can thrive.
The net effect of stopping GM now would be, if my basic 6th form economics is up to scratch, increased wealth. That’s good, isn’t it? It is if you follow the basic Malthusian economic theory. Any increase in effective technology increases the population and decreases their living standards. This is called the Malthusian Trap, which kept the vast majority of humankind in relative poverty up to the time of the English Industrial Revolution. This is why surviving English peasants enjoyed unusual prosperity after the Black Death wiped out over 30% of the population in the 14th century. There was increased demand for their labour, so their wages went up.
Like it or not, the world’s population is rising. Stop GM and millions of people will die, but average living standards will improve.
There's a word for people who would advocate action to cause such a thing to happen, and it isn't a nice one.

Steven Berkoff - scary fucker

Damn my timing. I went into WH Smith and asked the woman behind the counter if they sold bereavement cards. She said Yes, so I enquired whether I could get one in exchange for the Get Well Soon card I'd bought yesterday.
She was very nice about it, and I had been wondering how many cards I'd get if it was me who suffered a heart attack. Barely fuck all, if my annually diminishing birthday card tally was anything to go by. Mrs Chimps might do better. She has the body of an eighteen year old. It's starting to stink up the fridge though.
Ah fuck it, that's enough shite joking. This is the much-heralded "Watch your own heart attack" from the British Heart Foundation that aired on ITV last night. Brand Republic reports it achieved 6.5 million viewers, which is one hell of an achievement.
It scared the bejesus out of me - there's something undiminishingly eerie about Steven Berkoff - and the appeal against the "I don't want to cause a fuss" mentality is spot on.

Need a flat?

Posh apartments in Edinburgh. Click on the top right pic and examine closely.

Listen to Magic FM. It’s just like being dead

Jeez, here’s proof that if you ask a numpty to do a job, then you’ll get numpty work. As if to prove that you can’t find anything less original than a discerning radio listener of saddo middle of the road mum music, Magic FM asked its listeners to dream up ideas for its marketing campaign. A pity then that the winner was someone who probably has one foot in the grave, having manufactured an image familiar to those who guffawed through the laugh-a-minute 1957 Ingmar Bergman movie, The Seventh Seal.
The poster campaign is called “Good mood”. If you’re baffled and thinking “so what?”, then take a glance at the happy fellow leading the pack in the black & white snap. Yes, Death really is this fun. Chess, anyone?