In the middle of doing the last-minute run to the High Street that we were definitely
going to avoid by Christmas shopping online this year, I passed by a market stall
displaying one of those signs that traders only put up to reinforce our sense of
grammatical superiority:
"DESIGNED WATCHES - £12"
Which seems like a bargain to me. I can't stand those undesigned watches,
the ones where they shake a handful of springs and cogs and stuff about in a bag.
Anyway. Happy miscellaneous winter-time celebration, one and all.
A question that's seeped its way into what passes for my mind while playing a bit
of the fab-and-groovy Rome:
Total War this weekend:
The Samaritans get their
name from a parable from the Bible in which a wounded traveler-type gets helped
by, well, a "good Samaritan", right? Well, isn't "good" the
operative word, there? Correct me if I'm wrong (and I normally am with this religious-type
stuff - thanks for the e-mail regarding the whole Thou Shalt Not Kill thing by the
way, Dan. I'm afraid I lost your e-mail address in the Crash Of 2004. The same goes
for you, Dan, if you're out there, and I'm afraid the short version of the answer
to "how come our countries are so hopelessly led" is "Well, that's
people for you". I have a long version (surprise, surprise), which may sidle
onto the site at some point. Nice to hear from you both, anyway. This paragraph
brought to you in association with Ludicrously Lengthy Parenthetical Digressions.
We now return you to your regularly scheduled sentence)... where the fuck was I?
Oh, right.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the point of the parable that most Samaritans
are complete bastards? Hence the whole underlining of the fact that the chap in
question is a GOOD Samaritan? So why do the Samaritans drop the "good"
bit? It it just modesty? I'm confused.
These are the sorts of things that keep me awake at night. Like the one about the
Mario Brothers. Their names
are Mario and Luigi, right? But "Mario Brothers" implies that "Mario"
is the surname, yes? Like the Marx Brothers, the Chuckle Brothers, the Brothers
Gibb and so on and so forth. So does that mean that the older brother's full name
is Mario Mario?
This will hardly be a revelation to the gentle reader who's been perusing this site
for any length of time, but the advertising industry drives me up the bloody wall.
And given that 'tis the season to be flogged all sorts of tacky, overpriced crap,
the walls of Blue Man Towers are only going to be getting more of a workout in the
next month or so.
And the arrival of the festering season brings out of the closet the showcases for
the industry's very worst excesses, the paragons of create-a-need-then-fill-it,
form-over-message, style-over-substance bullshit. I refer, of course, to no lesser
beast than the perfume advert.
Really, when you stop to think about it, is there anything more pointless on God's
good Earth than a TV ad for perfume or aftershave (alright, anything other
than Mateja
Kezman)? The reason why you buy perfume - the only reason you buy perfume
- is in order to smell nice. That's it. End of story. Game over. So how can you
even make a TV advert for the stuff? What in God's name is the use of it? Unless
you're going to go the Ronseal route and say "Givenchy's "Smell Like
A Tart's Boudoir" - does exactly what it says on the bottle."?
Alright, so adverts for Maccy D's can't tell you what a double cheeseburger tastes
like, but they do have a pop at describing what goes into one - or at least the
edited highlights sans sawdust, rodent limbs, parasitic bacteria and so on. Perfume
ads don't even bother making the attempt. What sort of idiot bases a buying decision
on an advert in which a bunch of models with pre-teen bodies utter vague pseudophilosophical
musings whilst never actually mentioning the product in questions? Do their
not-even-recommendations really seem more relevant because they're shot in black
and white? On a beach? In French? I mean seriously, what the fuck? Are we insane?
Why do we let these bastards get away with insulting our intelligence like this?
Oh, wait a minute. Of course there's something more pointless, stupid and offensive
than a perfume advert. How silly of me.
I forgot about disposable razor ads for a second, there.
"Two blades!" "Three blades!" "Three blades,
and a lubrication strip!" "Three blades and TWO lubrication strips,
ha!" "Why you little... four blades!" "Dagnabbit! Four
blades, and it vibrates!" "Right, you bastards. I've had all I can
stands, and I can't stands no more. *Rolls up sleeves, deep breath* Four blades,
five lubrication strips, it vibrates, plays Vivaldi, can get stones out of horses'
hooves, gives an Indian head massage, will devise a workable roadmap to peace in
the Middle East and delivers toys to starving orphans.""Oh, you lying
git, it doesn't!" "It does so." "Does not!" "Does
so." "Does NOT!" "Does so." "MUUUUUUUUUMMM!"
I mean - how many blades is it possible to pack onto a spaccy four-inch stick of
plastic? Where does the madness end?
"Presenting... the new Wilkinson Sword Triskadeco! Thirteen blades, for
your closest shave... EVER! No, seriously, I know we've told you that every bastard
razor we've tried to flog you in the last eleventy-million years will give your
closest shave... EVER!, to the point that you're now wondering whether it's actually
possible for a shave to get any closer at this stage, but we mean it this time.
This bad boy gets SUBCUTANEOUS on your arse! Oh yes, it burrows right into the flesh
of your chin and rips the bloody hair follicles right out of your motherfucking
FACE!"
"Introducing the new Gillette Quantum, featuring an infinite number of blades
for a shave whose closeness is only determined when you observe it..."
I wouldn't mind - no, honestly, I wouldn't - if even the tiniest trace element of
imagination had gone into any of these adverts. But I long ago gave up that as a
beautiful, impossible dream (I still cherish my other beautiful, impossible dreams
though, like the one involving Ainsley Harriot and an industrial sausage-press).
According to razor companies, there are exactly three kinds of men in this world
- to whit;
a) Gorgeous, tousle-haired junior-executive types who swan about with their ties
at half-mast sweeping their gorgeous children up in their arms whilst having their
silky-smooth jowls fondled by gorgeous stick-insect women in black cocktail dresses,
b) Firemen, and
c) David Beckham.
In a particularly stupid sub-class of advertising's usual lie we're told that, with
a sufficiently close shave, we too could be a yuppie twat, we could be a heroic
authority figure that everyone looks up to with none of those sticky moral grey
areas that come with being a policeman, or we could be a man for whom the public's
level of affection has been up and down more often than Zebedee
on Viagra.
That last one has presented a few problems, actually.
"You know the feeling. Every man does! You're unbeatable!"
Um... I'm searching the memory banks here, and no, I can't say as I've ever felt
like that in my life. Are you telling me that's because I'm using the wrong razor?
Blimey.
"You look, they smile..."
Nooo... no. Still drawing a blank, really. I'm prepared to accept that one's on
me, though.
"You win, they go home!"
Sorry, mate. This is starting to get a bit embarrassing, now... oh, wait, who's
this trotting down the stairs in moody black and white? It's Becks! Well, he wouldn't
steer me wrong with everything we've been through together. And it's true, he wins,
and they go home... except for, you know, that unfortunate business with the penalty
against Portugal that's probably still in low Earth orbit. Oh, you must remember,
the catastrophic miss that knocked England out of Euro 2004. They showed it on the
telly. Yeah, oh, it was on, like... TWO MINUTES BEFORE YOU RAN THIS FUCKING ADVERT,
YOU CALLOUS FUCKING SWINE! What sort of fucking halfwit books ad-space at the end
of an England game for an ad that confidently declares the team's captain to be
fucking unbeatable? Do the words "tempting" and "fate" mean
anything to you dozy fuckers? Oh, and by the way - thanks a fucking bunch for letting
the ad keep running for another three months as well, just to make sure that the
wounds stay nice and open. What were you thinking? WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?!?
I mean, I didn't even know that Gillette were Scottish.
Following Yahoo's decision to wipe my e-mail account, taking with it the old Blue
Man site, I've finally started to port the entries from over there to over here.
If you're interested in being reminded where this all began, the first month or
so of stuff is (hopefully) in the Ossuary.
If you're not interested, well, it's there anyway. That's how the SuperIntraWebNet
works, y'see.
