Oh, to be French

and able to coin such marvellous words as googlelisées

je suis jealous!

Talking food! Yay!

I recommend that everyone on the planet visit the Talking Food website (one by one, though, we don't want to hammer the poor lady's bandwidth and get her taken offline).

You will get to see many more finely executed examples of lovely ideas like this:


Awwww. (Disclaimer: not all the foodstuffs featured say nice things. Some of them are frankly quite mean).

Only in North Oxford ... #1

...do children feed ciabatta to swans.

Badverts #4

They're coming thick and fast today (even though I didn't spend *all* of last night watching telly -- I did do a fair amount of cleaning too, as Morph would I'm sure testify if brought before a court of law).

This one wasn't even on, but bizarrely came into my head anyway, thereby doubling its Badvert score. Actually, I can't believe it's taken me this long to nominate.

My fourth nominee is ...

... anything with Linda Barker.


...you know what you can do with those scissors, Barker...

Notably Curry's and DFS; in both cases, the advert concept is *painfully* poor and has only managed to gain airtime because of the presence of the alarmingly omnipresent Barker (whom, it must be said, I used to quite like when she was just the chirpy one on Changing Rooms -- maybe, therefore, I deserve everything I get.) Brand dilution, anyone?

Happily, I came across this fact today which made me feel considerably better -- DFS have had a 6% drop in profits since Barker's been at the (advertising) helm. Yay.

(DFS are wankers anyway, no? Do they really think we fall for all that crap about once in a lifetime sales starting Sunday, everything must go? Like the futon shop opposite my office, with it's "Sale :: today only"-type signs that those of us who see the place every day realise are permanent fixtures. They take us for such fools.)

Yah, boo, sucks to...

... being rumbled. Dear old Morph has blown my cover. I realise the repercussions of this are:

1. Can't blog during working hours any more (hallo Geoff!)
2. Can't blog rude things about people I work with (unless in code, I suppose; although I took a chance on this with my neglection posting)
3. Must generally be more polite than might otherwise be (hallo Gran!)¹

Hmmn. Might be time to become übersecretraps.

"Leessen vairy carefoolly, ah shall blerg zis ernly vunce."

¹ Clearly kidding, but the concept has just made me spit cold coffee all over my laptop.

ne·glec·tion

n. not in common usage
1. The act or an instance of neglectioning something.
2. The state of being neglectioned.
3. Habitual lack of care (with your grammar in particular, it would seem).

[Latin neglegere, neglēct- : neg-, not; see 'ne' in Indo-European Roots + 'legere', to choose, pick up; see 'leg-' in Indo-European Roots.]

_{With thanks to Dubya Pearce.}

Badverts #3

It pains me to do this, but frankly, Prunella and Jane should know better so I won't feel too bad about it.
The third nominee is Tesco for its more recent attempts at comedy-mother(-in-law) ads.


It was funny the first time ("it's all right, she's got a baby!"). Possibly it remained funny for a bit after that. Ten years on, it's excruciating. Happily, it seems this is a recognised truth, as Dotty is to be phased out. Sorry Pru, but it's for your own good, love.

Badverts #2

Grrr, McDonalds' *stupid* salad one(s?) with the SATC-type ladies-who-lunch theme.


Utter pish. So much so, AIUI, that they've pulled them.

Good.

Not sure if this is serious, but if so ... Lordy. No wonder they pulled the ads. Finding a toad in your salad would, I imagine, be a little off putting.

Never mind the news that their salads contain more fat than their cheeseburgers. Blimey.

To think I use to work for them.

My conquering of the Web continues

(albeit on a small and likely to be ineffectual scale) with my first posting to the mighty b3ta.

Look!


People even said nice things about it :o)

I miss Spicers

There used to be a sandwich shop next to my office called Spicers.

Spicers was, I think, the best sandwich shop ever.

I should point out that I am a sandwich fiend and coinnoisseuse, so speak with some authority.  (I am also quite pretentious: look at that feminine ending on connoisseur.  Fortunately for Kirsty, I also know the plural of syntax.  Although I choose not to use it, because it's gay¹).

Anyway, the sandwich thing.  All I really wanted to say was, Spicers closed a couple of months ago and some bog-standard froggy place full of foreign² sandwichers and pre-ordained sandwich options took over.

And I really miss Spicers' smoked chicken, bacon and cheese mix, which is the most satisfyingly delicious sandwich filling in the world, and was particularly satisfying with peppers and tomatoes in either a baguette or one of their lovely big flat bappy things (granary option).

If anyone³  knows where Spicers went, *please* tell me.

I'm starving.

¹ Since this is the first time I have blogged the word gay in this context, I shall issue a disclaimer to the extent that it is not here being used in the sense of "homosexual-gay", but rather in the playground-inspired sense of "pathetic/annoying/I-haven't-got-my-own-way-and-don't-agree-gay".  Bigots, please don't think I'm on your side.

² Oh dear, unfortunate to have two seemingly bigoted comments in the same post.  In using the term foreign, I'm only indicating that it's a handicap for a sandwicher to be foreign and, to use a genuine example, unable to understand the word pesto⁴. Bigots (if you haven't bogged off already), I'm still not on your side.

³ Note continued referral to non-existent readership.

⁴ Just realised how pretentious that sounds.  Sorry.  Pesto is really nice in a sandwich, though.

And the chav sat on my window sill

I like having a window that looks straight onto the pavement.  I like to have the world busying along just behind me blinds.  It reminds me of a Shirley Hughes story wherein Alfie/Annie Rose/somebody lived in a basement flat and used to watch the legs walking past (Mum, which one was it?). 

What I don't like is chavs¹ sitting on my window sill.  There's a faintly menacing whiff to a chav sitting on your window sill.  I found it a little unsettling when, sitting on the sofa the other night, the sudden thud against the window revealed itself to have been caused by a bottom (at the top of some legs encased in Reebok² trackies) descending without ceremony onto the sill.  As I peered through afore-mentioned blinds at said bottom, I found myself saying incredulously (and dangerously loudly, considering the non-double nature of our glazing):

"There's a fucking chav sitting on the window sill!"

Chav or no chav, I think most of us would feel marginally put out by someone presuming to sit on our window sill (it would be worse, I accept, if I had window boxes) (worse for them too, I'd imagine).  Quite what the accepted course of action is in a chav--window sill interaction type situation, I'm not sure.  I went into my well-planned emergency drill, of course -- cowering behind the blind whispering chav-related obscenities until they went away.  Fully effective and minimal personal injury. 

Precisely the routine, I understand, to which Chris Martin refers when he famously whines "It was all ... yellow...".

¹ Mummm, what's a chav?
² or similar (not that hot on me sports branding) -- regulation Chav wear, anyway

How Morph fell in love with me over the Jaffa Cake advert

One advert that's definitely not a badvert. The school teacher training her young charges on lunar cycles :: "full moon ... half moon ... total eclipse" :: eating a Jaffa Cake¹ each time she says it to demonstrate the shape of the moon in each phase.

Morph and I once took a random walk with a packet of Jaffa Cakes and giggled a lot as we re-enacted the advert to bemused strangers. I think it was the crumbs down my front and the marmalade on my upper lip that finally ensnared him. ("The campaign", said my boss some short while later, "had been running for about a year". Way to lose all dignity, no?)

Talking of dignity, it is equally well lost by trying to re-enact the Jaffa Cake advert with the Dutch equivalent, Pims. A word of warning for all non-UK readers who, fervently wishing to learn about lunar cycles, are running off to their local supermercato/supermarkt/supermarché to purchase full moon fodder. Lu's are well-established in the European market and it may well be Pims that you end up with. Please note that they are bigger than Jaffa Cakes. As such, full moon is fine. Half moon presents no problem. But total eclipse can be an unexpectedly messy and dignity-consuming experience.

On the art of seduction I shall say only this: do make sure you've got a Jaffa Cake not a Pim.

¹The official Jaffa Cake webpage only hints at the excitement of the British Government's indecision about whether the Jaffa *Cake* is in fact a cake or a biscuit. It matters, because (*bizarre logic alert*) cakes are perceived as staple foods in the UK and thus not subject to VAT, while biscuits (how?!) are simultaneously classed as luxury items, thus taxable. A number of theories have been advanced as to how one can class cake vs biscuit. The Irish government rules "CAKE" based on moisture content -- a simple test of this is to leave the undefined object on the draining board. After two days, biscuits will be soggy, cakes will be hard. (Jaffa Cakes go hard.) The best bit of the UK story is that the trial judge², unable to make his mind up (yeah, right) was presented with a specially made 12"-wide Jaffa Cake "which he scoffed down with a pot of tea and then ruled it was a cake"³.

²Cakes on trial! Whatever next!
³To quote Nicey at Nice Cup of Tea and a Sit Down, who provided many of the above facts.

Badverts #1

I have coined the word Badverts to describe ... Bad adverts. (See what I did there?) My first nominee (please add yours¹) is:

The AA
for Bev and Kev

I'm not alone in casting Bev-Kev as a badvert -- look:
The Mighty Crumb agrees ...

However, *incredibly*, UNBELIEVABLY (yes, I know that's tautological, but it's intended to express my utter outrage, right?), the AA won awards for Bev and Kev! HOW can this be?! (look, it's driven me to interrobanging?! I can't stop?! I've turned into Glennda Slagg?!?!)
For shame.

My obsession with Bev and Kev now having grown somewhat alarming, I can also report the following facts:

o There is a real-life Bev and Kev. The artistic director of the ad is Kevin Bratley; Kevin is married to the lovely Beverley. Honest.

o Less of a fact than an amusing opportunity to go "duh...": Grauniad columnist Andrew Rawnsley missing most of the point by describing the second Bev and Kev as "identical twins of the first couple".

¹Non-existent studio audiences can vote on their keypads now. Non-existent digital audiences can vote by pressing the red button now. Non-existent audiences on the move can vote by texting "EH?" to 81234 now. Non-existent technophobe audiences can vote by finding some headed notepaper and writing "Dear Sir, Eh? Yours truly etc." and posting it here now.

Blog-driving ... just say "no"

So I find that the place I come up with all me thoughts is in the car, which is not a very conducive location for blogging, what with having to focus on the road, having legs too short¹ and the like. It came to me in another one of my likely-not-to-be-original visions that what I need is a blog-a-phone. A dictaphone with voice recognition software which I just need to talk at and then it adds it all to the blog.

I thought this was a worthy idea, so stayed with it for a bit to see what else my tired but overly conversational brain would come up with.

It came up with problems, plus ça bloody change.

Does voice recognition software have good grammar? (Morph says I should check out his essay on the subject.) I'm sure it can manage commas vs. semi-colons. Can it, however, recognise just how long a pause equals ellipses? Does it understand irony?² And so on.

Then I got on to wondering whether it knows all its entity names, and whether it would be able to cope with my pretentious habit of flipping between languages. If it's in English mode, will it write "ploo sa shonge" and then tell me politely it can't find those words in the dictionary?³

In the manner of all good self-fulfilling prophecies, I can't now remember the other thoughts I had on the subject. It's possible I reached my destination and stopped thinking about it all together.



¹Whereby, I have to have the seat really far forward to reach the pedals, therefore unable to fit laptop on lap between me & the steering wheel.
²Not if it's American, I suppose. Better hope it is invented by a Brit.
³Yes, I'm aware of a number of ways in which it would get round this, I just can't be bothered to take it to that tedious extreme. It was just a passing thought. [Hope it doesn't have one of those Nokia-style dictionaries that you have to rewrite every time you change phones...] But the irony point, I think, is thus far unsettled by code.

And it went a little something like this...

I believe we were about here when R2 in their bountiful wisdom put the needle on the record and made me say "woo" and "yay" with seminal-moment-type excitement (not literally – I mean, not in a rude way). I wish I could recreate it in words¹. It's <irony>quite well known though</irony> so hopefully enough of you² will know it to understand what I'm saying.

If I ever get round to saying it.

The eagle-eyed amongst you³ may have spotted the title of my first ever post and already computed that the song I'm referring to is "it's (only) rock and (roll) but (I) like it".⁴ In came that big fat riff and I decided that the whole raison d'être of rock and roll is encapsulated in the first, what, 5 seconds of that song. It just rocks. (And rolls, a bit).

And to hammer the point home, they only do that riff once in the whole song. As if to say, yeah, well, we came up with the best riff ever. No need to repeat. We'll just put in some weirdy words and get Mick to gyrate a bit now.

(This all sounded much better the way I wrote it in my head in the car – see a later post for my solution to *that* problem.)

So, somewhat disappointingly perhaps, that's it. That's the reason I got on the blogwagon (etc.). Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster? Bollocks. Keith Richards Got Me Blogging. *That's* news.

¹I do accept that would render an entire art form defunct so I don't wish it *much* (I have a vision of Carole Decker telling me my dreams are China in my Hand. Indeed). Anyway. It went "der Neerrr, der Ner ner ner ner ner ner ner ner ner ner ner ner ner".
²You being my non-existent readers, of course. Have to keep alive the idea of this being a column with a devoted following.
³Ibid.
⁴May have got some of these pesky parentheses in the wrong places. In honour of Mr G, of course,

In the beginning, there was rock and roll.

So, today, I have boarded the bandwagon, set sail for Blog Central, and mixed a few other metaphors along the way. A Streetcar named Blog. The Good Ship Blog. And so forth.

Why?

Because Morph has done it (more on him later).

Because I know lots of other people who have done it (well, I can think of one Lost Boy), and I like reading theirs.

And because I had a vision* today in which bloggers are the Future Feature Writers, i.e. those who've toyed with journalistic endeavours for years and quite fancy a weekly column, but who have never quite achieved this. In my case, it is for want of trying (and there's a phrase you don't often hear in the positive).

The musings that rudely thrust me through the shiny slidy doors of this train of thought (and blew the whistle quickly after, so that there was no going back) were brought on by dear old Radio 2.

(Have I just made a blog-pas? I quite like Radio 2).

And I'm going to make them a separate post all by themselves, just as The Maker intended.

Which makes this the end of my first post. Cor.

*Not strictly a vision, more of a realisation whilst driving along the A4074 (a truly inspiring road). Nor do I claim this to be a remotely original thought. I probably wouldn't put it in a blog if it were; I'd copyright and publish it in the respected "Journal of Blogging", or similar. I expect there is one (albeit with a more obfuscated title). I wonder if anyone will ever read this and let me know.