Sunday 29 June 2008

Let no-one call evangelists cultural opportunists

This was pressed into my hands on New Street yesterday. It's almost like they knew.

Huh. See, I've just been collecting tins and plastic bottles. Turns out I should have been bagging up my lost, lonely and weak too. Why didn't the council say anything?

But the metaphor isn't done yet:

It's kind of sweet how they've lowered their aim to somewhere just south of recycling in your daily priorities. Like, after you're done at the bottle bank, maybe give some thought to your mortal soul?

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Saturday 28 June 2008

Mariella joins the Sky+ posse

First Parkinson, now Frostrup, and if you're not familiar with your British media celebrities, the first thing you'll notice about their glamorous lifestyles is just how much they slob around in front of the TV. Take Mariella here, who couldn't even keep track of her gruelling 10 hour viewing routine without a set top box. Now, though, the poor love can sit down any time of day and catch up on every last minute of Cash in the Attic, Doctors and Flog It!. She doesn't even have to worry that Deal or No Deal clashes with Ready Steady Cook. And if that isn't the high life, I dunno what is.

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Friday 27 June 2008

Birmingham: proud of our hideous freaks

Children's drawings unnerve me, and it's only partly the monstrous heads and outlandishly sized limbs. It's also the suspicion that these things are drawn by specialist illustrators, possibly the same ones responsible for that cutesy kids' font with all the backwards Rs.

Anyway, whether you're proudest of Miss Windtunnel 2008, Sinister Blonde Dwarf or Pinhead McGraw, I don't think there was a clue in any of its 360 degrees what the point was. Is the council making sickly posters just to reassure us that they're proud of children? How much money did they spend on giving passers-by a warm, fuzzy feeling? Or, y'know, a cold, deep nausea.
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Thursday 26 June 2008

tryingtestingwearing patience

I dunno who this is, and I don't care. Rarely have I ever been happier to see a billboard get fly-posted to death, because three more lines of welfare-babble would probably have pushed me over the edge. Stop thinking up verbs and leave us alone.
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Tuesday 24 June 2008

This one goes out to Gary Glitter

What if I don't want to?

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Sunday 22 June 2008

Danger lurks round every corner with Piriton
























Forgive me, genuine sufferers, for suspecting that psychology might be playing a teeny little role in today's glut of allergies. I mean, if people leave the house expecting to swell up from pollen, animals, washing powder and gluten, chances are their minds aren't going to disappoint them. Of course, that's just some people. Your throat really does close up when you smell tomatoes. I know.

Helping the process along, Piriton introduce a little game every hypochondriac can play walking down the street. Shopping bags! Traffic lights! Bus stops! Old ladies! Any one of them could have you asphyxiating on the ground before you know what's hit you. Frankly, you'd better load up on chlorphenamine maleate before you even step out the door.

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Friday 20 June 2008

Eyecorp are in the business of perfection of dreamspace




























Or as some people say, "we're redecorating".

It's unclear how many pitches East Midlands Airport heard before they gave out the contract, but it was clearly the enormous photographs of children running in grass, the billowing clouds of po-faced high-mindedness and the ability to talk in their own florid language of grandiose bullshit that swung it for these guys.

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Thursday 19 June 2008

Don't get too involved, now

The makers were probably going for "help with homework". But everyone walking past remembers the feeling when they saw their first horse porn.
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Tuesday 17 June 2008

Honda channel JFK


"We choose to go to the moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard." -- John F Kennedy
Buying a car becomes yet more heroic. It isn't clear exactly what's difficult about driving a Honda Accord, but I'm sure they know what they're talking about. Maybe it's getting your inflated head through the doors.

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Sunday 15 June 2008

Dave and Cobra misunderstand wit



Something rubs me up the wrong way about Dave, the "home of witty banter". Maybe it's because, like talent or passion, people who profess wit rarely have it. Or maybe it's the gaggle of guffawing 25 year old dolts who in my mind's eye are cracking open beers, sticking on Dave and getting a night of banter started. There will be high fives.

Anyway, to remind you once again just how witty your banter can be, Cobra beer is now popping up as the sponsor. Their ads, sadly not yet Youtubed, even have little demonstrative snippets of it. "So if you told a story that started at The Cock and ended at The Bull," goes one, "would anyone believe it?" Oh god! You're killing me.

Luckily, this campaign has also found its way all over the street. These ones have lovely drawings of an aspirationally self-important moron, dispensing "wit" in a jaunty pose to his appreciative friends.
























Ahahahaha! Haha. Ah.


Clearly, this guy is new in Birmingham.

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Thursday 12 June 2008

McCain presents chips for dummies

Here at McCain, we're as concerned as you about all the chemicals, added salt, E-numbers, GM crops and tormented spirits of the damned in your food these days. That's why we'd like to clarify that our chips come from potatoes. We just hose the shit off, peel them, chop them, coat them in a thick layer of fat and we're done. Hell, we keep it all in the same mucky old bucket. Call us old-fashioned!








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Wednesday 11 June 2008

Grammar nightmare

- Dave, how do you spell policies?
- Policies? It's policy with an "s", innit?
- I dunno, it looks wrong...
- That's cos you forgot the apostrophe. Every "s" has an apostrophe.
- Oh, cheers Dave! Isn't there still something missing, though?
- Ah, that'll be the "i". Stick it in just before the "y". Funny word, policiy's.








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Tuesday 10 June 2008

Yazoo's cows have a laugh a minute

It doesn't happen with meat, does it? We'd be uncomfortable with cutesy animals selling us steaks or hotdogs, on the understandable basis that we'd rather not be reminded of Daisy's lovable properties right at the moment we're chewing her corpse. I've seen cartoon chickens on late-night fast food joints, but when you stagger into one of those places you've long given up on your meal being fresh, clean or readily identifiable, never mind ethical. If anything, it's reassuring they know what animal it used to be.

Turn to dairy, though, and cows are apparently a selling point. They can be dancing round fields, kicking a football, stood on a diving board, whatever you like, as long as you reinforce that being a dairy cow is basically a hell of a good time. That's a lesson Yazoo learnt the hard way with their first, hastily withdrawn ad.































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Saturday 7 June 2008

Missing your bus: it happens!

Oh... dear. I hope the student counsellors are more sympathetic.
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Thursday 5 June 2008

Self-satisfied pricks wanted for mutual masturbation

I never bought the line that atheists are smug; it just seemed a cheap shot for people who couldn't fault their arguments. But something changed today when I saw this poster for a student society.
























That's right. These "highly educated and very intelligent individuals" are going to have to save the "common people" from themselves. But when, Atheist Soc? Before the next Freshers Fair? I bet their meetings are a riot.
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NS&I: give them your fucking money

Bob Geldof is striding towards you with such steely purpose that his thunderous footsteps are echoing around the room. I mean, Jesus Christ, this is the man behind Live Aid; he didn't make this much drama when he was saving Africa. What the hell is he going to say?



What?

Greer? What?

Hawking? What?

So you sit there, a little transfixed, because no, you don't really expect an activist, a feminist and a theoretical cosmologist to flog you a savings account (Alan Sugar, on the other hand, has probably been whoring himself out for years). So well done, guys. Credibility is cashed in. Balance now zero.

Thanks to Sammy via Amy!

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Wednesday 4 June 2008

Praise Chesus at Elim Church

Kids, if you like Che, you'll love Jesus. He's like the original revolutionary! What's that, sweetie? Does he stand for social justice and the triumph of the proletariat? Well, right now he's more about stopping lesbians getting IVF. But sure, all that shit too.

We have t-shirts?

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Tuesday 3 June 2008

Lost cause
















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Monday 2 June 2008

Learn your 123s with the NHS

Left to my own devices, I always forget the catastrophes that await me after a drink and a half. Thank God, then, that every few months a new NHS campaign pops up to remind me.

This one was rolled out with blanket media coverage of some shocking statistics: 77% of Britons don't know how many units are in a large glass of wine. That's over 3 out of 4 of us not intimately acquainting ourselves with an arbitrary, stupidly restrictive points system every time we head to the pub. No wonder they need to scrawl it over our glasses.
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Sunday 1 June 2008

Trust a policeman: suspect everyone
























Well, here's a public service announcement with no chance of backfiring. Terrorists! They "live within our communities". They look like you or me. But they take the bins out a day too early.

Hotline: Hi, you're through to the confidential anti-terrorist hotline, where no tip is too small!
Caller: Hey, I've seen some suspicious behaviour at number 29? I'm sure they get the double glazers round every couple of weeks.
Hotline: Double glazers? To hold secret jihadist meetings?
Caller: No, it's more because they keep blasting their windows out. And the postman left this Amazon delivery at our house for them the other day. Nailbombing for Dummies? Is that suspicious?

How shit would a terrorist really have to be for passers-by to suspect their house? No, it's gonna be your everyday weirdos, harmless loners and the Muslims next door who are gonna get raided at midnight thanks to these little gems. And we know how cautious the police are in those circumstances.
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