10 Things to do this Christmas

1. Sing Sesame Street’s ‘One of These Things is Not Like The Others’ to the chorus of Foo Fighters ‘The Pretender’. It’ll be in your head for hours.

2. Eat something you haven’t eaten since primary school.

3. Smile at an old person. Better still, wish them ‘Merry Christmas’. Suicide rates peak amongst the over 65s at this time of year. Sometimes a couple of words make all the difference.

4. If you have kids, enjoy the mince pie and whiskey that your children leave for Santa. You’ve earned them.

5. If you haven’t got kids, leave a mince pie and whiskey for Santa anyway. You never know.

6. Wear the oldest Christmas jumper you’ve got hidden at the back of your wardrobe. Smile when people tell you how nice your new jumper looks. You may even get a compliment from the person who bought it for you all those years ago. Say nothing.

7. Avoid the iTunes Store when you’ve had a drink. It won’t sound as good in the morning.

8. Treat someone special to breakfast in bed. Your own breakfast will taste nicer for doing so.

9. A cocktail = two pints. A cocktail = two pints. Commit it to memory.

10. Live in the moment. Forget what you may or may not have done the past 12 months. Forget what you  want to achieve in the year ahead. Feel the cold air or the warmth of a fire. Notice the face of someone around you, the lines that chroncile their life. Listen to their voice as well as what they say. Savour the smells and tastes that you are experiencing. In an instant this moment will be just a memory. Make sure it’s a good one.

Merry Christmas.

Sorry, Christmas is censored this year.

Radio 1 has just announced that after nearly 20 years of playing The Pogues and Kirsty McColl's famous Christmas hit 'Fairytale in New York' as it was originally recorded, this year it is to be re-edited to be less offensive.

Specifically, this editing concerns McColl's lines "You scumbag, you maggot, you cheap lousy faggot", and McGowan's "You're an old slut on junk". The BBC sees these lyrics as offensive, despite the fact they are parts of dialogue exchanged between two fictional characters in the song, and not simply generic homophobic or 'heroin-addicted-prostituteophobic' abuse.

So where does this stop? Should Bing Crosby be censored for dreaming of a White Christmas...? Surely in multi-cultural Britain we should beseech unto each other the benefits of a multi-ethnic Christmas?

Furthermore, the lyrics of Deck the Halls urge us to "Don we now our gay apparel
Fa-la-la, la-la-la, la-la-la.", and the song 'Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas' instructs us to 'Make the Yuletide Gay'. Do we hear howls of protest from the homosexual community, or even those vehemently homophobic who fear their morals are being undermined? No.

Similarly in "Santa Claus is Coming to Town" we are told "He sees you when you're sleeping". Frightening stuff, but are the anti-pedophile lobby marching on parliament to stop this aged, bearded, voyeuristic man from sneaking into children's bedrooms at night? No they aren't.

Grow up BBC. I'm ashamed, and you should be too. Your role to the public is to Educate, Inform and Entertain, not to advocate censorship. Shane McGowan may be an ugly drunkard with sticky-out-teeth and a body composition of 33% vodka, 33% whiskey and 33% methylated spirit, but he certainly knows how to write a good song - and that song has been good enough for all of us for 2o years. I'm sure McColl is turning in her grave, and McGowan would be too if he was dead - which to be honest is surprising that he's not. And dear God don't try and cremate him, it'd be like Hiroshima.

unusual uses for technology - no.4

Got an MP3 player? Want larger breasts? Combine the two with breast implants that have a built in MP3 player.

It could happen within 15 years according to BT Futurology. Hang on a minute, this story is two years old so they should be available in 13 years.

They don't say where the controls would be:

http://www.gnxp.com/blog/2005/10/mp3-breast-implants.php

unusual uses for technology - no.3

While we're on the subject, the following is from an article in the Metro newspaper a year or so ago. If you don't believe me you can check it out here.

RAF repair plane with teapot
Tuesday, December 5, 2006

A teapot was used by an RAF crew to block a hole in their plane after a mid-air mechanical fault with a hatch door.

The Nimrod plane, which was on an operational flight, had taken off from Cornwall and was on its way back to base in Kinloss, Moray, when the problem occurred.

The crew had been trying to release a sonar buoy into the sea through the hatch when it got stuck and air starting whistling in.

Yesterday, an RAF Kinloss spokeswoman said the crew's safety had not been compromised.

'There was a minor malfunction with the hatch cover and the teapot would have been used to make it more comfortable for the crew,' she said.

Airman Neil Campbell, who was on board, said: 'It had no safety implications and really is a storm in a teapot.'

Boom, boom.

This is, in my opinion, quite possibly the most quintessentially British thing that has happened in this country since about 1945, and it makes me feel a warm glow of patriotism. Just makes you wonder how they managed to survive the rest of the mission without being able to make a brew.

unusual uses for technology - no.2

It would of course be quite conceivable to use a dell for such tasks as bashing a nail in, propping a door open, playing cricket or as a some kind of super-giant spatula. Bet you wouldn't do that with a Mac.

unusual uses for technology - no.1

I've got a mouth ulcer (which may explain why I'm not my usual happy go lucky self this morning) so went to the chemist for something to treat it. The problem is there are no mirrors in the office and I need to apply the treatment directly to the ulcer. The solution is to use the web cam on my MacBook with the preview feature on iChat. Fantastic. Bet you can't do that on a Dell.

singing with dead people

Katie Melua is number one in the hit parade. Singing a duet with Eva Cassidy no less. Yes, the same Eva Cassidy who died in 1996. Perhaps I've missed something, but I always thought a duet was about more than two people taking turns to sing verses of the same song. There has to be some chemistry for a duet to work. Think of The Pogues and Kirsty McColl. Think of Brian Adams and Tina Turner. Like them or loathe them, they were singing in the same room together and working off each other. Of course Miss Nine Million Bicycles in Beijing isn't the first to profit from a 'collaboration' with a dead person (I'll get to the fact that this single is for charity mate in a minute). David Bowie and Bing Crosby, Luciano Pavarotti and Frank Sinatra.  Fine songs, fine performances, but duets? Hardly.

Dear Miss Melua, the number one selling British artiste around the world (I wouldn't make that up, I promise you), is donating all the profits to the British Red Cross. One would surmise that this is Katie's charity of choice. But what about Eva's charity of choice? I suspect someone robbed of life at the age of 33 might have preferred the profits go to cancer charities. Of course I'm only guessing here. The dead can't talk for themselves. They only sing.

The experiment - part II

The second installment in our experiment to see what ads appear on the right once Google Bot has 'read' this post...

Malachy Leprechaun opened his eyes with a start.  He looked around the room to see who else was left, or awake, or alive, or undecided. Sartre was slumped over the grand piano, a bunch of keys held down by his face but making no sound. Now that’s what I call music, thought Malachy Leprechaun. Not like the racket he’d subjected us to earlier. Sartre had a party piece: Neil young sings nursery rhymes. It would begin well enough. ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star’ to the tune of ‘The Needle and the Damage Done’. Then a few more from ‘Harvest’. Maybe a rendition of ‘Humpty Dumpty’ to the tune of ‘Rocking in the Free World’ - that always got the party singing - or maybe a duet with Bob Dylan joining Young at the piano. It wasn’t X- Factor but it was entertaining enough. The problem was that Jean Paul was on the absinthe rather than his usual discount wines delivered direct to his door. As the absinthe worked its way into his very being he’d slowly changed the set list until his performance had become more Crazy Horse than Neil Young. The leprechauns hadn’t minded. They were warm and reducing their home heating bills without switching their gas and electricity accounts to one supplier. Sartre liked a warm house. Thick carpets. No roll ends or off-cuts and definitely none of that wood  laminate flooring that had become so popular. This was an energy efficient home of the highest order. All was grand until Jean Paul had begun to think he was being heckled by a fairy sat on top of his piano. A green fairy. The green fairy that looked like Pierre reciting Yeats...

Malachy Leprechaun’s stomach rumbled. He looked around the room for some party nibbles. Even an Iceland prawn platter would do. It wasn’t Heston Blumenthal but for five pounds you couldn’t complain. Drinking always gave him an appetite. Too much of an appetite. He knew he needed to lose a few pounds but thoughts of joining a slimming club he just wouldn’t entertain. Malachy spotted Kierkegard talking to himself across the room, his mumbled words falling into an empty glass, his foppish quiff capitulated to the weight of its own existence and now dangling before his eyes, full of self-loathing. Kierkegard was probably boring himself with tales of his new celebrity. He’d gotten a mention in a TV ad for a Welsh vodka and had made sure everyone knew about it, telling them, texting them, even emailing on his Blackberry. Hume sat beside Kierkegard. Drinking tea as always and never saying anything - just watching you, studying you. Why did he come to these affairs if he was only going to drink tea? Not even Yorkshire tea but that french piss that Sartre insisted on buying.

The Man with the Nuclear Button

Last night i stumbled across something frightening on the internet. Obviously the most powerful man in the world is feeling left out, and has decided to produce his own Jihad video just like Osama Bin Laden. Only this is scary on a whole different level.

If you've yet to see this cinematic masterpiece, you can watch it here courtesy of the BBC:

Barney's Christmas Message
(people of a nervous disposition may find some scenes distressing)

While you're watching, hold this thought; This man is in control of an estimated 9,938 nuclear weapons. And just when you thought it couldnt get any worse, you see this:



That's Bush's Lap Dog. Ironically playing second fiddle to Bush's real Lap Dog.

I can't actually think of anything more to say on this subject, so I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions. I'm just off to paint myself white, brick up the windows and nail the doors up against the wall.

An experiment - part 1

Given the impressive accuracy of Google Bot in matching the ads on the right of this page with the content of the blog entries we thought we'd try a little experiment. I am going to sound a little confused in a moment. Some might even venture, like a lunatic. But there be method in this madness. We want to see what sort of ads pop up on the page if we include some unusual phrases in the body copy. The leprechauns who live at the bottom of the garden pressed their noses to the glass and began cooing over the Christmas tree. Sartre sat smoking, wondering if Pierre had ever turned up at the cafe and, if he was honest with himself, ruing the day that the fecker had left Jean Paul waiting and set him off on his whole being and nothingness trip. He'd smoked three packets of cigarettes that day. His chest hurt at the memory. His mouth was dry.  His head hurt. The pain was worse than when he bit into ice cream. Though not having brushed his teeth for who knows how long  was taking care of that. And the mescaline of course. Those beautiful mescaline moments. Antique horse brasses. Sailing holidays. Carbon fibre racing bikes at discount prices. He'd had many a strange and beautiful experience with Madame Mescaline. The leprechauns had steamed the glass with their hot breath. Sartre poured himself another brandy and held the glass halfway between the table and his mouth, halfway between being and nothingness. He stared into the empty space in front of him. Space like an empty office block available on a short term lease and ideal for a small or medium size enterprise. The phone rang. Pierre? Apologising for not turning up at the cafe, after all these years? He let it ring. The silence. The ringing still echoing in his ears. Present through its absence. Being and nothingness. L'etre et Nuit. Outside snow began to fall. Christmas card snow, thick and fluffy. The leprechauns stood upright and tugged on collars, pulled down hats and blew into tiny frozen hands. Sartre stood up without looking in their direction. He walked over to the bureau and picked up the green bottle that sat half empty on top of it, extending his arm to turn the key in the patio doors before he pulled the cork from the bottle.

"It would seem Pierre cannot make it today," Said Sartre, arranging several glasses in a row now. "Will you not come in from the cold and celebrate Christmas with me? One should never drink absinthe alone."

Now that's impressive

You may have noticed the ads on the right of the page. Google bot 'reads' all the posts on this blog and places ads that it thinks will be of interest to the readers (there is more than one of you, isn't there?). I mentioned Kwik Fit in the last post and within 6 minutes there's an ad for Kwik Fit. That's impressive.

The trouble with old people

We were recently invited to offer an opinion on a number of options available to an organisation as it planned for the future. Sorry to be so cryptic but I don’t want subjectivity to get in the way of my argument. It seems that upon reaching a certain age some people loose or choose the ability to think beyond their own purlieu. It doesn’t feel right to me so I’m not going to entertain it, is their position. Logic doesn’t enter the proceedings; ad hominem argument always does. Unable or unwilling to consider any position other than their own, they usually attack the person opposing the status quo. It doesn’t feel right; if you are someone who feels you’d feel the same way. Codswallop. With the exception of psychopaths and tax inspectors everybody feels. It’s just that some of us can put our feelings aside for the greater good. Oops! I appear to have turned into an old person attacking the arguer rather than the argument. Let me try again. Many years ago I worked on the account of a national tyre and exhaust retailer. They were a big fish but were a long way behind Kwik Fit and so tasked their agency to come up with a strategy to address this. Considerable research led to the findings that people didn’t really trusts fast fit centres and what the market place really needed was someone trustworthy - like Marks and Spencer.

Now there were a couple things that didn’t sit right with me, green horn though I was. Firstly, if people genuinely didn’t trust fast fit centres how were Kwik Fit making such a success of their business? And secondly, this was around the time that Marks and Spencer was nose diving into irrelevance and major losses.

The fact that people didn’t trust fast fit centres I don’t find surprising. There are some immutable facts about visiting these places: it’s going to cost you money; the coffee is awful; the tea is not really tea; mechanics can out-sneer a teenage girl and most of us wouldn’t know if our tyres were legal or not, let alone whether our brake disks met the manufacturers recommended minimum thickness. We have no idea if we are being ripped off but we still part with our hard earned. The same way that many of us put up with a poor meal in a restaurant and complain about it in private after we’ve paid the bill in full. Being asked if we trust fast-fit centres by a clipboard wielding ‘official’ is our chance to get back at them, let them know how we really feel.

The fact that people (the account and planning directors in particular) had declared a Marks and Spencer of fast-fit centres to be the way forward was genuinely surprising. It took Marks & Sparks quite a few years to turn their fortunes. (Of course any red blooded male could have told them that having a French supermodel in her underwear appear in all of your TV ads was the way to go.) What people were really harking after was a time gone by. Marks & Spencer were no longer relevant. The buying public had gone elsewhere; maybe reluctantly, but there was no turning back. Despite what they might declare in questionnaires. And perhaps there in lies the problem: to truly glean our attitudes and feelings from a questionnaire is a costly and time consuming process. few companies have the budget and few people in the street have the inclination to be psychometrically analaysed in the interest of market research.

So how does an organisation deal with change? Undoubtedly the opinions of the ‘doesn’t feel right’ brigade are just as valid as mine. So do we just wait for them to die and then move our organisation forward? I’m not a fan of waiting for anything. I am an advocate of strong leadership. Change and be damned. Around 5% of us are totally opposed to change, 10% embrace revolutionary change, while 20% of us welcome a combination of revolution and evolution. Most of us (the remaining 65%) accept small changes as long as they are referenced to the status quo. So what does this all mean? Well you can’t please all the people all the time. In fact one of the two ‘all or nothing’ groups will always be aggrieved. So change and be damned. Of course your stakeholder base might have a higher than average number of luddites, but statistically speaking most of us are going to go with the flow as long as the flow is nice and steady. Of course once things begin to change for the better you have a frame of reference for bolder changes.

So what happened to that fast-fit company? They’ve bounced from agency to agency over the past 10 years, doubtless briefing them all that they want to be the Marks & Spencer of fast-fit. Meanwhile M&S is once again a success story so the original market research might finally prove to be correct. I await the ad with baited breath: Noemie Lenoir wiggling beneath a Ford Mondeo wearing nothing but a basque and a mechanic’s sneer. Marvelous.

From the people who brought you Donald Trump's hair...

...comes Jeremy Clarkson's Eyebrows

Jeremy Clarkson, the man’s man, the voice of reason in a world of politically correct madness, that walking, talking curly topped reminder that even a Doncaster lad can make good and have his own world war two aeroplane at the end of his drive to annoy the neighbours, is a big puff. He may not lift the shirt tails of other men but take a look at his portrait on the Top Gear website and tell me that those eyebrows are not the product of time spent with Mrs Clarkson’s tweasers and a protractor. They are perfectly triangular (a scalene triangle, no less) and trimmed to within a grade 2 mowing of a porn star’s mirkin. Yes, it seems old Jeremy is a fully blown metrosexual. Perhaps now we know the real reason 6 foot 7 inch Jezzer backed down in a confrontation with (in his own words) ‘an eight year old hoody’ recently. It wasn’t because he feared suffering at the hands of the Law, as have-a-go-heroes are wont to in this country, it was because he might have broken a nail.

Keeping fit and elfy

You can scare yourself too at www.elfyourself.com

A sales promotion idea

We've got a 300g jar of Nescafe in the cupboard. It's nearly empty and it causes me real existential pain to try and get a heaped spoonful of coffee from the bottom of the jar because our standard length Ikea tea spoons are just too short. So, Nescafe: why not give away a long handled tea spoon with your big 300g jars? An ice cream spoon would probably do the trick. They have long handles to get the last bits out of your knicker bocker glory (what a great name for a dessert).

You read it here first...

A rather weak pun

New Squids on the Blog

(sorry, I couldn't resist it)

At your service, Sir...

Whilst I was cogitating over a piece of cake this morning, an email dropped into my inbox. This happens from time to time, usually its something to do with work but every so often it's someone trying to sell me something. In this particular case, good old Apple - evidently not happy that they're getting enough custom from me already.

But I suppose they know how this works. People who already buy Apple stuff tend to have a loyalty towards them. These customers fall into two categories:

The most 'hardcore' are The Apple Worshipers. A rather geeky bunch, they're the sort that cheer and applaud and wolf-whistle at Apple's product launch keynotes and would rather like it if they put Steve Job's bottom on a postage stamp just so they could lick it every day, were it not for the fact that putting something in an envelope and giving it to a person to deliver is so passé is this age of technological marvel.

The second category contains those who just believe there are greater and lesser degrees of crap. Windows PCs are crap, Macs are slightly less crap. Oh and they look prettier too... but what's really wrong with a biro anyway?

I guess this email was targeted at the biro contingent. It's primary message being that rather than tapping keys and clicky clicky-ing on the Apple online store, then waiting for the People's Post Office with a big parcel, one could actually visit a genuine bona-fide Apple store, inhabited by real human beings, and stocked with shiny things to buy.

At this point, allow me to quote from the aforementioned email:

We're here to help. Introducing the in-store Concierge, just in time for the holiday season. The Concierge (in the blue shirt) is your guide to finding anything in the Apple Retail Store. If you need any help, just ask and they'll point you in the right direction.

The Concierge! Well I must say I'm glad i found that one out. To think I was going to go and ask an ordinary shop assistant to help me find whatever elusive piece of technical gubbins I was after. Evidently your average common or garden Apple shop assistant isn't capable of such superior service - they must only take the very highest calibre Sixth former/Media Studies Student/2 Star McDonalds Employee and give them a whole extra half hour of training before they can don the exclusive Blue Shirt of a Concierge.

But then, Apple have a history of this. Let's take a completely hypothetical situation: Computer broken? No whirring? No clicky clicky? No amount of swearing or death threats seem to fix it? What you need is some kind of technical support person... or in Apple's parlance, a Genius.

Take it to the Apple Store and find the Apple Genius - that spotty scouser they pay minimum wage to stand there and spout technical mumbo jumbo at you. He's often found, apparently at the 'Genius Bar'. Well, either there or at the Frog and Tadpole Bar, or outside having a fag and scratching his arse. When he's eventually located he will give your machine a cursory glance and say something which is eventually decipherable as "It's %$@&ed mate, buy a new one."

At this point I presume I'm supposed to find my Concierge, to tell me what I need to buy and where to find it. They are apparently the only employee on the premises with this secret magic information.

What the ordinary shop assistants are doing throughout all this, god knows. Maybe they've buggered off to get a job where they wont live in constant fear of getting some stupid job title slapped upon them.

Which brings me neatly around to the question - is that their actual job title? Is is written in their passport?
Occupation: Genius

Not even Einstein had it that good. It almost tempts me to go and work for Apple.

Now I'm not accusing Apple of being the only company in the world to try and fob us off with these ridiculously unconvincing attempts at customer service, but they are one of the few who give them a silly name too. But i suppose it gives me something to laugh at.

Genius? Genie Arse more like.

a shameless plug

We've got a sister site called off-the-shelf-websites.co.uk that offers off the shelf websites to small businesses and start-ups. One page or three page site. Low cost. Have a look if you need a professionally designed site without breaking the bank.

a design problem

The traditional toilet is a classic of design functionality. Design tutors the world over have doubtless spent many a happy moment expounding the simplicity of its design while at the same time marveling at its embodiment of the Bauhaus principle of form following function. Indeed, Walter Gropius is rumoured to have included prunes with every meal during his later years, not only to aid his peristaltic action but also to give him reason to visit one of the true monuments to his life's teachings: the toilet bowl. It cannot be emphasised enough that if you had designed the classic toilet potty you could have retired there and then, content that you had reached the zenith of your intellectual and creative abilities and would never have to worry about earning money again.

And then someone had to go and mention that we use too much water when we flush the toilet.

Now, call me a cynic if you like but we live on an island that has been deluged by floods these past few years. The Saudis can extract water from the sea, desalinate it and drink it without any problem. We, a so called advanced country, leaders of the Industrial Revolution, surrounded by water and besieged by Biblical rains 10 months of the year, can only do what we are becoming world famous for and create an inferior version of something that already performed faultlessly. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the modern water saving toilet.

On the face of it, the water saving toilet is an improvement on the classic design. It serves the same function but spares the Earth's most abundant resource. But is it really an improvement? Let us consider another simple and timeless piece of design: the snooker table. What could be simpler? A flat surface, 6 pockets for the balls to fall down. Marvelous. Imagine if someone decided to improve the humble snooker table by redesigning the pockets. Now, instead of the ball dropping down into the pocket and disappearing, the ball drops onto a small shelf where it sits until you manually remove it or poke it into the hole with a brush. Imagine further, if you will, that snooker balls have a soft brown outer coating and that the shelf that they land upon in this 'new and improved' snooker table is made of white porcelain. Suddenly the act of potting the brown has resulted in you having to perform two further operations: removing it from the shelf and cleaning up any residue it almost certainly left behind.

Now come with me if you will to a world beneath the sea. Here you will never see fish swimming up to the underwater flora and sniffing it. There are two reasons for this: fish don't have nostrils and you can't smell anything under water. That's right, you can't smell anything. However foul. Deposit it beneath water and you are spared the olfactory distress. This was another feature of the classic toilet design. Pretty much 99% of deposits ended up beneath the water line. Introduce a stopping off point on this journey to the North Sea and you lose this benefit.

I trust nobody needs pictures to understand these design flaws...

Courage and creativity part II

‘Courage, also known as bravery and fortitude, is the ability to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty or intimidation.’
Wikipedia

There’s one word that really stands out for me in the Wikipedia definition of courage: uncertainty. In business, as in most aspects of life, we are expected to make the right choice, do the right thing, behave the right way. The flaw in this thinking is that it assumes there is a right way and a wrong way and nothing in between. Decision making is not always so clear cut. Often there may be several possibilities where the outcome isn’t certain either way, but the potential for moving beyond the status quo justifies the risk.

What is required is less judgement and more consideration of possibilities. Unfortunately creativity is deemed the preserve of people with long hair and Bench T-shirts, not the bed fellow of enhancing the bottom line. How do you introduce a culture of creative thinking into a company? I’ll ponder that one and get back to you. There are companies who value creativity and courage, to the point where they employ expensive business strategists and futurologists to do what they could be doing themselves. If only they were brave enough.

Courage can be defined as the ability to confront uncertainty. Creativity thrives on the uncertainty of an outcome to generate new ideas. Therefore, it can be said that creativity incites courage. Or put another way, creativity encourages people to be brave.

What are we teaching our kids?

I'm going to my first school parent's evening tonight. Nothing unusual in that except my kids don't start school till next year. So why bother? Well, the school invited mrs pigs & bees and myself along to meet the teachers and ask any questions we might have. This is a lot different to how it was in my day when you presented yourself before the headmaster to receive your school tie and a pep talk on what was expected of you. You're 4 years old, you have responsibilities now. But have things really changed that much? Getting 15 GCSEs at A * grade is easier than getting to £32,000 on 'Who Wants to be a Millionaire?', everyone has a degree in 'Media Studies' or 'Women's Studies' or 'The Study of Studying' yet once they start work people behave the same way they behaved 50 years ago. So what are we teaching them? Or more importantly, what are people learning?

Edward de Bono has spent his life promoting the need to teach people how to think. No, not people who have had an axe stuck in their head and need to relearn the basics. You. Me. Everyone. His argument is that schools don't teach kids how to think yet with a few hours tuition people can really unleash their potential creativity. Ah, but I'm not creative, I hear you say. Well, actually you are. You may not be a Van Gogh or Da Vinci but creativity isn't something bestowed upon the chosen few, like a hump on the back, it's a skill that can be learned just like mathematics and reading and writing. Check out Dr Ed's website for more info: http://www.edwdebono.com

This got me thinking to what else we might never have been taught at school. Now, if there's one thing that anyone in this crazy business needs it's a firm belief that they've got a set of stones on them like a pair of granite space hoppers. (Yes, especially the women.) Yessiree, when it comes to courage creatives are kicking the Army Rangers out of the way. We know no fear. We laugh in the face of failure, sat here in our world of comfy chairs and marker pens that smell like Bakewell Tart. Unlike the people we work for. Clients, we sometimes feel, are bereft of even the smallest plums. A distant cousin to the jelly fish, as my art teacher at school used to say. But can we really be that different? We are all trying to do well. All worried about paying the mortgage.

Is courage something that you can learn? I don't have the answer but welcome comments.

Fork in hell

The common or garden fork is an often-seen creature at this time of year.

He spends most of his time nestled amongst the other members of his brood in a little compartment in the cutlery drawer, but a couple of times a day the humble fork leaves the confines of his nest and goes out to feed.

This is when sightings are most common. The fork loves to frolic with his close cousin, the knife. The knife is an altogether different beast, although she sleeps with her family in a compartment just a couple of inches from the forks.

Together they feed, plunging together into steaks and vegetables and sausages, rubbing against each other in a merry dance, celebrating the pleasure of food, and being cutlery.

There are some foods, however, the knife and fork do not like so much. Nachos are always difficult, and so is soup. For these, the plate must be cleared by the Great Speckled Spoon, who sometimes returns after the main feeding has done and helps with pudding.

However, though the fork and knife are indeed similar, they differ in a few important details. One of these is that only the fork is allowed to venture into the mystical land of The Mouth. This is sacred ground on which the knife must never tread. She must hold back, lying discarded in the gravy while the fork, his tines plunged deep into a juicy piece of pie, heads onwards and upwards for the land of The Mouth.

Despite this, the fork is unhappy. He mourns because he must spend his life upside down. He is sentenced to this punishment by the evil Table Manners - the same mysterious powers that decree that the humble knife should never venture to The Mouth.

You see, the fork evolved over millions of years into a special shape which makes him ideal for scooping up food. His tines curve gracefully upwards from base to tip, creating a perfect recess for holding porridge, or beans or rice.

How he would long to carry food to the land of The Mouth nestled in his scoop-like shape, but the evil Table Manners have decreed otherwise. Throughout his long life, since his birth in Sheffield (all forks are born in Sheffield), the Table Manners have forced him to carry tiny, insignificant portions of food balanced upon his back. Over and over he journeys to The Mouth, dreaming of the day the evil Table Manners will be overthrown.

You can help poor little forks the world over. Would you use a spade upside-down? Then why do something equally silly with a fork?

Help us liberate forks the world over - turn them back the right way up and scoop away to your heart's content.

The menswear department? Yes it's just up the stairs...

...through children's wear, ladies' wear, homewares and DIY, then carry straight on through the home entertainment department, past tools and DIY (DIY is so popular we've devoted two areas of the store to it), straight through the food court and you'll find it right in front of you.

This is how some people treat Google keywords advertising, assuming that you'll jump through hoops to see if their offering is actually the product you want. Well I, and millions of others like me, don't do hoops. We know what we want and if you can't show it to us we'll go elsewhere. Bye bye.

It's not hard to have people land at the page of the thing they are searching for when they click your sponsored link. If you don't know how to do it, visit our website and send us a message. We'll tell you how.

Training flight

I want one. Hours of fun with the theme from Airwolf playing on surround sound as I take chunks out of the paint on the ceiling.

Chocks Away!

Tally ho chaps, a fine day for flying, what?

Ten hundred hours: Pigs & Bees HQ, station scrambled. New Company Helicopter arrived. Rather a poor show on the first flight, a few near misses and whatnot, but with the addition of some precision blue-tack ballast we soon had her flying.

Ten Thirty Hours: Refueled and took on a scouting mission downstairs. Extended flight with Flight Lieutenant Bob at the stick. Jolly good show!

Twelve Hundred Hours: Papa Alpha Bravo One flew a recce over Ubergruppemeister Mike's Giant Pie of Mass Destruction. Wing Commander Phillips was at the controls when the crate got into a bit of a scrape down the back of the cupboard. A full scale rescue mission had to be launched, but proved to be successful.

Thirteen thirty Hours: Refueled and ready for flight again but all evidence of Ubergruppemeister Mike's Giant Pie of Mass Destruction has disappeared....

I know how Hans Blix felt.

Roger and Out.

The Gus Gorman road to riches

In Superman III Gus Gorman hit upon the genius idea of transfering all the half cents that were lost in the system, when people's salaries were rounded down the nearest whole cent, to his own bank account. Of course, this scam having appeared in a Superman film no one was stupid enough to try it for real. It would be just too obvious and people would know they are being stiffed. Until now. Only now the small quantities of salami slicing (as web literate types know this sort of crime) are deemed to be small change and today's Gus Gormans will take you for anything up to £1-80 at a time if my experiences today are anything to go by.

The first experience was the air machine at a petrol station. Now despite vending in 20p increments, the machine only accepts 20p, 50p, £1, and £2 coins. And it doesn't give change. Hmmmmm. So either I have the right money (a 20p coin) or I can choose to pay up to £2 for my 3 minutes of air. Gus Gorman take a bow.

Fast forward to 10 minutes later. Tyres inflated to the correct pressure I deftly manoeuvre the pigs & bees mobile into a city centre parking space and go to get a pay and display ticket. The minimum tariff is a hefty 70p. Only the machine doesn't give change, so the minimum tariff is really £1 for most people (based on the number of motorists wandering up and down the pavement with pound coins in their outstretched hands). Now if they (in this case Kirklees Council) said it was a pound I could live with it. Granted I would probably be living with it like a chronic Tourettes sufferer, but it's there in black and white and that's the price. But the Council has seen Superman III and they are sticking it to the motorist like old Gus stuck it to the man.

Could this trend catch on? Could we send out invoices rounded up to the nearest £500 and claim that our accounting system only accepts thousands or half thousands? I doubt it.

bloody students

Imran Khan, politician and former cricket star, is also the Chancellor of Bradford University. Following his imprisonment during the current state of emergency in Pakistan the university has started a campaign for his release. Now, this is admirable behaviour. Most of us are happy to tut-tut-and-don't-get-involved when we learn of injustice on the other side of the road let alone the far side of the world. So off toddled the local news team to get a few sound bites from the students of Bradford University. Now here is where it all starts to go a bit Pete Tong. You see, of the half dozen or so people interviewed on camera, only one could muster comments beyond 'It's so unfair' or 'He's our Chancellor' and "I like Imran Khan, he's really popular here'. Only one actually gave an example of Khan's philanthropy and the injstuce of his imprisonment (and one of those interviewed was the Dean). I suspect had you told most of the interviewees that Simon Cowell had changed his mind and Imran would be released and back on X-Factor next week they would have been happy.

Students have always come in for plenty of stick. Work shy lay abouts wasting the tax payers' money and in need of a good wash, is just one such example. The thing that really grates about students is the selective washing up. They will happily spend 5 minutes searching a sink full of cups and plates for the one mug that they have used, refill the sink with the dirty crockery, and wash just their own cup. This is fine when you are living in the squalor of your student house, but not so when you join the world of work.

Innit.

Donald Trump's hair

I'm sorry we can't show you a picture of it here. He's very rich and no doubt has teams of people scouring the Internet for mention of his name to keep his lawyers busy so here's a picture of some noodles instead. Google it. Make sure the kids are asleep and the curtains are closed before you do. Oh, and turn off safe search. It's got to be seen to be believed.

something that really is Marvelous!

I went to the doctors today. I had an unsightly growth on my wrist and I was beginning to lose sensation in two fingers (not those two). Before setting out for my appointment I did what any responsible person with dependents would do and made my own diagnosis with the help of Google. A ganglion. A pocket of synovial fluid that has leaked from the joint as a result of trauma. The prognosis was for a ganglionectomy by aspiration or excision (if you didn't know me you'd swear I was a doctor using such big words). Aspiration involves draining the fluid with a large gauge needle, injecting cortisone into the now empty lump and then having the patient lay down for 30 minutes to recover. Excision means cutting the skin, removing the offending item without damaging any blood vessels or nerves and stitching the wound up. So off I go and present myself as John Merrick to the GP.

"I think it's a ganglion," I say, as he squeezes it from all angles. "According to Google."

"It is indeed," concurs the good doctor, before snapping on the latex gloves and, with a quick rub of a sterile swab, plunges what is best described as a sterile prison shank into my wrist and squeezing an aspic like fluid out of it. Elastoplast on (optional) and I'm restored to my lump free self.

So why am I telling you this? Because, dear reader, Google also listed the cost of having a ganglion removed in a private hospital. £900 - £1500. Isn't the NHS marvelous!

I mean, how hard is it?

There are some things in life that are unquestionably hard to do. Performing vascular surgery, managing the England football team, or being a friend of Dorothy in a South Yorkshire mining village are some examples. Then there are things at the other end of the difficult-o-meter that require minimal, if any, effort - getting drunk and breathing would be two examples, listening to what your customer actually said to you 3 seconds ago is another. Step into my time machine and let us re-traverse the temporal plane to a time hitherto spent and we will find my younger self sat at his desk trying to pay some bills using HSBC's online banking system. Only the chuffin' thing isn't there. It's not working because it's not there. The box to log in has disappeared like a Romulan vessel before the tightening sphincters of the crew of the USS Enterprise. So I picks up me phone (I often act like Popeye when I'm frustrated) and ring the number buried deep within the HSBC website. Naturally, being in Yorkshire and having an account holding branch in Manchester I'm greeted by a woman who can barely speak English.

Me: "Hello, I'm trying to log on to Internet Banking but the log in box isn't there"

Cusotmer Care: "I see. Well we've had no reports that it's not working."

Me: "Really?"

Customer Care: "Yes, there are no reports of any problems."

Me: "So what did I just report to you?"

Now please don't take this as condemnation of foreign call centers. Our web hosting company is based in Blighty and their staff announce themselves with a grandeur straight out of Dickens.

"Good afternoon, Hostway Sales. Charles De Vries the third, grandson of the late Admiral De Vries, great grandson of the Fifteenth Earl of Tossington, and generally thoroughbred Englishman. How may I help you?"

"Your website isn't working."

"I see. Well it seems fine at this end..."

My favourite courier service

Long ago, back in the dawn of time, whilst woolly mammoths frolicked in the snow covered mountains of England, and far below in the glacial meltwaters primitive lifeforms began to contemplate evolving into something slightly less primitive, in a stunning anachronism I ordered something from Ebay.

Years passed. To quote Monty Python; Winter changed into Spring. Spring changed into Summer. Summer changed back into Winter. And Winter gave Spring and Summer a miss and went straight on into Autumn. Not having received anything I dispatched an urgent message by Pterodactyl to the sender of my package.

A short while later a message was returned, by a runner from Olympia who managed to gasp his reply before he sadly expired on the floor. The delivery man was unable to find my address. His gnat-nav must have failed him. The runner however, was duly honoured for his fine work. They named a famous sporting event after him. The Rutland County Biannual Trout Tickling Championships will now and forevermore be known as 'Dave'.

As the final throes of the Ice-Age began to subside I contacted the courier service, and asked that they deliver the package to my work address. They responded heroically and flung the full weight of their Tortoise Department behind the task of delivering my parcel. A particularly slow Tortoise was selected for the job, and began his laborious journey.

Several years later I phoned the courier service. Unfortunately the Tortoise had neglected to yet make it out of the depot, probably having been distracted by a small piece of lettuce. The managerial staff duly issued him with a kick up the arse, and as the 21st century dawned my package finally arrived.

Imagine my excitement when I discovered on opening that they had included a special free 'Missing Part' with my order. At first I was thankful, then on later reflection I came to the conclusion I would actually like the aforementioned component - it being necessary for the correct functioning of the product. And so, a flea-mail was sent asking if the Special Missing Part could actually be included after all.

After a while I received a reply. Their flea mail took slightly longer than mine - the carrier dog being distracted en-route and having to spend a few minutes sniffing other dogs' bottoms before resuming his journey. Many apologies were offered and the component would duly be dispatched.

Another bold Tortoise commenced his journey. For years he trekked through snowy topped mountains and windswept plains. And finally, in my absence, delivered his burden to a neighbour of mine. Or possibly someone in the same road, or maybe the one next to it. Come to think of it, it could have been anywhere. Having completed his task, he fell exhausted into a ditch, where he was picked up by MI5 and taken off to have his memory erased.

Further contact with the courier service confirmed that the delivery Tortoise had completely forgotten where he had left my parcel. He also forgot to put one of those little cards through the door at the time of delivery telling me where he'd left it. Bastard Tortoise.

And so, time slips on. In a few years, after the end of World War Three, and when global warming has destroyed all the crops and flooded most low lying countries, just before we slip into the next Ice Age a package will turn up in a sorting depot somewhere near Wyre on Piddle. A look of astonishment will come over the old Tortoise's face as he remembers that day years ago when he stopped for a nibble at a brussel sprout and mistakenly left this package here.

With a sudden burst of enthusiasm surging through his old rheumatic tortoise limbs, he decides then and there to complete his long lost mission and deliver the parcel safely to me. Just at this moment however, as Historians tell us has happened several times in the history of the world, the Earth's magnetic polarity suddenly switches.

Guided by his faithful internal compass, the old tortoise lumbars off into the sunset, my package on his back, bound for Tahiti.

GRRRRRRRRRROOGLE!

I have a sneaking suspicion that Google is owned by the People's Post Office. Now I know that Google is a work of genius, provides this lovely blog for free, has totally improved our lives and done more for mathematics than even Carol Vorderman reciting Pi to 58 decimal places while wearing nothing but a mortar board could do but is it really that hard for them to test their websites? Perhaps test is the wrong word. Google employs more people with doctorates than any other organisation on the planet. Maybe 'testing' to them means interrogating the code and comparing the speed of algorithms like a high brow game of paper-scissors-stone. Unfortunately most of us speak in a language where words have vowels as well as consonants and we value simplicity above all else. Have you ever tried to contact Google? Their sites (Google Maps, Google Webmaster, Google Adwords) all have links to contact them but invariably link you back to a help page that has no doubt been shortlisted for the Long John Silver Arse Kicking Web Awards for Usefulness. If you do manage to get an email to them you'll get a standard cut and paste reply. We know it's a cut and paste job because half the last sentence was missing one time they deemed us worthy of a reply (and the content is exactly the same every time they do reply).

It's not rocket science to have a website that is logical to navigate (the rocket science graduates are probably not clever enough to work at Google) so please, Sergey and Larry, take a random selection of non-egg heads and ask them to test your websites. I'm not talking window lickers, just everyday computer users who are only interested in what a website can do for them.

New statistics say the heaviest users of computers are now men aged 50+. I suspect many of these are simply unsuspecting forty somethings who went onto a Google help page a few years ago and were unable to find their way out.

Bob, have you looked outside since you put us on Google Maps?!!

What are the neighbours going to say?

The People's Post Office

A client just rang us up. He has a problem in that if you put their business' post code into Google Maps or Multi Map, you can't find it. I checked on the Royal Mail's own postcode checker and they too can't find it. No worries, I thought (I sometimes think in an Australian accent) I'll call the People's Post Office and find out what the problem is. The problem is the helpline is only open between the hours of 6-00pm and 8-00pm Monday to Friday and 9-30am to 5-00pm on Saturdays.

I'll let you guess what I think of that.

some things I learnt at a conference

We've just spent two days at a conference. Here's what I learned:

1. Alliteration Alludes to Above Average Ability.

2. Using capitals on every letter makes you a gifted child.

3. "The most complex of ideas can be expressed in the simplest language," said Wittgenstein. Clearly he'd sat through a few PowerPoint presentations in his time. If you need to use a yellow and red sunburst colour scheme on your presentation the content is dull. One font. Two sizes. Maybe some judicious italics. If it ain't working like that then it's time to think about what you are saying and say it in small, easy to digest chunks.

4. If you are going to use PowerPoint learn how to change between slides. I hate all things Microsoft with a passion but they got this bit right. You simply press a button.

5. Talking of things that are easy to digest, it's an immutable law of biology that your bowels will fill with gas the second the room falls silent yet be as calm as a Bhuddist on Mogadon the moment you leave the room to fart.

6. The large coffee pots are not a challenge. That caffeine will play havoc with your digestion. See point 5 above.

7. Whenever a group of parents get together over alcohol the topic of conversation will always include their children's bowel movements.

8. Whenever a group of creatives get together over alcohol the topic of conversation will always include their own bowel movements.

9. When you've heard the keynote speaker singing rugby songs in the bar the night before, their presentation takes on a whole new meaning.

10. If you put party poppers and empty balloons on the dinner table expect people to use them.

11. The 3rd sector is and always has been a hiding place for people who just aren't very good. It is also the vocation of some very talented, passionate, and modest people. Don't confuse the two.

Reality TV hits a new low

As if being crap and having your staff constantly walk out on strike wasn't bad enough, the Post Office seems intent on killing itself with its new TV advertising campaign. Now, when I'm not thinking the Post Office provides a service that is akin to something that fell out of a dog's behind, I'm probably queuing for an interminably long time in some poorly laid out building that has at least twice as many service windows as people willing or able to serve, and have not only lost the ability to think but also the will to live. This whole psychic and spiritual collapse is only enhanced by the Post Office's insistence on decorating their buildings a la mode du World War II. So imagine my delight at seeing the money the Post Office extort from us, the public, for such terrible service is being spent on a TV advertising campaign that depicts the Post Office as an organisation staffed by half whits. Now hats off to the production team: the casting is superb (I doubt there's a collective full whit amongst the lot of them), the sets have any hope of life leaving my soul at the sight of those biege-cum-pea-green-cum-not-really-a-colour-more-a-feeling-of nausea walls. But it gets better! The People's Post Office (clearly that World War II decor is having an effect on the creative team to come up with such an inspirational line as that) is a place where Z-list celebs go to buy their TV licence, stamps, and probably to lose the will to live just like the rest of us. These celebs are so well known that the Post Office 'staff' have to announce who they are, like some piss poor impressionist at a working men's club who begins his impersonations with 'Ay up, I'm Frank Bruno. Know what I mean 'Arry?'. Only in this case we've got Wendy Richards, Bill 'I'm not really difficult' Oddie, and Boy's Life or West Zone (I'm not sure which, but I do know it's not that other collection of middle aged men who once upon a time were known as Take That because they're starring in some pretty frightening POS in Marks and Spencer).

An intellectual might call this paradoxical intention. Depict the Post Office as an anachronism run by morons and the morons who really run it might actually buck their ideas up. I'd call it the beginning of the end. It only serves to remind me that my local courier will deliver a box as big as you like anywhere in the country the next day for only £10. They've never let us down. The Post Office, on the other hand, charged £10-95 to deliver a CD before 9-00am the next day. Guaranteed. Only it didn't show up. Twice.


With these new ads it seems that the message is finally getting through and they are ready to stand up and admit it. The Post Office is rubbish. Well done, Royal Mail. You've finally got something right.

natural selection in action

From our friends at Burn:

http://www.burnmarketing.com/bang/


(Cut and paste it into your browser if the link doesn't work. It's not going to kill you.)

The Blazeman

Live more than your neighbours
Unleash yourself upon the world and go places
Go now
Giggle
No, laugh
And bark at the world like the wild dog that you are

Understand that this is not a dress rehearsal
This is it, your life
Face your fears and live your dreams
Take it all in
Yes, every chance you get
Come close
And by all means, whatever you do, get it on film.

Jon 'Blazeman' Blais
1971 - 2007

Marvelous!

And so it begins

I shall soon be quite dead at last in spite of all.

Rarely have I suffered the anxiety of the blank page. Move the pen or press the keys and make a mark on the page. It doesn't have to be the right mark. Just sully the purity and have done with it. Or not. The line above is from Samuel Beckett's 'Malone Dies'. It's better than any opening line I could ever write so there you go. A mark on the page. Eloquent. Profound. Or plain old miserable. The virginity is stolen. This blog is officially open.