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

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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...