Filed under: Food For Thought
How come companies call their products names like 'Beautiful' or 'Seduction'? Are the people who buy them so insecure they need to associate with brands that tell them what they'd liike to hear?
It's happening everywhere … even Mercedes Benz got in on the act calling their BOTTOM OF THE RANGE car, Elegance. Come on, it's not elegant, it's a boxy 1980's German taxi. Infact the only thing that looks elegant is the car dealer who flogged one to a couple who now think they're 'upper class' when in reality all it has done is highlight just how middle class they really are!!!
Where is it going to end? What are we going to see next?
– Get Laid Aftershave For Men?
– The New Porsche Fanny Magnet?
– I'm Not Fat, I'm Big Boned Eau de Toilette?
Look, I'm all for brands creating an image/identity (hell, that's what I'm paid to do!) but when someone is as blatant as this, I can't work out who is the more disturbed … the manufacturer for coming up with it or the customer for buying it?
If you ever want to make one of these people see the folly of their ways, just ask them what car they own or what perfume they are wearing and then sit back and watch them cringe as they say "Elegance" or "Beautiful" …
Mean? Well, I never said I was nice did I!!! Guess this all links in with my view that people are seemingly more and more unhappy with their 'lot in life' but it could be that I am just ranting, it has been known.
Filed under: Comment
Do you remember the singer Sophie B. Hawkins? She had a couple of hits in the '90's … ?
She wasn't very good at her peak but the poor thing must be really crap now given she won a court case against a guy selling promotional copies (via eBay) of her soon-to-be-released album and only got awarded US$346!!! Three Hundred and Forty Six Bucks … that wouldn't even cover the cost of a stereo to play the rubbish on!!!
Poor thing, talk about a reality check on the state of your career, the judge might as well of said, "Sophie, you're a nobody, go and die under a rock!!!"
This got me thinking … when do you give up on a dream? When do you realise or accept 'it's not going to happen?' Having watched the awful 'Pop Idol', I was struck by the arrogance of some of the entrants … they were crap and yet believed they were amazing … what drives this? What do they call upon to keep their dream alive? What are they chasing … the fame, the money, the desire to fulfill their dream?
What is obvious is that fame used to be the end product of doing something worthy or great, and now, for many people, it is the actual goal … hence the incredible growth of reality TV shows like BIG BROTHER, which may be many things but certainly not 'reality'!
Is 'normal life' so bad these days? Why do we crave a life 'style' rather than a life? Why aren't we happy with our 'lot' in life? What has changed this and do you think it is going to get better or worse?
So many questions and not enough answers ….
Filed under: Comment
When I was a kid adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious lectures about how hard things were when they were growing up … what with walking twenty-five miles to school every morning, uphill both ways through year round blizzards carrying their younger siblings on their backs to their one-room schoolhouse where they maintained a straight-A average despite their full-time after-school job at the local textile mill where they worked for 35 cents an hour just to help keep their family from starving to death!
And I remember promising myself that when I grew up there was no way in hell I was going to lay a bunch of crap like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!
But, now that I've reached the ripe old age of thirty-five, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so fucking easy!
I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a goddamned Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today you don't know how good you've got it!
I mean, when I was a kid we didn't have the internet – if we wanted to know something, we had to go to the goddamned library and look it up ourselves!
And there was no email! We had to actually write somebody a letter – with a pen! – and then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the fucking mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!
There were no MP3s or Napsters! You wanted to steal music, you had to go to the goddamned record store and shoplift it yourself! Or we had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and fuck it all up anyway!
You want to hear about hardship? You couldn't just download porn! You had to bribe some homeless dude to buy you a copy of "Hustler" at the local newsagent! It was either that or jack off to the lingerie section of the Grattan catalogue! Those were your only options!
We didn't have fancy shit like 'Call Waiting'! If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a bloody irritating busy signal! And we didn't have fancy 'Caller ID' either! When the phone rang, you had no idea who the fuck it was – it could be your boss, your Mum, a collections agent, a drug dealer, you didn't know! You just had to pick it up and take your chances, mister!
And we didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation videogames with high-resolution 3-D graphics! We had a piece of shit Atari 2600 or worse, a Phillips G7000 that sold itself as a personal computer but all you could make it do was show your name on the TV screen in 20 shades of stupid pink! We didn't get cool games with huge background stories, we had shit like 'Space Invaders' and 'Asteroids' where the graphics sucked serious ass! Your guy was a stupid little square for christsakes! You had to use your imagination! There were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever! You could never win, the game just kept getting harder and faster until you died!
Just like LIFE!
Hell, when you went to the movie theatre there no such thing as stadium seating! All the seats were the same fucking height so if a tall guy sat in front of you, you got fucked!
And we sure didn't have cable television, back then we had 3 channels and then too huge fanfare, we got a 4th. We didn't have 100 channels with onscreen programming menu! You had to use a little fucking book called the TV Times to find out what was on! And there was no Cartoon Network! You could only get cartoons on Saturday morning … for 10 minutes!!
D'ya hear what I'm saying!?!
You kids today have got it too easy! You're spoilt, goddamn spoilt! Let me tell you something, you little pricks wouldn't last five minutes back in '78!!!
Filed under: Food For Thought
Thanks to social, political, economic and entertainment* trends … Western women now feel a greater level of independence than they've ever felt before.
For possibly the first time in civilisation, a mass number of women no longer believe they are reliant on men to enjoy a full and happy life.
Because men have an inherent need to maintain their gender position within society, they now place much greater importance on their physical, mental and aesthetic 'offering' as they feel this is what is needed to stand out from the crowd and attract a female and maintain [what they believe] is one of their gender fundamental 'roles'.
With the attitude and roles of men and women slowly but surely merging, could this be best described as 'Gender Blending'
* This could be everything from the Spice Girls, right through to Sex In The City etc etc