I have a thing about advertisements particularly TV advertisements. A few, a very few are brilliant. Some more are just good, but then it goes downhill from there.
My bugbear at the moment are the ads for nicotine vapour suckers. I am all for using a vapour as a transition to giving up smoking but the ads are now comparing them with sexy, smart technology. They remind me of the old fag adds that were allowed many moons ago.
They're not selling a solution but a product that is actually encouraging new users. Shame on them. The fact that Griff Rhys Jones as lent his voice over to one of these ads shows anyone would go something the money. Shame on him to.

I would like to wish you all happy New Year (especially for when it actually happens).
As you may or may not know 2016 is a leap year. The reason for the leap year is that the Gregorian calendar has a year of 365 days but in actuality the time it takes the Earth to orbit around the Sun is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds.
The reality is that the real New Year is later tonight.
 If you're up to it, I suggest you PARTY ON.

The Art of the Fart

Creating a smell

Is all very well

But there is an art

To the fart

When alone

You’ll squeeze a tone

From daybreak to well past noon

But when an Audience is there

You do not dare

So hold it you will

Till your colon doth fill

Only then can you play a whole tune

Taken from the ebook of the same name

How Not to Sell - Part One

Retailer: Jewsons Kitchen and Bathroom Centre.

The conversation literally started in this manner.

Me: I'm looking for a corner toilet.
Salesman: you don't want one of them they're rubbish.
Me: Why?
Salesman: They don't save any space to know.

Already I was thinking what a twat. This is not a good start and this 'salesman' made me feel annoyed and patronised at the same time. When I politely explained the constraining space considerations and that this was the best solution to where I needed a downstairs sanitary room built, he had to concede, that from a practical design point of view, this was the best solution.

However, he was still incredibly negative about the the whole idea mentioned on three more occasions that he hated corner toilets. He offered two choices but said categorically not to buy one manufacturer as it was incredibly expensive and not worth the money. That left me a choice of one.

Where this vitriol against a design concept came from my do not know or do not care.

I left the premises and went online and found exactly what I wanted, at half the price and delivered directly to my door.

Jewsons did not only lose a one-off sale but also the opportunity of selling me all the other bits I needed his particular project.

Thank God the Internet

Going Around in Circles

I was kicking back and watching a repeat episode of MythBusters where Adam Savage and Jamie Hyneman were experimenting swimming, walking and driving while blindfolded. 

In all these experiments they discovered that, without visual clues, they continually went round in circles almost ending back at the same spot they started.

At the end of this particular feature, Adam and Jamie discussed the results but could not determine any reason why this happens.

I do not have a definitive answer but it got me thinking. I wonder if we have a predilection for this from a time we are very young, particularly at the early crawling stages?

Could we have this tendency as an inherent internal safety feature to make sure that we do not stray too far from an original spot so that we can be found easily by adults if we get lost? 

Just a thought.

Did You Know That Lemonade Has Lemon in It

It was a lovely warm day and I was sitting drinking a glass of generic brand diet lemonade. My mind started to wander, as it does, and my eyes happened to rest upon the bottle sitting on the table. I notice the label that said "Diet Lemonade” with a subtext, “Made with Lemon Juice.”

I wondered why such a statement should need to have been made. What would you expect to have been a drink that was called lemonade? Chocolate bananas? Aardvark mucus? ‘Come on guys,’ I said to myself, ‘why would you feel it necessary to qualify fact that lemonade has lemon in it?

The label, therefore, warranted closer inspection.

This 'Lemonade' contained:

Carbonated water

Lemon juice from concentrate (1%)

Citric Acid

Flavouring

Acidity Regulator (Sodium Citrates)

Preservatives (Sodium Benzoate, Potassium Sorbate)

Sweeteners (Aspartame Sodium Saccharine)

This had a final sub note of “Contains a source of Phenylalanine.”

Gee, what ARE all these chemicals? Man, this made it feel like a really healthy drink. So the manufacturer found it necessary to mention that there was Lemon juice in it, even though it constituted only 1%.

 Of course, the label had the traffic light system.

It was less than 1% calories (green), trace fat(green), trace saturates(green), less than 1 gram salt (green), and less than 1% trace sugars (green).

So the green ‘traffic lights’ across-the-board on the label made it look healthy.

But it also should have included another element in the traffic light system.

The one red light at the bottom of the list meaning “no nutritional value or any fucking flavour whatsoever.”

Funny True Story 3 - Canal Boat Holiday.

There was a guy I used to work with called Des. I don’t know whether it was short for Desmond or desperate. But that is only slightly relevant to the story. Des lived with his wife and his mother-in-law. Besides all the obvious and usual jokes, this was not an ideal situation for Des. He did not get on with his mother-in-law all that well and each day he used to come into work with various stories and horrors of his life at home.

Most of the time we took these with a pinch of salt but there is one happenstance I know to be true and maybe is indicative of life that Des had to live.

One day Des came into work and he actually looked happy for once. The reason for this sudden onset of enjoyment was that he had managed to book a holiday. OK, as well as for him and his wife, it also included his mother-in-law, being the only way to persuade his wife to allow him to book it. It was a bit of a victory for him as it was difficult and almost impossible to get his mother-in-law to go anywhere, let alone on a holiday.

He had booked a canal boat holiday on a traditional narrowboat. A real traditional narrowboat, as it was not diesel powered but horse-drawn in the same manner as when the canals were first built. A week of quiet meandering through the countryside just watching the world go silently by.

As the months turned to weeks Des’s anticipation remained constantly buoyant. His whole being, it seemed, was focused on this one single marvellous event in his life.

Then one day, a couple of weeks before the holiday was due to commence, he came into work with such a manner of sadness and anger it was a shock, even to us. Apparently, unbeknownst to him his mother-in-law had cancelled the holiday. The reason she gave was cruelty to animals. Apparently, she had failed to grasp what a going on a horse-drawn narrowboat entailed.

She thought it was cruel to make a horse swim and tow boats as well.

You couldn’t make this up.