There's a bloody 't' in that word, woman.

[hirez]

Since it's January, the media pseudopod of Global Corporate Headquarters has withdrawn the sub-appendage concerned with trying to sell us expensive perfume[1] and has extended the one which is busily selling cheap holidays in other people's misery.

The advert on heaviest rotation features Mr & Mrs Redknapp. Now, while I didn't go a bunch on whatever popular beat combo she apparently fronted, I wish her no ill-will and it's nice to see someone making a decent fist of a second career. However, that glottal stop really does drive me up the wall. I would imagine Thos. Cook (it is that lot, isn't it?) didn't spare much expense on the thing, but the diction and the forced M&S-style vocal langour make it come across as if it were one of the six-bob local ads they had on ATV in the seventies called 'sunspots' . Tacky bikini shots[2], some wobbly captions via a transistor-powered genlock the size of a small lorry and a very local (for Smethwick) voiceover promising us a 'Bostin time in Playa des Americas'.

This of course was entirely impenetrable for small children from rural Gloucestershire who understood 'holiday' to mean 'long weekend on a windswept beach at the pointy end of Pembrokeshire in the space between the last of the winter wheat going in and the Andoversford YFC ploughing match'

This leads me toward the subtext of said advert. We, as passive media-consumption nodes, are understood to spend the first part of the year planning and/or looking forward to this alleged 'holiday' and the second part remembering it wistfully and/or lying awake at night wondering how to pay for it.

An entire year failing to live in the now for the sake of a week or two lying about feeling vaguely guilty you're not having more fun?

Fuck. That.

I reject the entire tree of assumptions inherent in that view. They are too horrible to contemplate.


Other than that, the sun was bright today, so I made a start on the pruning.




[1] The book 'Deluxe' is a fine thing and I commend you all to seek out a copy.[3]
[2] Given the amount of oil being vomited from passing tankers back then, all bikini shots were tacky and smelled of benzine.
[3] Curse my memory. The book's called 'Deluxe' and it's written by Dana Thomas.

Comments

[jarkman.livejournal.com]

What would it take to get zero-advert telly ?

I guess one could restrict oneself to iPlayer and Lovefilm. Might be a worthwhile tradeoff.

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

Ha! As a perfume addict (latest acquisition: Divine Folie by Jean Patou, long discontinued and utterly beautiful) I can tell you that most of the stuff that gets advertised on the telly is *not* expensive in terms of pounds spent - although it is if you look at the pounds spent compared to what the juice in the bottle costs to make. That said, perfumery is an art, and to look at it in terms of material cost can be a little silly.

[liz-lowlife.livejournal.com]

*Applause*

[mr-tom.livejournal.com]

Do not, under any circumstances, start reading Crazy Guy on a Bike (http://www.crazyguyonabike.com/doc/alongridehome) journals. Or "Vagabonding". Things will start to happen in your mind that are not conducive to a consumerist existence.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Quite. There's something like a hundred 'new' scents cranked out per year by various appendages of the LVMH corporation and/or IFF.

It's 'expensive' because it's an 'aspirational brand' which apparently 'makes a statement' about one's 'liefestyle'.

(At this point I would start jabbering about AK-47s in the street, but one of those is as much an 'aspirational brand' or 'lifestyle choice' to western europeans as a widescreen telly or a German car.)

[hirez.livejournal.com]

Ta. I think it's the comet-like appearance of 'JHR feeling distictly trapped by alleged lifestyle and having a boggle-eyed ramble about it'. Every couple of years, like Newtonian clockwork.

[inulro.livejournal.com]

V+ box. I haven't seen an advert at < 12 x speed since last April.

[d-floorlandmine.livejournal.com]

Well said. Of course, if you're working to pay off the holiday that is your only escape from sitting in front of (and not worrying about paying off) your credit-card-purchased flatscreen TV (two inches bigger than the one your neighbours have!) then you'll be more likely to just get on with working for the Yankee dollar $insertNameHere $insertCurrencyHere.

(I think I need to make a Radio Ga-Ga/Metropolis type icon.)

[ivory-goddess.livejournal.com]

Seconded! Except for the ads that have peaked my curiosity enough to make me want to see what they're banging on about.

[ivory-goddess.livejournal.com]

Oh yes, it's January, so all the ads are for holidays and diets (food and/or systems), with the occasional 'nicotine replacement therapy item' for a bit of a change. Even using FFWD you can tell what they're for.

[christiffer.livejournal.com]

I'm fairly convinced that the days of receiving one's media in physical form[1] are numbered - it'll all be downloaded soon. To that end I have a sony blu-ray that features an ethernet port, and runs lovefilma and iplayer both, plus an apple tv for itunes media. As regards broadcast media, this will only be the case for live events soon[2].

I've noticed some ads seem to be designed to catch one's eye at 30x normal speed now.

[1] Case in point - last year I entered HMV in search of a DVD, found it, then noticed the enormous queue for the checkout. So, I whipped out the Iphone, used redlaser to scan the barcode, and ordered it from amazon instead. One wonders why their results were so poor this year?
[2] In this country, the Coronation of QE2 was the event that broke live television in this country - wouldn't it be ironic if the coronation of her successor was it's swansong?

[mimmimmim.livejournal.com]

:( Try 700 new ones a year, although the number is starting to fall again. The two big perfume formulation companies are Givaudan and Fermenich. You ever want to see me rant, ask me for my opinion on the current regulation of natural ingredients by IFRA.

I do love the romance of perfume, and that probably makes me a sucker, but most human beings probably have things they love that seem a bit pointless to other people.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

How many? Fuuu...

Anyway. No more of a sucker than the sort of fellow who rather cares for old Range-Rovers and Agas. Even though the majority of either are bought by total bastards these days.

[cybermule.livejournal.com]

I just came back from the pointy end of Pembrokeshire. It was far more fun than going on the big Orange skybus, and ironically probably much more aspirational in that the cottage is *always* booked.

I envy your pruning. Seems to be a thing I only do for other people.

[hirez.livejournal.com]

I'm wondering out loud about the wisdom of hiring an electric chipper-thing to mulch up the prunings so I can feed them to the Quatermass Compost Monster. It's that or chop them up small so they'll go in the brown sacks from the council.

[cybermule.livejournal.com]

Chipper. Tools are always fun, your compost will be better (especially if it's mostly green, mushy stuff so far) and I can disappear any surplus shreddings. Would lend you my shredder, but I got a bit ambitious with what to feed it and need to tinker around with it.