Underblog.co.uk

PREPARE TO MEET YOUR GOD, the illegal advertising hoarding commands me.

“Fuck off”, I reply.

Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ and you will be saved, the sign continues, undeterred.

I pass by, angered by the rudeness of an unknown evangelist interrupting my train of thought with a crude threat during what is otherwise a fairly calm and relaxing drive. Whatever became of this announced crackdown on motorway advertising?

Later, I stop at Moto services. What with food price rises and the bursting of the housing bubble, a unappetising bite at motorway services can set you back nearly 27% of the value of the average home, so I decide just to make use of the facilities. Whilst doing so, I read the advert above the urinal. It informs me that the coffee shop doesn’t just serve coffee, but that “frappés” are also available. There is a photo of an iced strawberry drink. So far, so dull. But the disclaimer that intrigues me: “Photo for illustration purposes only”. I wonder what other purpose a photo would serve, and what legal protection the advertisers think the disclaimer affords them. I am not about to mistake a photo for the real thing. This is quite clearly not a frappé, but a picture of a frappé (and come to think of it, I wouldn’t drink from a frappé I found above a urinal in the gents anyway). Of course the photo is for illustration purposes. And presumably saying so does not negate the requirement for it to be an accurate illustration. So why the disclaimer?

When I return to my car, I wonder if a disclaimer could be added to the Christian hoarding. “Implicit threat for rhetorical purposes only”, perhaps.

I always thought the Daily Mail was anti-paedophilia. Being anti-paedophilia is a good thing, obviously, because paedophilia is wrong.

But now I’m confused, because today they ran a “story” on somebody called Dakota Fanning, which basically amounted to “Look at this really fit 14 year-old girl!”

Don’t feel dirty, it’s not your fault, they seem to say. She “looked mature beyond her 14 years”. And besides, she’s not really a child any more, she has “passed the awkward stage” (with flying colours, no less!).

It’s almost up there with the notorious Daily Star which ran an outraged story on the Brass Eye “Paedogeddon” special directly opposite a picture of a 15 year-old Charlotte Church to show how big her tits had gotten.

I left a comment on the Daily Mail story mentioning something about mixed messages, but it won’t get through their comment moderation policy.

UPDATE:
Facetious snipes here, or a proper argument from septicisle? I know which I prefer.

I’m not an insomniac. Sleeping is one of the few things I’m very good at. I’m not even really a night owl. No, the thing with me is that my body clock runs slow. It loses between 15 and 30 minutes every day. Once, during my year out from university, I tested this hypothesis by going to bed and getting up exactly when I felt like it. It took approximately 8 weeks to complete a full cycle, my routine slipping back 20 minutes or so every day, until eventually I got back to where I started, minus one day. It was basically equivalent to circumnavigating the globe in 56 days (in a westwards direction), except there wasn’t so much travelling involved.

I’ve never understood why it is necessary, in a modern society, to have a 24 hour day. Now, you may think that these things are pretty much decided by astronomical phenomena, but think about it. Electric lights and blackout curtains were both invented years ago; there’s no real need for us to be awake at daytime and asleep during the night. And no-one likes getting up in the mornings, so why not just make the day 20 minutes longer? It would mean a 20 minutes lie-in every morning! And it wouldn’t be completely without precedent. We mess about with British Summer time every year, and that’s far more annoying. At least if it happened every day nobody would forget.

Alas, we have to deal with the world as it is, not as it could be, and these days I don’t have the freedom to get up whenever I like. But my extended circadian rhythm still causes me to be bright eyed and bushy tailed at some funny times, especially at weekends and during holidays. Now on the one hand I love the night. It’s quieter, less crowded and more mysterious than daytime, which has always been a little in-your-face. But the night can sometimes be, well, boring. I like to imagine that in big cities, there are bars and cafés where fellow creatures of the night gather to drink, read and - I dunno - listen to Gordon Haskell’s How Wonderful You Are on loop. In my town, there’s just Tesco (handy, but restockers clanging cage trolleys together is not really a pleasant sound, and the place isn’t exactly mood-lit) and, on Fridays and Saturdays only, late showings of films at an out-of-town Showcase cinema. Is there nowhere else I can go?

There’s always the internet, of course.

Imagine a good meal. Doesn’t it just fill you with despair? No? Think again: You’ve had a long, hard day at work, you got a lecture from your boss about time management (which was the only thing he did all day), Sarah and Michael are still in a bad mood with one another which just causes extra stress for everybody else, and Alex still hasn’t answered your email. You didn’t have time for lunch, and are now starving. Surely a big meal is the last thing you want to come home to?

Perhaps you don’t understand the meaning of the word “meal”? You were thinking of food, weren’t you? Fool. A meal is not food. A meal is the lack of food. It’s the absence of something to eat. It’s a problem.

Thankfully, like most problems in life, the meal problem goes away if you pay someone enough. In this case you pay Tesco, and in return you get one of these.

Or if you’re feeling a little mediterranean, you could go for

Commonly known by human beings as pizza, or, if you want to be particularly vague in order to include pasta with a stir-in sauce, italian meals.

It’s time to put a stop to this sort of thing. I’m perfectly happy for corporate and marketing types to smarm on to each other about “filing solutions” or “payroll solutions” in their special tossy language, but when it starts impacting my customer meal solution selection and purchasing experience, I think it’s time for action.

A blog post it is then.