Click on the pic to see the whole series.
Seriously, WTF? Russian translation websites tell me the label on the bottle says “wine product” and “Cahors wine”, Cahors being a wine region in France. Wacky.
I should really get some work done.
Archive for February, 2006
Young, happy conservatives
27 Feb 2006From the department of the bleeding obvious, the Oz tells us young people — as in under 25s — are increasingly conservative and more likely to vote for Johnny than Big Kim . . . while they’re living with parents saving up for a mortgage, going to church and getting ready to get married and make babies. Not making excuses or anything but author Caroline Overington explains it thus:
In part, that’s because young people do not have time to paint slogans on to protest signs. They work an average of 20 hours a week, on top of full-time or part-time study, and they leave university with HECS debts worth $30,000 or more. Since the collapse of communism, young people are less likely to adopt the Marxist view that capitalism contains the seeds of its own destruction. To them the fruit of capitalism is new cars, plasma TVs and trips overseas. They have grown up in an age of prosperity in which the welfare state appears redundant. A vibrant economy has emboldened young people to create small businesses of their own.
Even my own 18-year-old sister sent me a creatively spelled text message yesterday to let me know she got a job at the evil coffee empire before asking me to find her the best price on a shiny new mobile phone which is blatantly aimed at young women. Allow me to quote the marketing copy:
Contradictions
26 Feb 2006I seem to have good luck with storms. Made it home just before the whopper that’s currently sitting directly over my house, judging by the very loud and very immediate cracks of thunder. Storms and raffles. Not much luck with anything else at the moment, which is a cryptic comment about last night. Cryptic even to me.
Anyway, this is probably just a bunch of waffle to fill up space because all I really wanted to do was post a quote and couldn’t bear to go Alan Ramsey style and spend a whole column quoting someone else.
No serious person is without contradictions. The test lies in the willingness or ability to recognise and confront them.
– Christopher Hitchens, Love, Poverty and War
Considering abortion? Don’t!
23 Feb 2006One of the more amusing aspects of reading the Israeli newspapers, as I occasionally do, is the advertising. In the English-language versions of the papers, most of the ads are aimed at extracting cash from diaspora (which in the Israeli mind means American) Jews. Thus naff and overpriced Israeli army surplus gear or evil and overpriced Jewish dating websites. See the theme emerging? And me with my hatred of anti-Jewish stereotypes. (Although I’m tempted to get another one of those cool Israeli army bags like the one that the burglars borrowed to cart off my stereo, camera, minidisc player etc. a few years back.)
In keeping with the Israeli reputation for, shall we say, bluntness, the word ’subtlety’ is not in these advertisers’ dictionaries. (Although there are apparently six Hebrew words meaning ’subtlety’ according to my Hebrew-English from 1990.)
Thus I came to see the immensely unsubtle video and website from this organisation which aims to reduce the number of abortions in Israel by providing financial, practical and psychological assistance for mothers-to-be who may prefer not to be mothers. ‘Considering abortion? Don’t! We’ll give you nappies and baby clothes and counselling and stuff’ . . . or something along those lines. This approach has apparently rescued some 17,000 little urchins from the vacuum cleaner since the organisation kicked off in 1977.
Help yourself
22 Feb 2006A friend of mine who is lovely, attractive and intelligent, but has trouble landing a decent bloke, convinced me recently to read her copy of He’s Just Not That Into You, which she swears (only partly ironically) has changed her life. Some other friends were having a rant today about that other bestselling relationships manual, The Rules.
The main target market for self-help books is people who have read other self-help books. Wha? Surely you read one self-help book and it, you know, helps. Nope.
Self-help books, like pretty much everything else in society, exploit your insecurities. You’re wonderful, of course, but you have a PROBLEM. And it’s a really BIG PROBLEM so you’d better do something about it. And THIS book, with its wry and amusing “that’s so true” homilies and handy 10-commandments numbered lists will solve it all.
In other words, these books will convince you that they have the answers, but will leave you unhappy — probably more unhappy than you were before — if you follow their advice.
Why I am not communications minister
21 Feb 2006Tough job being communications minister, I reckon. On one side you’ve got your beloved coalition partners the Nationals saying they won’t budge on phone services in the bush. And on the other side you’ve got Telstra saying it will lose squillions of dollars if the government enforces the pricing set by the ACCC to give other phone companies access to the phone network or otherwise be forced to provide commercially unattractive services. How do you balance the natural tendency of Liberal party types to suck up to business and let it do whatever it wants with the natural tendency of National party types to demand free handouts for no good financial or even logical reason?
Here’s what I would do:
Right, Telstra. Shut the fuck up. You didn’t pay for the phone network, taxpayers did. It doesn’t belong to you and neither do the enormous profits you’ve banked on getting from exploiting it. The government paid for the phone network so the government will set the price. Final word. What are you gonna do, vote Labor? Shut the fuck up.
Now you, whinging hick farmers. Shut the fuck up. It costs more to put a phone line out to where you are because you live in the middle of bloody nowhere. So you should pay more for a phone line. End of story. You want broadband, fine! Pay for it. There is absolutely no reason why people in the city should pay to subsidise your phone services so quit throwing your political weight around demanding Commie handouts. What are you gonna do, vote Labor? Shut the fuck up.
Surely they can get do some dodgy preselection deal to get me into the house of reps and give me the job . . .
Politics geek
20 Feb 2006Occasionally I worry about me. Why is the highlight of my day, if I’m sick or working from home on a weekday, watching question time in parliament? Why is it the return of Lateline has brought me more joy than most things in the last month or so? Why was the most entertaining thing I saw on TV all weekend this debate on Lateline? And why, when I was talking to a friend yesterday who said she felt exactly the same way, did I not ask her to marry me?
Pop genius
18 Feb 2006Over the last six months I’ve become a half-hearted gym junkie having joined the evil cult next door to work. I still hate gyms, but the desire to live longer has helped me overcome my distaste. Why, for example, do they assume men only like to do weights and women prefer cardio, thus putting all the exercise bikes etc on the quite obviously designated chick floor?
They even segregate the music, playing more girlie stuff on one floor and slightly more masculine fare upstairs with the weights and rowing machines (no Barnesy, though). Which means when I’m on the exercise bike I have to listen to an ever-repeating small assortment of R’n'B and pop unless I remember to bring the iPod.
Which is all a very long-winded and lame explanation of why I’ve heard (about a million times) and seen the video clip of The Veronicas‘ masterpiece 4Ever. You have to feel sorry for those nice folks trying to pitch abstinence to teenage girls when they’re up against the full force of the Warner marketing department, an incredibly catchy tune (more of which later) and lyrics like:
Good to be home
17 Feb 2006Weird-arse day. Aside from the usual work-related craziness, met a nice young (-er than me, anyway) woman for coffee on Chapel St. Nothing particularly weird about that, you say dear reader, only — embarrassing admission time — the whole thing was set up by my father and her uncle who know each other from synagogue.
This is the second — and quite possibly last — time I’ve ever agreed to let my parents talk me into this. But the even more embarrassing part is, they’ve done very well both times. I mean, the first one didn’t work out and it’s too soon to tell with this one but the Sydney-Melbourne thing doesn’t bode well . . . but the folks do a pretty good job of finding women I’m compatible with intellectually and in values. And they’ve both been pretty good to look at, too. (Nu, so why are they single? But then why am I?)
For a swingin’ man about town who eats bacon and seafood and does many other non-kosher things, it is of course acutely disconcerting that I’m even considering making my parents happy by finding a nice Jewish girl to marry (let’s not pretend this is about my parents finding me a friendship or casual relationship, eh?). When I consider the alternative — what it was like when I was with C — that’s not pretty either. But when did I stop living my life the way I wanted to?
Romantic pictures for v-day
14 Feb 2006In breach of who knows how many copyrights and/or boundaries of good taste, presenting my v-day random image* gallery . . .
*images selected from recent livejournal posts
