Burger King blows. Pun intended.
Have you all seen the new Burger King ad for its new, monstrously sized “seven incher” sandwich? It’s disturbing on a variety of levels. Especially the obvious ones. See for yourself:
Lovely.
Apparently an ad agency in Singapore came up with that stellar piece of crude misogyny. Uh…kudos? Good grief. Fortunately, Devan over at Bust Magazine felt compelled to respond:
The King Could Be Compensating, Just Maybe
This ad is so mind-blowingly (heh) offensive and slack that I can feel myself getting dumber as I write this. It manages to desecrate both burgers and blow-jobs–and as an erstwhile fan of both, and a defender of the ladies, it leaves me triply outraged and left with the same greasy sense of empty calories and broken promises that fast food so often delivers. I love a dick joke as much as the next girl, but, in the words of Gob-COME ON!
http://rlv.zcache.com/come_on_tshirt-p235674413508025583tdf9_210.jpg
Why would looking at a vacant, armless, dead-eyed woman about to choke on a massive sandwich make me want one? Or a man want one? (Is the one a sandwich or a blow-job?) I think this ad could be a minefield of confusion for a dude–am I hungry? Horny? Is my junk actually a sandwich masquerading as a penis? This explains that embarrassing mess on the subway!
Oh, and I am officially calling shenanigans on the whole ‘it’s a foreign ad agency/affiliate, so it’s not our bad’ excuse. The problem with ads like these, in my opinion, isn’t that they try to use sexy images and words to sell a product. My problem is that they do so in such a joyless, exploitative, unfunny, and unclever way. My problem is that they make the cheap and desperate choice to use women’s subjugation as a punchline. My problem is that as a female consumer I am told to be pretty, sit still, and open wide. My problem is that ‘have it your way’ means ‘have it your way if you are a misogynist male.’
On second thought, do something.
hether prompted by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the mudslinging during last fall’s presidential election, or Sarah Palin’s cringe-inducing voice, the poster bearing the saying “Keep calm and carry on” has made a resurgence this past year.
Image: http://paulvieira.wordpress.com/2007/03/29/
The perfect Father's Day gift
The poster, which harkens back to the WWII era and invokes the crown and message of King George VI, seems to be cropping up everywhere lately. It even has its own freakin’ website, for crying out loud. And, I have to say, I kind of resent it. In fact, I just found the poster reproduced on beautiful porcelain tiles that I posted on my other blog today, and I couldn’t help but highlight my disdain for the message. I understand that King Georgie meant to reassure his people that “all capable measures to defend the Country were being taken” (SOURCE; see below), but I fail to see how “keeping calm” and “carrying on” with one’s daily routine equates to an engaging, active people. Europe was being taken over by Naziism and fascist dictators. Genocide was occurring. Millions of people were literally going up in smoke in concentration camps. AND YOU’RE COMMANDING PEOPLE TO KEEP CALM AND CARRY ON LIKE NOTHING’S THE MATTER?!?!?!?
I’m not a licensed physician or anything, but I *am* almost a doctor (PhD, MD, same diff), and I deem Georgie a wee bit delusional.
So, the fact that this message is finding its way onto cufflinks, deck chairs, rugs, and children’s clothing (?!? aren’t “children” and “calm” sort of oxymorons?!? I mean that in a good way. Children should not just “carry on”… children should react and do the whole pleasure principle thing, damn it)… it disturbs me. I don’t like it one bit.
(Images above found HERE)
Which is why, when I found the following images, I smiled, clapped my hands, and acted like a general non-calm lunatic out of sheer happiness and comfort:
That's more like it.
How perfect is that?!? Olly Moss created the print above, and there are now t-shirts and mugs, too. Not sure about the cufflinks. I’ll get back to you.
I’ve seen this version around, too:
Found here: http://www.monster-munch.com/2008/08/
But I don’t get it. Cool guitar, but… keeping calm seems a bit counter-intuitive to “rocking on” as far as I’m concerned. How does one calmly rock? Headbanging while smoking weed? I don’t get it.
Oh, and then I found this version:
From here: http://www.notcot.com/archives/2009/03/make_things.php
That saying’s pretty cool, but it sort of ignores the politicality (is that a word? again, I’m almost a doctor, so please just accept it as real) of the “Freak out” poster. I think I’d like it better if the crown were still upside down and then the message said something like “BE PROACTIVE” or “ENGAGE” or “DON’T BE A COMPLACENT @SSHOLE” or something like that.
I’m not too picky.
Happy Fathers’ Day / Bonne Fête des Pères
Père Ubu will eat an extra hot dog for you in celebration.
*Image from Wikimedia
Annoyingly accurate.
However, I would allow for some overlap between “F-Buddy” and “Friend,” which then creates the Awkwardness.
(Graph found HERE.)
Crap. I forgot to synchronize my watch.
pparently, the millionth word was added to the English language as of approximately 5:22 this morning, so says Paul JJ Payack, president and chief word analyst at the Global Language Monitor. From CNN.com:
[Payack] says, however, that the million-word estimation isn’t as important as the idea behind his project, which is to show that English has become a complex, global language. ”It’s a people’s language,” he said. Other languages, like French, Payack said, put big walls around their vocabularies. English brings others in. ”English has the tradition of swallowing new words whole,” he said. “Other languages translate.”
Oh, grrrrrrrrreat. This Payack guy sounds like the Grand Pooh-bah of the Everybody Should Speak English Guild that has such a large following here in the United States.
I don’t trust him.
And neither do these people:
Paul JJ Payack, Word Man to the Stars
“This is stuff that you just can’t count,” said Jesse Sheidlower, editor at large of the Oxford English Dictionary. “No one can count it, and to pretend that you can is totally disingenuous. It simply can’t be done.”
Part of what makes determining the number of words in a language so difficult is that there are so many root words and their variants, said Sarah Thomason, president of the Linguistic Society of America and a linguistics professor at the University of Michigan.
In the language of people who are native to Alaska, she said, there are dozens of words for snow, but many of them are linked together and wouldn’t be counted individually. Does that mean, she asked, that “slush,” “powder” and other snow words in English should be counted as one entry?
Thomason called the million-word count a “sexy idea” that is “all hype and no substance.”
Payack said he doesn’t consider his to be the definitive count, just an interesting estimation based on set criteria he has helped develop.
Linguists and lexicographers run into further complications when trying to count words that are spelled one way but can have several meanings, said Allan Metcalf, an English professor at MacMurray College in Illinois, and an officer at the American Dialect Society.
“The word bear, b-e-a-r — is that two words or one, for example? You have a noun that’s a wild creature and then you have b-e-a-r, [which means] to bear left or to bear right, and there’s many other things,” he said. “So you really can’t be exact about a millionth word.”
Payack said he doesn’t consider his to be the definitive count, just an interesting estimation based on set criteria he has helped develop.
And there we have it. Even the self-described “Word Man” doesn’t know what purpose this alleged millionth word serves… other than the fact that it’s “interesting” to him and his elusive, who-knows-if-I’m-anywhere-close-to-being-right criteria.
Nice work.
Books read > Blogs read
And furthermore: what’s the deal with Kindle? A book is not a book unless I can flag pages, take notes in it, and use it as an obvious signal that people should leave me alone in public spaces. I don’t want wireless reading. I want tattered-pages-that-occasionally-wear-and-tear reading.
*Image found via A Bugged Life; created by Analog Soul
Bad Writing, the Movie
oly crap, guess what!
Image from MorrisHill Pictures MySpace page
My hero/gay boyfriend David Sedaris will be strutting his literary stuff in an upcoming documentary focused on the Crappy Writing Plague (not unlike the Bubonic Plague, but with slightly fewer reported instances of internal bleeding).
Bad Writing, by filmmaker and documentarian (redundant?) Vernon Lott, includes a range of interviews and anecdotes by Sedaris, George Saunders, Claire Davis, and others.
“I’ve written so many bad, bad things,” Sedaris admits. “And I think if I’d really looked at it and studied it, I never would’ve continued. But it seemed important to write something bad and then move on.”
Unfortunately, the film does not yet have a release date. It does, however, have a trailer:
For additional information:
Morris Hill Pictures, MySpace page
*Initial “H” found HERE
As the stock market plummets, so do my hemlines
SN Money blogger, Michael Brush, offers us several highly scientific measures of recession severity: the Hemline Indicator, the Undies Indicator, and the “Can I Return This?” Indicator, among others.
In his May 27th post, Brush explains the Hemline and Midriff Indicators:
What our economy needs. (image: rollingstone.com)
In tough times, the experts muse, hemlines drop as an expression of conservatism, only to rise again as the markets hit go-go mode. During the late-1990s boom, the hemline indicator was supplanted by a midriff meter, as more women bared their stomachs as the popularity of tech stocks (and Britney Spears) peaked.
When the financial mess hit two years ago, blouses began replacing halter tops, and midriffs started to vanish, observes Jeffrey Hirsch of the Stock Trader’s Almanac, which looks for seasonal and other patterns that traders can play.
If you believe this indicator, Hirsch says to watch for bellybuttons, plunging necklines and higher hemlines to confirm that we are in recovery mode. As I write this, looking around the streets of New York City on a warm spring day, it doesn’t seem we are there yet.
As for the ever-reliable Undies Indicator, Brush leaves it to former Federal Reserve Chief Alan Greenspan to do the talking:
Greenspan reasons that because hardly anyone actually sees a guy’s undies, they’re the first thing men stop buying when the economy tightens. (He told this to National Public Radio’s Robert Krulwich years ago.)
By extension, pent-up demand means underwear sales should be among the early risers when growth returns and consumers feel confident enough to shrug off “frugal fatigue,” says Marshal Cohen, the chief industry analyst with NPD Group, which tracks consumer behavior. In fact, right now men’s underwear sales suggest that things have bottomed but not started to recover.
Image: thefrisky.com
For a recovery, we’d need to see a return to 2% to 3% annual growth in underwear sales. And that’s not in the cards, believes Bill Patterson, an analyst at consumer research company Mintel. Based on market research and surveys, Mintel predicts a 2.3% decline this year in men’s underwear sales and no recovery until 2013.
That’s four more years of saggy elastic and threadbare cotton.
And in case you’re wondering why Greenspan appears so sexist with his Undie Economic Theory, here’s Brush’s rebuttal:
Folks such as Greenspan don’t seem to look as closely at women’s lingerie — reasoning, perhaps, that women are more sensitive about wearing worn undergarments.
Oh. Of course.
Finally, let’s take a look at the “Can I Return This?” Indicator, shall we? We shall.
The amount of stuff consumers return to stores can also tell us when a rebound is in store, says William Angrick, the chief of Liquidity Services (LQDT, news, msgs).
Returns have spiked for pricey discretionary items — such as high-end apparel and shoes, expensive electronics and top-of-the-line tools and grills — just as they did during the previous recession. “It’s been high since October,” says Angrick. And returns aren’t letting up — as you’d expect if consumers felt recovery was on the way.
Here’s another bad sign: Angrick says the number of consumers who band together to amass the larger buying power needed to purchase directly from Liquidity Services — like the soccer moms who recently bought a bunch of Guitar Hero games and game boxes — is not letting up either. That’s a sign they’re not confident enough to pay retail.
Crap.
Curiously, today I spent $16.99 on an ankle-length, cotton Maxi dress at TJ Maxx.
Coincidence? Only the NYSE can tell…
For more rather oddly conceived recession indicators, click on MSN Money.
* Initial “M” found HERE.
To my quick ear the leaves conferred…
have been on quite a hiatus from both of my blogs, for a variety of reasons, for quite some time. Quality writing (or any writing, really, let’s be honest) is hard to come by for me lately, so, instead, I’ll let the following baffling creations speak for me.
Thanks to Aesthetic Outburst for clueing me into the following brilliantly delicate (and, yes, slightly expensive) silhouette creations by Jenny Lee Fowler. Did I mentioned they’re created from natural materials such as leaves, feathers, and bark? Yeah. I am in awe. Check out more of her work on her Etsy site HERE.
Pog title borrowed from Emily Dickinson’s poem:
To my quick ear the leaves conferred;
The bushes they were bells;
I could not find a privacy
From Nature’s sentinels.In cave if I presumed to hide,
The walls began to tell;
Creation seemed a mighty crack
To make me visible.
*Initial “I” found HERE
