Archives, eh
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# Bastards
Frustration is: Spending ten hours knowing that your website is down due to an application error, knowing – more or less – what is wrong and how to fix it, and being unable to because you can’t shell out past the network proxy.
Incandescent anger is: Arriving home and finding out that no, you were wrong, the problem was that the hosting service upgraded crucial bits of software and while doing so, took the extra step to make sure the upgrade was not backwards compatible.
I am a towering inferno of impotent rage. I was irritable when I got home. I am ready to rant – without credibility – about committing imaginary acts of violence.
Bah!
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# I like deliberately absurd television ads
There is an television advertisement on the air at present, an ad for a fast food franchise named Nandos. They sell chicken. That’s all I know, actually; no idea if it barbecue chicken, fried chicken, portuguese-style chicken or any of the myriad of other chicken cooking methodologies I have no doubt exist and are just lying in wait to be distilled into a multi-step process, codified in a series of culturally-neutral line-drawings in a Standard Operating Procedure document for McJobbies to follow.
Anyway, the ad (YouTube). I should tell you, the first time I saw it I was watching the Colbert Report on the Comedy Channel, and I had assumed that it was actually a sketch by the Comedy Channel, not an legitimate ad. I only realised it was for real after I saw it on Channel Seven and absorbed that they were using an actual brand name – Nandos.
The ad is basically a pastiche of nicotine gum ads. A smartly dressed lady talks to camera about using patches to combat her addiction to Nandos chicken. We then switch to her pole dancing – yes – and she tells us that her use of the patch is getting in the way of her receiving tips. She tells us this as she waggles her arse in the face of a customer, with a patch prominently placed on her left buttocks. Said customer fails to slip cash in her g-string. She then tells us that after she switched to Nandos gum instead of patches, her tips have come rolling in again – we see the customer slip a $100 note in her g-string. The end of the ad of course features the product itself, Nandos chicken, as the lady sits down for a meal at Nandos with her family.
It is, in a word, absurd. It is ludicrous on a grand scale, parody from top to bottom. It sets us up by giving us the impression she is a business woman – walking past an office building in smart business dress – and then cuts to her pole dancing and then in the final scene undercutting us again by showing her in the stereotypically wholesome family environment. She’s the power mum, working a career and raising a familyi, except the career is the one you least expected. It ridicules notions – amusingly spread by both the standard industry ads and their critics – that fast food is addictive and from it creates a note-perfect parody of nicotine gum and patch ads. And to tie them together, it creates the kind of scenario that a stand up comedian might toss out as a one liner, how can strippers use the nicotine patch and still do their job? And of course, it makes fun of the notion – solely expressed by the fast food industry – that a fast food store is something other than a place to get cheap food quickii, that it is a family restaurant.
I love this ad, almost as much as I loved the Carlton Draught Canoe ad (YouTube) which used the same principal; an absurdist parody of an ad style, the principal ad style used by the very industry whose product you are shilling. Sure, on the face of it this ad is controversial because it depicts a stripper. I was prompted to write this post after reading another Australian blogger express speechless outrage at the objectification of women implied by depicting a woman whose career is to be a identity-free sex object. It would be awfully easy to just glibly suggest that such objectors need to develop a sense of humour; doing so would be to pretend that there isn’t still a lingering culture of objectification in mainstream – i.e. not porn – entertainment. But in many recent cases of the depiction of women in ads, I think the objectors and the outraged are only seeing the superficial.
There was a series of ads for a brand of beer – I forget which one – which depicted scenes of escalating sexual fantasy – featuring astonishingly beautiful women – that were shattered at the end by tom-fooling men oblivious to the moment in the face of a drag from their beer. On the surface it is an objectification of the woman; dig a little deeper and it is actually mocking the central pillar of the sexual objectification concept. Far from showing men whose only thought was sex, it actually showed men who completely spoiled the moment by thinking of anything but sex – bombing the jacuzzi, bombing the pool, fishing. It wasn’t until the last in the series when they blotted their copy book by completely reversing the concept – romantic moment spoiled by the guy more interested in the girl’s tits.
In the case of the Nandos ad, if you just look a little deeper maybe you’ll see what I see, that the pole-dancing scene exists only to mock; us and our tendency to preconceive; other ads; the very idea of the wholesome family fast food restaurant. It is mockery all the way down.
i As opposed to that other ad-based cliche woman, Super Mum, cleaning house wearing a indefatigable smile and suspiciously pristine clothes. The best parody of that was the ad equating cleaning house with prison.
ii There’s a maxim in project-based work: “Quick, cheap, good; pick two”
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# Links for 2007-05-28
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# Where's the Hello Cthulhu costume?
Seeing as it appears this blog has devolved into sports and Things That Amuse and Weird. I’ve already done a sports post – despite it starting as a TTAW and I refuse to discuss the potential for that acronym to be recursive – so it is weird’s turn.
A selection of Japanese Halloween costumes, proving once and for all that we really should just put a giant wall around Japan to prevent contamination. From outside, I mean, the place should be preserved for later generations to be amused and weirded out just as we have.
I was going to include images here, but the commentary on the other site is worth the jump.
Well, maybe just one…
Wheee!!!!!
via jwz
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# This started off as a two paragraph joke post, and then went all sporty
During the singing of the Welsh anthem – which I should note makes Advance Australia seem thin and meaningless, just like every other national anthem – the camera panned down the line of Welsh players. One of their sponsors is a brand of beer named…Brains.
I couldn’t help it, and I apologise to any Welsh nationalists in my audience – ha ha, it is to laugh – but I giggled. I just had to say “Braaains. Braaaaaaaaaaaaaaaains!” and imagine the Welsh forward pack going awfully hungry in the scrum. Rugby forwards – the only viable career for today’s zombie.
Sad to say, that was the highlight of the night. The Wallabies sucked. I’d like to give some sort of erudite examination of their plays but every time I try to, I find myself wondering if I am not confusing ineffective play with clumsy play. For example, Sam Norton-Night seemed throughly ineffectual – but was it because he was actually ineffectual or was it because each time the Wallabies started to apply pressure and get a play on, somebody dropped the ball?
The Channel Seven commentators made the excuse a number of times that the team hasn’t played together for six months. That may be true in itself, but the entire team has just played a Super Fourteen series that involved teams from New Zealand, teams that chewed up the Australians and spat out their bones to use later to make clubs and hair combs. They’ve played plenty of challenging rugby recently – one would think that the weekly training sessions through out the series could have allowed them practice at, say, running forward, catching and passing. Just me.
Meanwhile, don’t think I didn’t notice that They lost again. I was much pleased – I do so love seeing them lose – and have revised my World Cup predictions in accordance. Two of South Africa, Ireland and France will play in the finals. New Zealand, of course, will continue the proud tradition of being completely unbeatable, devastatingly so – often the remains of their opponents will be sent home draped in the appropriate national flag – until the semi-final, during which they will lose by about a million.
I think we all know that they aren’t making throat slashing motions in the newer haka. they are simply acknowledging their Doom – to choke in the World Cup.
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# Queensland by seven and lightyears
Like I said, a devastating win to Queensland.
Queensland’s first half was…almost frustratingly average. They threatened every time they got in the NSW twenty metres but they needed NSW to make a mistake to get there, they just didn’t seem to have any attack at long range. NSW, on the other hand, took advantage of Queensland’s lethargy and misfortune by playing some good tight football.
They go into the sheds at halftime at 18-6, NSW well in control.
Maybe there was an interdimensional tear underneath Suncorp Stadium. I tried to look but my television doesn’t quite have resolution for me to verify if the two teams had suddenly grown goatees.
Queensland came out and suddenly – almost – everything that hadn’t quite worked out in the first half just materialised from the ethereal plane in the second. It was just magic.
NSW were hopeless in the second half, particularly in the halves again. Mullen is a good player but he is still raw and for long periods of time…well, where was he? He should have been getting assistance from Anasta, but he showed up about as often as Mullen. Anasta had a really good first half and seemed to finally understand that he needed to actually do things, but then he faded into obscurity in the second half, doing Mullen a terrible disservice. The problem for NSW, of course, is who replaces him? I don’t think there is any eligible pivots who are capable of dropping into an Origin side and giving Mullins the kind of back up he needs.
So Queensland wins 25-18, completely dominating the second half and keeping NSW scoreless. There was a remarkable statistic that went without comment by the Channel Nine commentary team, AFAIK. In the 72nd minute, after QLD had been down an interchange player for some time, they had score 19 unanswered points, and yet had used three fewer replacements. They were still in single figures, eight I think; an astonishing, practically unheard of situation. NSW had been full of talk of wearing out the older Queensland forwards, and yet Queensland had a mile of replacements up it’s sleeves in the last moments on the chance that NSW turned around their entire half.
There will be replacements for QLD, Nate Myles will be suspended for four weeks minimum for a stupid lifting tackle. There need to be replacements for NSW but I am not sure if it has to extend out of the halves. The forwards were ordinary in the second half, but they had their game plan messed up by White’s constantly bleeding nose. Haynes should be kept despite doing a Justin Hodges, coincidentally at the feet of Hodges himself.
The number one replacement though needs to be the referee who had what can only be called a bad game. By my count the Badly Wrong calls were 2-all.
- Nathan Hindmarsh didn’t ground the ball and may even have received the ball off a forward pass
- Steve Price did not receive the ball off a forward pass
- Late in the first half there was a clear 40-20 kick by NSW, but the feed was given to QLD
- Thurston dropped the ball while tackled in the Queensland half and it wasn’t noticed by the touch judge, only a dozen metres away.
Anything less than a scoreless draw is bad, anything more than 1-0 is unacceptable. A layer of sludge on the cake was a very high penalty count.
On a more personal note, D has finally broken her Origin curse. She and tWM are normally out at dancing on Origin night; they come home late in the second half and without fail have always put the mocker on – if QLD are winning, they immediately fall apart and lose. Tonight, they kept it together; mocker broken.
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# Links for 2007-05-22
- Not everybody’s a critic ✴
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# Cui bono
A new parallel runway at Brisbane Airport won’t cause local property values to fall or increase noise, its developers say.
Oh, the developers have researched it for you. Surprise! Their research found everything they want to do will be all rosy. What a – very credible – relief.
The average house price in the area had risen from $63,500 in 1985 to $422,000 in 2005.
I’d be idly curious how that compares to other areas.
Obligatory anecdote: the day I first set eyes on D, when I met her at Brisbane airport on the way to a meet up of posters to a particular Usenet group, we caught a coach from the airport to Caloundra. She looked around ten minutes later when we had definitely left Brisbane – that is, we had hit the tree plantations – and asked me “What, is that it?” Brisbane airport does certainly have the decency to still be a long way away from where most people live.
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# Putting the thug back into rugby league
In light of Queensland’s devastating victory on Wednesday night, I thought I better make a sports-related post. Actually, I tried to resist because today is Monday and I am growing to dislike the growing need to post on Monday and Thursday. But it is 13.00 and I have been sitting at my desk for four hours and have achieved nothing; my brain is in neutral and refuses to think. So if I type out a post at least my keyboard is making noise and the co-workers I share my office with once a week con continue to think I am a slacker and not simply know it.
Whither the league scrum? I remember years ago , I was watching an Origin game with my father and one of the neighbours. Queensland must have just scored, because those two were engaging in one of their rituals, namely leaving the room while the kicker – whoever it was – kicked for goal; it so as not to put him off. No, I have no idea why either. It certainly wasn’t to take a ciggie, Dad didn’t smoke. Anyway, soon afterwards there was a scrum and my father opined that the scrum didn’t matter any more, it was just a way to take the forwards out of the defensive line for 1½ plays. This was, mind you, still back in the days when pushing in the scrum didn’t end up on a Plays of the Week reel. It was actually possible for the team without the feed to win the ball. I understand now though that he wasn’t being derisive, that that is now the actual purpose of the scrum, whether or not that it is officially stated or left to unsaid and obvious.
Technically the rules still require that a scrum be competitive, but technically it is still illegal for the ball carrier to dive at the feet of the tackler and that happens, oh, 40 or 50 times a game. When Chris Lawrence scored after fielding a kick in the game against St George wasn’t just amazing because he ran 72 meters to score, it was also because he ran.
It is a popular moan amongst league fans, I know. “The Modern Scrum Sucks”” is for all intents and purposes a shibboleth. If you talk about it, you are a rugby league fan; if you don’t you are at best uninterested in the game, at worst an administrator who has only half an eye on the game when they can spare it from making sure Channel Nine is happy.
The scrum is now a vestige left over from it’s ancestor, rugby, and the game is the worse for it. It used to be that the halfback put the ball in at the feet of his own hooker; what is the rule now? The half puts the ball in at the feet of his own second row? And in practice, he puts the ball in at the feet of his own lock. And then scrum breaks up as soon as the ball goes in, not comes out so it isn’t even serving the purpose of keeping the forwards out of the game for that 1½ plays, particularly since teams aren’t obliged to put forwards into the scrum, they just have to have six bodies nonchalantly leaning against each other.
I think the reasoning behind making the scrums meaningless, a move that started in the seventies to reduce penalties from scrums, is illogical; if the team with the feed are stuffing around, you don’t need to give a penalty you could always just hand the feed to the other team. That it no longer fits the game might hold water since the plays are no longer about the fight over possession of the ball but what you do with the ball while you do have possession of it. There’s merit in the idea of replacing scrums with a simple handover. Doing so would certainly fit better with the theme of the game – the previous sentence was about the plays, but at a game level rugby is about field position while the strategic goal of most league sides is either be winning by a long way or to make sure the other side is tired. If the other side is tired, specifically their forwards, gaining meters towards their try line is so much easier. The scrums are a rest for the forwards, an extra play or two where the backs need to carry the ball by themselves.
I don’t particularly care which way they jump. I just want them to piss or get off the pot; make the scrum meaningful by enforcing the competitiveness ruling and coping with the infringements some way, or get rid of them and replace them with a handover.
On the other hand, I do have an opinion on play the balls. They actually do make sense, a simple way to restart play after each tackle since rucks no longer occur. But I kinda wish they were competitive as well, the way they were when Benny Elias was playing. A single marker who could also play at the ball, either kicking it back towards the opposition try line, or even racking it back to his own team. I hated Elias when he was playing – he was the NSW hooker, after all, a shifty ball-thief who milked penalties all the time, unlike the wily tricksters who played hooker for Queensland and merely had marvelously speedy regenerative powers. And allowing attackers to tap the ball if the marker isn’t in position.
Hell, just take the game back to the rules of the late-80’s, early nineties :- )
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# Links for 2007-05-17
