If you’re British, it’s not “awesome”. That’s an American word, like “sidewalk”, “gas” for petrol, “critter”, “varmint”, “tarnation” and “gotten” as the third form of the verb. Americans, you’re welcome to use them; they’re your words, but they are not English.
If you want knee-jerk circle-jerk response to mediocre design, the term is “Brendan Dawesome“.
If you want to express actual approbation for something, the English terms are “spiffing”, “top-hole”, “wizard” or “ticketyboo”.
My anger management has been going well, thank you very much. Even christmas music doesn’t rile me. Only one thing of late has disturbed my legendary seasonal bonhomie and general goodwill-to-all-bastards demeanour.
And that is obviously-hyperbolic advertising. We all understand the tropes of advertising so, of course, tell me that what you’re peddling is better than your competitors’ offerings while it’s actually identical; naturally, I understand that your product is consumed by pants-moisteningly attractive people and that, if I use it too, I will be considered to be attractive. That’s all fair enough.
No, I’m talking about the ludicrously unrelated association of mundane products with high concepts: imagine if toilet paper were marketed as preserving democracy, that kind of thing.
Exhibit one, the televisual rectal cyst that roused me from my semi-pissed slumber last night to begin foaming at the mouth, is the £3m ‘freedom’ ad campaign for LG (watch it if you really need to).
Cue a film of a small baby swimming in water (all very Nevermind); “the day we are born is the last day we are truly free” intones SeriousVoiceoverMan. “Before you know it, we’re boxed in; held back; constrained” he continues over images of cubicle farms, ranks of desks. Tantalisingly he asks “What if we knew we were free to go further?” over sunny visuals of flowers opening, wide open vistas, and a gratuitous pretty women in a bikini being hosed down.
So, that’s the set-up. We can see by this point that whatever it is they want you to buy is inextricably linked with the concept of “freedom”. Never mind that the ad agency’s idea of freedom is being submerged insensible in warm amniotic fluid and strapped immobile to a placenta (all very The Matrix with a dash of Oedipus complex: rather sinister, if you think about it).
In Adland, freedom usually means cars or tampons. Tampons because, as Mrs Pankhurst would have told you, women never feel truly free unless they’re swimming or wearing white trousers while simultaneously menstruating and risking toxic shock syndrome. The way to advertise cars is to remind us of the single USP of the car (you can go where you want whenever you want) that is shared by every motor vehicle, while insinuating that flooring the accelerator of the Audi Mingé is the act of an eco-warrior that does the planet a favour.
Back to the product. Tampon or Motor? Neither. Our advert is for an LG television. Now, I have nothing against televisions. I was recently persuaded by my family to purchase one the size of Luxembourg and I spend many an hour balefully peering at it. During those periods of stupefaction, I have concluded that TV has three primary purposes:
It’s the best way to find out who the government requires us to hate at the moment.
When used in conjunction with a games console, it’s invaluable for stimulating endorphins and adrenaline in your children without them having to go anywhere. This negates the risk of their being touched up by one or all of the 4.9 million rampant paedophiles who are roaming YOUR TOWN right now. It also means they never need move, accumulating body mass until they die aged 50 of diabetes and obesity thereby saving the nation a fortune in medical care.
It’s perfect for married couples to avoid speaking to each other. Instead, they can watch Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks pretending to be in love, just like they thought they were before transient sexual attraction cooled to become festering resentment and then crusted into mutual contempt.
I’m a coward. I wouldn’t have opposed fascism, put a flower down the barrel of a soldier’s gun and certainly wouldn’t have mustered up the courage to stand in front of a Tienanmen tank. But even a happy Epsilon minus like me understands that a big TV does not equate to the concept of liberty.
In fact, the ad is like Orwell for lazy people. Freedom isn’t slavery in this hyperbolic hyperbollocks, but Freedom is passivity. Be free! Be free to absorb more advertising like this! The obsequious marketing media reports (seemingly without irony) some lovely doublethink from George Mead, the LG brand manager who says
the TV, print and online campaign aims to promote LG Electronics as ‘refreshing and sophisticated’ … Mead said LG was trying to ‘dumb down its marketing’ to make it simple and educate consumers.
In other words: advertising people are clever. Consumers are stupid. TV=freedom.
Video for the track Shake Your Head (With Your Black Ponytail), shot in the rehearsal studio. Featuring some old mates: Sally-Ann Parker (Vocals), Robin Dallaway (Guitar/Keyboard), Tony Sherrard (Bass) who are collectively known as Silverlake. Video filmed and edited by Tony Sherrard and Robin Dallaway.
Last night, a whole house load of Lawsons, my mum and stepdad, my half-sister and her kids went to Stratford to watch Arabian Nights by the RSC as a pre-Christmas treat.
Arabian Nights is the story of a storytelling Queen, Shahrazad, who will be executed by the King unless she can think up new stories to tell. Like the Canterbury Tales or Decameron, it’s basically a framing story for a disparate collection of folk tales; some are high and courtly like The Knight’s Tale and The Story of the Envious Sisters, others bawdy like The Miller’s Tale and How Abu Hassan Broke Wind.
The latter had such a triumphantly staged megafart that every child in the audience (and juvenile adults) were laughing hysterically for minutes. The cast used puppets, slapstick, and mime to tell the stories in a manner that consistently held our attention (as did the gorgeousness of lead actress Ayesha Dharker).
The show was quite long—over three hours—but it rarely dragged. Perhaps the final story could have been pacier if there had only been one brother to fail in the quest, rather than a second who repeats the first’s failure. Once or twice, some of the dialogue jarred for me; most of the dialogue was in a high narrative style so Shahrazad’s reponse to a request with “I’ll see what I can do” sounded clichéd and lazily written.
But those are small criticisms of an otherwise excellent production.
The Sunday Times reports that modern British artist Tracey Emin may leave the UK as she doesn’t want to pay the 50% tax that rich people (those who earn £150,000 a year) must pay.
Desperately poor Emin, who ekes out a living making personalised neon signs at £65,000 each, says
The taxes are too high, there aren’t enough incentives to work hard, and our politicians have put me off. We’re paying through the nose for everything.
It’s a shame when someone who has been the beneficiary of so much tax money for education, health care and funding of the galleries that buy her work should now be so churlish about an extra 10% of tax above an already-comfortable level of income.
It smacks of ingratitude and selfishness. But if that’s the way she feels, Britain will just have to soldier on without her contributions to art or the exchequer.
Last night, I got a few angry emails after I wrote on Twitter that some visiting relatives were “Bible-Bashers”. I’m happy to accept I’m wrong; they are “God-Botherers” who enjoy going to church but otherwise don’t mention it to people who don’t share their views. There’s a difference.
“Bible-bashers” are those who feel the need to spread their views to others. It’s a term that comes from the religious pamphlets of the English Civil War of the seventeenth century, describing aggressively religious people.
To find out which you are, take this handy quiz:
Do you believe you have an Invisible Friend In The Sky? (Yes=1 point, No= 0)
After spending a few days creating the billions of stars in the billions of galaxies that fill the awe-inspiring majesty of the universe, does your Invisible Friend In The Sky now spend its time closely monitoring your daily actions and reading your thoughts? (Yes=2 point, No= 0)
Does your Invisible Friend In The Sky care which adults you have consensual sexual intercourse with? (Yes=5 points, No= 0)
Is your Invisible Friend In The Sky eternal, beyond the laws of causality and entropy and undetectable by science? (Yes=1 point, No= 0)
Does your Invisible Friend In The Sky regularly intercede in the material world on your behalf (good grades, safe journeys, speedy recoveries) because you ask it to? (Yes=1 point, No= 0)
Does your Invisible Friend In The Sky routinely neglect to help blameless people caught up in calamities like genocide, war, famine, earthquakes or tsunamis because it “works in mysterious ways” (or other manifestations of inscrutability)? (Yes=5 points, No= 0)
Does your Invisible Friend In The Sky require subordinate behaviour from women such as covering their hair, wearing shapeless garments, not being allowed to teach in places of worship or hacking off each others’ external genitalia at puberty? (Yes=10 points, No= 0)
Does your Invisible Friend In The Sky require you to tell people with a different Invisible Friend In The Sky (or no Invisible Friend In The Sky) that they are wrong? (Yes=10 points, No= 0)
Does your Invisible Friend In The Sky think it legitimate or laudable to kill people with a different Invisible Friend In The Sky? (Yes=20 points, No=0)
Are you angered/ offended by this quiz? (Yes=5 points, No=0)
If you scored zero, you are not a God-Botherer.
Between one and five, you might be but don’t know it; you probably tell people that you’re “a spiritual person”.
Between five and ten, you’re a God-Botherer.
More than 10 makes you a Bible-Basher. 20 or more and you’re a fundie.
Sometimes I have a bad day, and on those sort of occasions I like to refresh myself by laughing at people who are stupider, uglier, or otherwise less fortunate than myself.
Here’s my list of schadenfreude blogs.
spEak You’re bRanes – a collection of real letters to the meeja by right-wingers and godbotherers.
Texts from last night (“Remember that text you shouldn’t have sent last night? We do”) occasionally has some gems.
Tweeting too hard is where self-important tweets get the recognition they deserve.
Teen angst poetry collects reader-submitted sixth-form poetry. Brilliant.
The Intubator distills YouTube down to its core: an endless stream of randomly selected, unedited personal videos…Videos that no-one bothered to tag, title, or describe
I tried the UK citizenship test and failed, even though I’m am a history buff and a lifelong UK citizen. In my defence, the questions are crap. How do I know when women got the right to divorce, or whether “Methodist” means Church of England?
I propose these as some better questions:
Which avuncular sports presenter was later found to be consorting with prostitutes and snorting coke? Gary Lineker/ Dickie Davis/ Frank Bough/ Jimmy Hill?
Do chips come with gravy in Ireland/ North England/ London/ Isle of Man?
Fill in the blank: Monty Python’s [blank] [blank]
At a pantomime, what is the correct response to a character saying “Oh yes it is”?
Which is NOT a genuine Enid Blyton group of fictional child detectives? Famous Five/ Five Findouters/ Six Sleuths/ Secret Seven
How long is drinking-up time?
Which of these was NOT a Blue Peter presenter? Konnie Huq/ Sophie Ellis Bextor/ John Noakes/ Peter Purves
When did England last win the World Cup?
Which of these was never a member of the Beatles? Paul McCartney/ Pete Best/ George Best/ Stu Sutcliffe
“Neeps and tatties” means what in Scotland? Turnip and potato/ coats and hats/ neat and tidy/ Did you call my pint a pouff?
Which series is set in Wetherfield/ Albert Square/ Ambridge?
Which is welsh: Thomas the Tank Engine/ Ivor the Engine?
Which comedian had “short fat hairy legs”? Bobby Ball/ Syd Little/ Ernie Wise/ Bernard Manning
Got any to add?
(On a serious note: I’m bloody glad my lovely missus got her citizenship before this silly test came out.)
It’s often said that English is the second langage in India, and cetainly that’s true when Hindi speakers from the North are doing business with their colleagues from the South, who speak the Dravidian languages of Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu or Kannada. Some say English is the glue that has held India together, although the extensive railway has a comparable claim, while my travelling companion Shwetank believes that the Civil Service is the historical reason. (Whatever it was, it seems to me as an outsider during the Indian general elections that belief in democracy is what holds India together now. That and cricket: "Ek desh ek junoon"—one nation, one obsession—the TV ads for the Indian Premier League say.)
But it’s also equally accurate to describe English as an alternative language which educated speakers of the same language will employ if they determine that it’s the better language to express a particular idea, switching unconsciously between their own language and English, sometimes mid-sentence.
It makes watching Bollywood masala movies much easier for the Hindi-challenged like me. There will be a stream of Hindi and—in the middle—"Wow wow wow, I love you" to help me understand what’s going on. (Not that masala movies are particularly complicated, anyway; they’re pretty light on plot, relying instead on gorgeous scenery, costumes and lots of songs. Top Bollywood tip: a male with too much gold jewellry, a moustache or who smokes is invariably the baddie.)
Indian English can often seem either elaborately formal ("Excuse me good sir, may I impertinently enquire as to your occupation in your country of origin?" I was asked) or somewhat quaint, almost Enid Blyton-esque—I assume that many idioms are frozen in the late 1940s when the British left. So, when police arrested a gang who were stealing gas from cylinders they sold as full, it was reported in my morning paper that "sleuths nabbed neer-do-wells". A man who dressed in a burka in order to visit his girlfriend was "bashed up" when discovered.
There are also a few perculiarly Indian formations. The back of a building or rear of an aeroplane is usually referred to as "the backside" ("Is a backside seat acceptable, Mr Lawson?", to which the answer can anatomically only be "yes"). Near my hotel is a shop offering "gentlemens’ suitings and shirtings". The word "even" has been commandeered as a synonym for "also" as in "Even I need to go to the bank" for "I need to go to be bank, too". Even I’ve found myself saying this, it’s so common.
Not all Indian English is as charming: sexual harrassment is linguisticaly trivialised as "eve-teasing". Perhaps the local ladies might carry some scissors for retaliation, adding reciprocal insult-by-euphemism to the injury by calling it "sausage-snipping"?
