Advertising....am I a slave?

It is widely known that advertising is a watered down version of a company executive on his/her knees begging you to buy their crap. Ads, especially on television, are literally a tool to invade your home and shove their product down your throat. Which would be good if they were effective, but I honestly can’t see why the nonsense that ads come out with encourages people to give their money away by the bucket load. Take Kingsmill for example. Their tagline is “love bread, love kings mill”. Really? Does anyone actually love bread? Unless its some kind of posh gourmet bread, I really don’t see it. Generic crap in a plastic bag is not something anyone could love. It’s a strong emotion, and brand loyalty is taken to the extreme. And anyway, if someone could actually “love” a cheap sundry product then they must lead a depressing life, which isn’t really the consumer you should be aiming for, unless your advertising prozac of course, but prozac has a loyal consumer base anyway, so it doesn’t need to sponsor big brother, or run a Bluetooth text campaign.
Sports companies are some of the worst, they bend the realms of possibility with the image conscious campaigns that baffle innocent shoppers into buying the product in the hope that all the confusion will end. Adidas’ “impossible is nothing campaign” is a good example. Many a nights I’ve sat and watched the ads and thought “impossible is nothing…..except correct grammar.” Nike are no better, with the ambiguous just do it campaign. This leads them open to a lot of poetic licence to be taken with their instructions. For me “just do it” seems to be an instruction to steal their product, but
I can see how many could justifiably stand up in court and claim the corporate hegemony of Nike and their intrusive JDI campaign forced them do “it”, whatever “it” means to the individual. This gives a lot of leeway. It could be any of the following: Smoke Crack, Sell crack, Eat Burgers, Run over grannies, cut your initials into your patients when performing surgery on them, download bestiality porn, park on a double yellow line and even avoid buying a TV licence. All of these are the fault of Nike. All of them and more.
I think of myself of a reasonably rational human being and I don’t think I’m particularly influenced by branding, but maybe its hard to ignore. I once, when living in the UK, watched the Army recruitment ad with a laptop on my knees and without thinking typed armyjobs.co.uk into the address bar. It was weird. I momentarily became a complete tool of the advertisers. And for something I would never in a million years buy into. Seriously. Apart from the fact that I’m opposed to militarism, I would never, even if I thought the army were a great idea, actually do a job that involved people trying to kill you. And this was in the time of the bloody Iraq war. Bloody hell.
Try to notice the effect ads have on you the next time the tv show ends and the remote isn’t close to hand. Its scary. I have to stop writing now, because I suddenly have the urge to go and buy some Cilit Bang. But don’t worry. I’m not going to be a whore to consumerism. I’m going to poison myself with it. Haha Barry Scott, you’ve just lost a customer!

Beards are awesome!

Beards are awesome. Seriously. I’ve got one and I’ve never had so much fun in my life. It started when I was twenty, when I was travelling with work and went through a bit of a cash flow (maybe homeless would be a more appropriate term) problem, so I lived off a bare minimum and luxuries like razors were deemed surplus to requirements. It began with stubble of necessity, and developed into a beard of wonder. It was so cool. I smoked roll-ups at the time and I got the stage where my beard was off such a stage where I could hide five fags in it. Needless to say nobody ever accepted my offer of a cigarette in that period. I was saving mega bucks because of my beard!
Nowadays I still have the beard, only more trimmed since I’ve had to enter a world that doesn’t allow me to go barefoot on a day to day basis, but the effect of a bead is still awesome. Not only does it allow me to stand out from a crowd, but it also gives me a vital source of static electricity should I ever come across an appropriately placed balloon. I currently work in the (lower, shitty-wage, end of) the sustainable energy business and my face is one of the biggest renewable technologies known to man. I should get a government research and development grant.
Beards are also a fantastic tool for sex also. Apart from the fact they make people look totally badass, they also give beard rash to girls. Every man wants to leave his mark on a girl, and with a beard, the lucky lady will know she’s had the benefit of good beard-love.
Furthermore, beards make you safer when risking those journeys out in public. I learned this from my father. Beards make you look more mature, more sensible and evidently harder. No one wants to mess with the guy with the beard, coz he just don’t care, he’ll come at ya like a grizzly bear, yeah! Which is handy when you’re a peace loving chap like myself.
The ability to grow a proper beard is one of the manliest things known to man. Along with taking a very large book to the toilet to announce to the world that your going to drop a monster log, and having the ability to slouch on a chair and balance a full can of beer on your belly. Yes beards are a badge of honour, and only those who have ever had the bushy face feeling will ever truly know. So lets honour famous beard wearers! Karl Marx, Michel Foucault, Santa Claus, Bill Oddie, Jeremy Beadle, Noel Edmonds, ZZ top and even wannabes like Craig David and Justin Timberlake and all those little boys who at one stage aspire to be like me and my comrades! Reach for the furry faced dream. Show your masculinity in a way that only facial hair can! Wait… what’s that you ask? Moustaches? Sorry, the club is full.