Monday, February 05, 2007

Ad-verse Effects. Ugh, That Pun Made Me Hate Myself

Everyone hates ads, and this is officially the 946,000th blog post on such a subject, but hey, you don't like it, sue me (on a no-win no-fee basis!) In fact, I know of one wonderful human being that was so enraged by ads on TV that when faced with one she would have to turn off the TV, face the wall and count to ten under her breath, and when we confiscated the remote just to watch her suffer as we had very little else to do with our time, she would hurl screaming abuse and occasionally beer cans at the set for thirty seconds before collapsing into a gibbering wreck under the sofa, alternately laughing hysterically and mewling for gin. But, oh, how we laughed.

Anyway, so there's the strange pixies in the Butlins advert screaming useless facts about childcare into our brains ("KIDS LOVE TO STAY UP LATE!!") who disturb me in a number of interesting ways, not least because they look like a junior version of Big Cook Little Cook. And also, their insistence that "KIDS LOVE SURPRISES!!" is illustrated by a 26 foot tall robot striding maniacally towards a small girl paralysed with fear, presumably because the robot is about to eviscerate her entire family in front of her adorable tear-filled eyes. I'm going to make the sweeping assumption that death at the hands of a crazed automaton is not shoehorned between Jordan'n'Peter karaoke and shovelling £20-worth of 2ps into an arcade as part of the entertainment programme at Butlins, but who knows? I've never been there, maybe that's part of itsmasochisticc charm.

But horror of horrors, the main layer of scum floating to the top of the cesspool of advertising currently has to be the repugnant return of the Diet Coke laydeez, who have moved on from their pre-Sex In The City repressed state of ten years ago to become fully-fledged sexual predators. In this depressing vignette, three well-up-for-it-phwoar!-bet-they-know-their-way-round-a-bedroom strumpets heave their lust-swollen bosoms into a lift with their cans of Diet Yeuch, press the alarm button, then proceed to sex it up towards a security camera, acting as if at any second they are going to strip down and have actual three-way intercourse for the benefit of some young strapping engineer type, who then has to sweep majestically in through the escape hatch showing a tantalising glimpse of pubic hair. How very, very vile.

I don't know why it upsets me so much. Maybe because I bet the engineer gets really fucked off about having to fix the lift every twenty minutes on the beck and call of some weird coven of cackling proto-feminists. Maybe because I hate all women, and men. But probably I'm just yearning for the days when I was 14 and Jack Dee could sit in an armchair and look at a silent penguin and make me laugh for days on end. Life was simpler then. And ads were better. And I'd never heard the phrase "consolidated into one easy monthly repayment". Hey ho.

2 comments:

justrestingmyeyes said...

Wow, I've officially entered the 21st century! I've been SPAMMED!

justrestingmyeyes said...
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