The Big Epic Advert Hating Rant Part2- The Sequel

I hesitate to call this 'the conclusion': for there are many putrid and hateful advertisements out there which deserve ridicule, and I would hate to leave anybody out. I got a nice amount of suggestions for this one: thanks for everyone's input. If you sent me something saying "I love this advert!" and it ends up below with the piss taken out of it... well... you've only yourself to blame.

The Graham Norton award for Hideously Disturbing Campness
Some of the less easily concerned among you might find this funny. I would ask you to take a good hard look at your life. Here is a company who presumably pays eleventy billion dollars a year to some sweaty marketing executives who decide the best way to advertise their product is with a character less likeable than Adam Sandler's testicles, sexually harassing his fellow male colleagues. Smooth.

The Spaghetti Bolognese Award for Things Nearly Everybody Loves but which I Hate

The YouTube comments for this next pick would have you think you were about to watch something so artistically masterful that Van Gogh would've immediately hurled himself off a building with self-hatred at never being able to accomplish such greatness. The reality, I find, is a pathetically cute advert doing nothing to sell its intended product and introducing a dog who apparently likes watching your daughter through her bedroom window.

Then again, the average YouTube user has the IQ of a potplant.

The Andrew Lloyd-Webber's Face Award for Creepiest Shit

Hey you! Yeh you! You big shiny member of our target demographic! I think I know what you want. You want some mineral water! You know what encourages drinking mineral water?

Utterly deformed, badly animated, babies.

Yup. I'm thirsty now. I warn you, this is one of those things you wish you could un-see.

The worst thing is it goes ON. You think it's finished but OH NO! We hired this 16 year old college kid to do our animation and by god are we going to get our money's worth.

The Piers Morgan Award for Narcissism

Personally, I think perfume companies should give up on adverts. You can't possibly convey a smell through the television anymore than I can convey punching Beyonce in the face through the internet: which is a real shame because that's the overwhelming desire I'm left with after exposing myself to this nauseating visual depiction of the unwashed singer making camera-love to herself. I say we disfigure her.

The Frankie Boyle Award for Political Incorrectness

I personally find Paris Hilton about as attractive and likeable as a face-full of malaria. But it's ok: because we can mock this disfigured person instead.

Dear God in heaven...

The John Prescott's Anus Award for WORST EVER THING IN THE UNIVERSE EVER.

This really does need no introduction. If you haven't heard of this, well.... I envy you. In fact, if you've not heard of this, don't watch the video below. Lead a happy life, safe in the knowledge you never exposed yourself to the vilest, most sickening, hateful pile of breakfast-cereal based garbage in the history of mankind. Never before has an advert drawn such universal hatred and derision. Never before, and hopefully, never again.

Ah! My brain! My braaain!

Skip to 0:23 if you fancy a disturbing close up of the little twat's crotch =/

So there we have it. The end of part 2. If you enjoyed this, please feel free to spew your ideas at me and we can continue the flaming well into the future.

Ta

-Neop

The Big Epic Advert Hating Rant Part1- A Recap

Once upon a time, I wrote a blog about some adverts I hated, and I said there would be more to come. I lied though, and said it would be 'that week'. Well, here I am around a year later, planning the sequel. In the meanwhile here's the first batch for you, reproduced in full, lest we had forgotten the contenders:
(Open quotes)

Inspired by being reintroduced to TV after my self-imposed televisual exile at University, I've decided to commemorate the stupidest adverts ever (that I can find) with a nice little blogging. Rather than do a countdown of the worst adverts ever (which was my original intention, but has been done many times) I'm going to pick out a few choice pieces of thick-headedness and give them my own coveted Neophlegm Patented Advert Award 2010®. Without further ado, let's see the winners!



The Duct-Tape and DVD award for Most Forced Movie Tie-In


We're probably used, by now, to the relentless capitalist empires of large firms throwing money at big Movie production companies to leisurely paste their logo all over the resulting film. Audi in I Robot and Iron Man, Sony in Terminator Salvation, iPods in.... everything. But while these at least bear a passing relation to the subject matter of the film, I think the forced-marriage of Twilight and Volvo leaves many, many questions unanswered:

The Microsoft Help Centre award for Useless Information

This category is dedicated to all those adverts which tell you absolutely bugger all about their product, under the pretence of being useful. I was tempted to award this to anything with a figure like "75% of Women prefer [Product]" but instead have to award this to any advert which includes the phrase "Up to 100%". There are plenty of these, but the one I've highlighted here is a particularly retarded Head and Shoulders advert which gives you the useful information that it can make you 'up to 100% flake free'. 

This tells you two useful things: That you may be anything UNDER 100% flake free (for example, 0% flake free, which presumably means your head is one enormous flake... yummy), and that it will never make you MORE than 100% flake free (which I imagine would mean it had an area effect which cleared other people's dandruff?). Anyway, video here if you need reminding how easy it is to baffle large groups of people with figures and crap French soundtracks.

The Mel Gibson Award for Barely Concealed Racism

There are a worrying amount of entrants in this category: of note are Sony's poorly thought out PSP ad, and this more obscure advert courtesy of an air-headed Spanish basketball team.

The runaway (pun intended) winner however, is this wonderfully bad-taste piece that appeared from Intel a few years ago, which is definitely not a concealed veil for white supremacy. Original piece on Gizmodo.

The High School Musical Award for most Cringe Inducing Soundtrack

If you're expecting a certain cereal advert for this section, I'd like you to consider that 'cringing' is not the same as 'contemplating murder'. Be patient.

This category though, I think is jointly won by two different stupid pieces of advertising garbage for two different reasons. The first winner is this pathetic attempt to appear 'cool' by one of those oh-so-trendy sofa companies DFS, who saw fit to pick out a bunch of photogenic but otherwise useless actors using a recruiting piece which probably ran "Wanted- Actors to mime horribly to utterly inappropriate soundtrack for Sofa store ad. Must have no appeal whatsoever, and dance moves that would make Michael Jackson cough up blood".

The second winner is something of a no-brainer, and doesn't really need any introduction, except to say that there probably aren't many people left who don't want to cause some amount of bodily harm to this guy.

Anyway- that does it for part 1. More to come in part 2 later this week. Keep your eyes open!

-Neop

Past midnight, Blogging is go.

Ah. So having been suitably roused by some well-meaning idiocy in our quaint student household, coupled with an overarching desire to not-sleep, I find myself as usual in a slightly pissy mood doing what I do best at this time of the night. And I don't mean clubbing children.

GOD. Children piss me off.

Not all of them mind. Mostly only the ones I see around here. Maybe it's because the more innocuous younglings don't draw any attention to themselves and I can happily ignore them in my daily routine of wake->uni->home->eat->go out [replace 'go out' with 'write blog' as appropriate]. But, living next to a run down council estate you'd be forgiven for thinking that every sub-18 year old is a badly dressed loudmouth with the IQ of a football and the public decency of Lindsay Lohan on ketamine. You can't pass a miserable, sweaty group of the jumped up little bastards without getting insults hurled vaguely at you (or anyone you're standing near) in this sort of pathetic pre-pubescent powerplay that smacks of underdeveloped brain syndrome (medically classified as being "Fucking thick").

You know the sort. 

They potter around in their little 'cru' with their stupid hair and their stupid Adidas trousers tucked into their stupid socks, feeling like entitled little dictators. I don't believe in capital punishment for one minute but I wouldn't hesitate, if I were the parent of one of the swaggering little parasites, before branding 'dickhead' on them with a hot iron. That being said, probably the average parent of one of these respiring little shit-sacks is a fat wobbling mass of cheap lager and nicotine farting their way through benefits only stopping to occasionally piss and moan about rich people. Yes fat-cat businessmen are wankers, but at least they're wankers who own yachts and aren't going to die, writhing in chest pains from a self induced heart attack, at an age where their sole achievement is contaminating the earth with their useless effing offspring.

An aside:

I'd like at this stage to add some caveats: being as we are living in an age of very loud online groups with acronyms instead of names, if more than my customary audience of about 20 readers get hold of this and feel that I've somehow implied that all council estate dwellers are in fact bottom feeding scum, I will be summarily lynched publicly and expensively. As this is the case I'll qualify this by saying firstly that I have nothing against council estates inasmuch as I can't have anything against inanimate areas of habitation: and also that I'm somehow generalising whole groups of the population (perhaps unfairly) into a category of sub-human faeces whom I utterly despise.

This second point holds some value: it's impossible to completely generalise people. You can't even say you hate Nazis because Oscar Schindler was a Nazi and he helped a whole bunch of Jews in a bizarrely altruistic way.

However I take the view that most people clever enough to type in a web address (or at least follow a hyperlink) can also realise this themselves. In this case generalisations are useful and you shouldn't have to worry about the sort of covering-your-own-ass which I am relentlessly pursuing in this very paragraph. In short: I'm picking on the people who deserve to be picked on. If you're not a stupid little cock, and your parents aren't blundering arseholes, then I'm not aiming my comments at you and please don't take offence; even if you live/lived on a council estate. By virtue of the fact you're reading this you're a completely different league of human being.

These guys obviously agree with me. You can tell because they have sunglasses on.

To resume, then.

I haven't been alive long enough to make the kind of conceited comment that this wave of human-shaped viruses is somehow a product of the current times/government/digital revolution/water fluoridation. I imagine a large majority of the older populace does just this on a regular basis. My main question though, is why does there seem to be such a divide? This is all based on the microcosm of society that I have been exposed to in my short 21 years but you rarely find people that sit in the middle of laddish-thug and what I'd call a normal person. It's an honest question and I'd be happy for some sociologist to explain to me and then give me a firm telling-off for cheapening their science by blogging about it.

Until they eradicate the stupid gene though, we're stuck with them. We even have the word 'Chav' to encapsulate the whole nauseating class into one succinct syllable for easy conversation. We as a society have clearly hunkered down and just gotten used to the fact that they exist and aren't going anywhere except possibly the old-folks home to steal things and piss on the walls. They're going to keep yelling that bystanders are gay, keep smoking from the ripe old age of twelve, keep knocking back White Lightening like it's not fermented Demon-piss, and keep getting each other knocked up so that their kind can continue to get on everyone's tits for generations to come.

And there's nothing you can do about it. Goodnight.

-Neop

Little bit on the side:

http://thearis.posterous.com/airports

Go on. Read another blog, you dirty scoundrel. You know you want to read an amusing anecdote about airports from my (I should point out, extremely british-sounding and greek by blood) friend.

-Neop

Never bored: Now in HD

Isn't it amazing what worldly wonders we sit and contemplate at the end of a very windy, stupid day?
Why is my laptop running hot?
Why is PROPER Schnapps off the continent so much tastier than the regurgitated syrupy discharge known as 'Archers'?
How can I be so bored I'm writing yet another blog in the space of a few weeks?

Chief among my deep existential concerns this evening is why VLC is so temperamental. For those uneducated in the Way of the Computer®, VLC is an oftentimes reliable media player which yaps at your feet like a loveable little puppy, only occasionally deciding to take a massive shit on your floor before curling up and dying. So whilst I sit here in an ever fouler mood because I can't watch Battlestar Gallactica I contemplate bigger things, such as the changing way we watch films and vids.

3D Cinema. Brought to you by the year  1953

In this digital renaissance we're forever bombarded with ways to immerse our senses in fictional High Definition glory: whether it be the balls-tighteningly overpriced eyeball assault that is IMax 3D at your nearest Odeon; or the less-annoying but more illegal piracy option, it seems we're in a position now where almost any program we fancy is well within our greasy grasp.

Although bear in mind what I just wrote is sort of rubbish. It's true, but I can't possibly speak in that preachy manner of someone who's ever known any differently. I'm 21 and I can barely remember what happened last year, much less a time before all-access media when I actually would've cared. I'm pretty sure when I was 5 years old and the internet was still a foetus it didn't bother me nearly as much whether I'd seen a particular episode of Thomas the Tank Engine once before. Now my only link to this backward time of steam-powered stone-age VHS is recording them onto DVDs (if my parents are reading this, you ARE allowed to do some yourself you know). Anyway we're living in the digital revolution and I for one think it's bloody brilliant (if slightly scary).

A stone-age video cassette from the Natural History Museum

For one thing you're never more than 20 seconds away from realising you're wrong about something. QI has helped this, but now that every fact in the known Universe is available online you can very quickly find out if you were right to say Jimmy Carr is secretly a Hindu, because one of your friends is bound to have a smartphone and free internet so they can smugly touch-screen their way to an article and tell you how much of a retard you are, before you decide to drown them in a urinal.

A smug person I'd like to drown in a urinal. 

Anyway I'm generally all for technology and it has now been a few days before I started writing this, so like an amnesiac on a motorway, I've kind of forgotten where I was meant to be going.

Rather than leap boldly to a new topic (like a howler monkey jumping across trees) I shall opt to cut this short (like a howler monkey coming down from his tree via a sensible ladder instead of jumping around. Seriously- they might get hurt) and endeavour to maintain my new-found pace of postings in subsequent weeks.

Oh yeh, and this is where I'd usually put a punchline.

"And on that bombshell......"


-Neop

Happy Blogday

...to me. Yes folks it's been two years since I started this jaunty little blog and in that time I've acquired LITERALLY a few followers. Which is always nice. I shall justify my recent post-vacuum (except for last week's bizarre pictorial interlude) by reminding my readers that I'm only just recovering from a recent bout of explosive exams.

I've had a recent suggestion to try and write slightly more positively about things. This is an odd piece of advice since my cynical approach adopted thus-far seems to have been largely well received (bar one or two vociferous critics). I also think I've realised why this is true. It's simple: People like reading things that aren't inherently happy.

"WHAT?" I hear (over the internet) a good few of you scream: "I'm always positive and I like reading positive things!"

I challenge you to name me them. Name ONE piece of purely positive literature. Outside of vague areas like cookery books or maths textbooks I reckon no such thing exists. Because it would be boring. Everything we read has something negative in it, from kid's books to newspaper columns. Can you imagine what life would be like if there was literature with no peril, or danger, or conflict, or anything negative of any kind? "Mrs Happy Fwuffy Bunnykins Buys Some Jam", in which the protagonist goes to a shop, buys some conserve, and never once has any sort of encounter or challenging thought. Come on- you wouldn't read that. "Mrs Happy Fwuffy Bunnykins Buys Some Jam And Gets Hit By A Truck" on the other hand is a sure-fire winner. Did she survive?? What will happen to the kids? Does this society of sentient woodland mammals include free healthcare? These are the questions! These are the points of interest arising from a tasty squeeze of negative-juice on our otherwise bland story.

Biographies (good ones) follow this rule too. No-one cares about some poncey rich bastard who was born rich, had money all through their childhood, grew up rich, inherited their father's multi-trillion pound business empire and then died happy. Screw that. That's designed to make us throw up in our mouths, not entertain us. But what if the star of the book was born in a ditch, in Croydon, to a mother who died in labour and a father who quickly stole the last bread and ran away? Imagine the gripping true-story of how they learned to survive by eating from bins; how their only possession was a piece of cardboard and a woodlouse called Trevor; how they fought tooth and nail to survive and through sheer determination, ended up being the 2nd richest person in the Universe. You see how negative things are needed?

"Silence fool!" I hear once more: "But this is surely taking it to extremes! Why not just add a bit more positivity to your bloggings?"

Well... if I change the tone of these, I'll almost definitely have to change what I'm writing about. Unless you really want an uplifting tail of how, say, the catering at our University is actually pretty good. Again: more dull than The Archers.

Have you ever read the typical blogger's blog? They illustrate exactly why, WAY back in my second ever article, I said how wary I was of starting this. There are blogs and blogs and blogs on fascinating topics like 'how quick my baby's growing up' or 'my favourite food' or 'pictures of my dog'. You know. Bollocks. The kind of pathetic crap no-one but a few relatives and your stalker care about. For nearly everyone who I don't know personally, I really don't care what comes out of your womb, what goes into your mouth, or what your stupid wooly rat-ball looks like. I also don't care what you think about the weather, why you love a certain item of clothing, what your ideas on philosophy are, or that the neighbour's foxes like peanut butter (I wish I'd made that last one up). To anyone but yourself and personally involved parties, your life is pretty dull unless something monumentally catastrophically disastrous happens to you. You don't make the news because your life is going great- you make it because your Nan just trod on a landmine on the same day your house burned down and your Mum ran away to be with another woman.

And you know what? My life's not that bad. So I'll do the next best thing and share some rants with you, until people stop reading...

...Or a relative steps on a landmine. Because I'm pretty sure blogging will be the last thing on my mind.

-Neop

You mean you haven't read this yet????

Stop reading now.












There- bet you didn't. I mean, if you did you wouldn't read this bit afterwards. But I bet approximately 100% of you kept reading. I could probably use that as a clever analogy about important socio-political matters. As it is, I just felt like doing it for the hell of it :)




I write to you now (live) from a slightly more positive perspective than usual. As a result I imagine no-one will be the least bit interested in what I have to say. As a random aside, someone on Facebook quipped about how there weren't enough pictures, so I resolve to add more pointless illustrations to help further my unending quest for Blogging perfection.


I'm trying to remove from my vocabulary that awful phrase "YOU MEAN YOU HAVEN'T SEEN/HEARD [Film/webcomic/song]???"; often delivered with such unnecessary incredulity you want to mash the speaker's face into a cactus. No I haven't, you judgemental sack of organs. Almost as bad is 'You should see/hear....'. I'm sure everyone's perfectly capable of making their own minds up about what they do or do not want forced down their eyesockets or into their earholes. Suggesting stuff is quite innocuous though. So let's try that:


I think you might enjoy The King's Speech.


Where 'you' means everyone over the age of about 15 and with more than a double-figure IQ. And you know what? I don't think I could really say why. The age suggestion is only because of repeated uses of the word 'fuck' (albeit inoffensively). But what should come across as a fetid, limp period-drama about some flouncy royal berk stammering like Gareth Gates instead ends up as a genuinely funny, and perplexingly exciting, tale which you just can't help but enjoy. I guess there is some value to Oscar nominations. 


Oh yeh.... pictures. Here's a picture of a King, in case you're having trouble visualising this at all:

I may make this habit. i can see how illustrations really serve to improve my otherwise stereo-chrome word stack.


In fact, let's continue the trend. Here's some pointless drawings of sea-creatures that look posh:

These are all concept doodles for a cartoon series some compatriots and I had planned which hasn't materialised yet. Hopefully some less-tight scheduling will mean it eventually gets made. I mean... who wouldn't want a bizarre cartoon show about a Gentleman's Society under the sea? I can't think of anyone.

Which is probably a statement about who I associate with.

-Neop