Wednesday 26 January 2011

why marketing folk are the way they are.

The History or Marketing - Part 1

Tuesday 25 January 2011

Say What?

I heard this chestnut recently, (that's "chestnut" - as in old saying rather than a talking conker. Blinking heck I've become my own distractor from the plot and I've not even started!... oh and that's "distractor" as in person diverting attention and not "which Masey Ferguson should I choose?") .

Meanwhile!

“If a tree falls down in the woods and no one is there to hear it, does it still make a noise?”
Yes, and you'd have to be an IDIOT to think otherwise. If trees didn't make loud snappy noises when they were falling there would be a menagerie of dead animals under every one. Just because squirrels are incapable of comprehending even the most basic of philosophy it doesn’t mean they don’t know how to run from a dangerous situation.
“Do bears shit in the woods?” Yes and they probably make a noise too!

Useless sayings and phrases get my goat, (no I don’t understand that either).

“Did you know we only use 10% of our brains?”
So-called facts like this are as useful as a receipt from Poundland. I do know some people that appear to use only 10% of their brains but that’s only because they have very small brains to start with. These people use 90% of their available head space working out how to open cartons of milk without causing a diary version of the Bellagio Fountains. The rest of us I’m happy to say use 100% of our brains, (just not necessarily at the same time). I’m longing for the day when our heads can be hooked up to tech support when something goes wrong. Antivirus products will be exactly that, they still won’t work though and they’ll make your head run 25% slower. Dam you Norton, Kaspersky et al...

“Easy like Sunday morning”
I don’t call four trips to B&Q with the rest of the world and their moaning kids, £100+ gone on paint and brushes, 3hours spent painting the garden wall, 4hours spent repainting the garden wall after freak tropical storm, 2hours spent in a bath of white spirit scrubbing paint from body, 1hour yelling at the wife that apple white is indeed the colour she choose and if she now doesn't like it she can repaint it herself and 4hours spent in dog kennel as ‘easy’. If that’s Mr.Richie's idea of easy I'd hate to see what a busy Sunday looks like.

Ooh B&Q…there’s a topic! Who comes up with the names for paint? And why can’t they just tell it how it is? In my world Azure Delight will now be known as "the sea on a nice day in a part of the world most of us can't afford to go and see", Terracotta Sunset is now “reddy brown but definitely not red, sorta like brick”, Amazon Forest is now "a bit like a bogey when you’re not well" and magnolia is now "goat jizz". It’s not difficult!

Monday 10 January 2011

A Big Number Two

I hated school. From day one I saw it as a necessary evil. It didn’t help that I went to a catholic school whose demi priest teachers were from an Arian sadist superior brotherhood, or AssBros for short. A school full of boys in puberty with male teachers who volunteered to be abstinent equals testosterone city. If it moved, had a pulse and smelt even vaguely female then it wasn’t safe. I can’t help feeling this is why I was so readily accepted into the media. My naivety and desperation levels must have been off the scale!

One boy at school got hooked on drugs. He couldn’t afford proper drugs so he'd crush up senna tablets and snort them. I’m not too sure why he used laxatives, maybe he liked the rush…. Like all addictions he progressed on to the harder stuff and got into injecting cod liver oil and mainlining chicken jalfrezi. Of course, in between drags on his high fiber fags through yellow curry stained fingers he would always say he could quit at any time. More impressively he could pooh at any time as well. For years in the West Country the sonic boom heard most evenings was mistaken for Concorde going super sonic, when it was in fact this boys arse breaking the sound barrier while he was ‘coming down’ from his spicy induced highs. Every December 31st he would make a resolution to himself to give up. Some of you will have heard what you thought were the naval warships in the dockyard sounding their sirens and hailing in a new year. Not so, the sounds you heard were just the drugs temporarily leaving his system.
The last I heard he was better and had a job at CERN accelerating particles up to near light speed. The technique employed is all very hush hush but I have a feeling I know how he’s doing it.

The rich kid at school, the ugly side you tolerate because they always had the latest game or gadget. The reason you hated yourself and whored your friendship because their Walkman was made by Sony, and not a ‘market special’ which used batteries quicker than you could change them, didn’t have a rewind function and left the cassette tape looking like an explosion in a noodle factory. The rich kid, who everyone smiled at but secretly hated and wished would go away. A bit like London.

I grew up in Plymouth, which because of its remoteness to anything resembling a civilisation I suppose is like the loner kid. A bit strange with a wiff of something unpleasant and an eerie knowledge of how nuclear bombs work. Growing up I always wanted to be older, taller and more like a Manchester type kid. A cool kid who started smoking before anyone else. A kid who was always in detention for something really cool that I was too afraid to try, like marmite.
In my clique there was a trapeze girl that hung around. Looking back she would see things behind her and I suppose she was like Wales. You don’t like Wales at first because….. Wales is a girl, but then twenty years later you see a recent picture of Wales on Facebonk and you finally appreciate how stunningly beautiful she is. If you knew now what you knew then you would have moved to Wales along time ago. But you can’t go to Wales because you’re married to Southampton with an Isle of White on the way. Southampton is great and all, and perfect for you, but Wales has got much bigger mountains.



I live in Stockport which is slightly smaller than Plymouth, but at least I’m nearer to the cool kids.

Friday 7 January 2011

In the begining

I pondered many openings for the collection of scribblings that will follow. I thought about using something from Genesis but the last thing I want is to be sued by the Vatican, or even worse Phil Collins! So I pondered something more personal, something about me which would give you an insight in to myself and my way of thinking. The only obvious contender was “No but seriously, I’m NOT gay” so that was out the window. Then I thought about using a famous quote, “veni vidi vici” leapt to mind. Roughly translated it means I came I saw I conquered which to me sounds more like the autobiography of a famous squirrel. I needed something bigger than the bible, something which would stand the test of time, an opening which would lead everyone reading this to the unequivocal conclusion that this was the start of a story that would captivate them so much they’d want to read it to their grandkids. So with that in mind would you the reader please affect a drawn out reality TV show Geordie accent for the next two words.

Day One.

Days 1-834 of my life were a bit of a blur so we’ll skate over them. I don’t remember much but I’m told there was wee, poop, sick and crying, (sounds like a good student night out to me). By day 843 I had mastered the art of climbing out of my cot and jumping onto my parents bed. The resulting thud could be heard by my mother downstairs, and before I could get to my shaky feet she had already scaled the stairs and was putting me back into bed. I can’t help feeling that with a memory foam mattress and some Nike Airs I could have easily made it to the landing.
By day 1250 I was at pre-school, these were easily my happiest memories of school life. There was a plentiful supply of lead based painted toys and as much pee-flavoured sand as I could eat. It was at pre-school that I had my first major bike accident. I was duped into swapping turns on the white sports go-cart with ubercool go faster stripe and hand brake, for a spin on the three wheeled tractor with pedals on the front wheel. Naturally I took her for a spin but lost control when I tried to turn in too sharply. Massive over steer and no real brakes meant my face connecting sharply with the ground and a trip to A&E. By landing on my face I had ensured that there was no lasting damage. Numerous tears and three stitches later mummy’s brave little soldier was back! As we all know chicks dig scars but at that age chicks were about as appealing as broccoli. For the next 15 years or so I blended in to the background nicely, just doing enough to keep the teachers happy and staying friends with the right people so as to avoid any playground nastiness.
After I eventually achieved average results at ‘A’ level I resisted the call of university and instead found myself working in the media despite the fact I wasn’t gay or anything. While employed at a radio station I was quickly adopted by numerous comfortable shoe wearers, who saw me as both an oddity and a challenge. I was shown the secrets of ‘gaydar’ and taught their language and customs. For a short time I contemplated turning to the pink side but my salary was nowhere near enough to cover the tight jeans, gym membership and subscription to Attitude, (vital essentials for even the most heavy handed of left footers). I worked in the engineering department I became rather adept at cleaning knobs. Word got round and I was rocketed up the managerial ladder but only to fall quickly back down when it was realised that I was in fact referring to the knobs on a mixing desk. A gloomy future in light bulb management awaited so I jumped ship and decided to head for pastures new. My CK One smelling friends put the feelers out and once more I had to politely decline but not before they had helped me secure a job in Bournemouth.
Higher powers within the Eurovision fraternity had obviously decided that it was best if they could keep an eye on me from their HQ up the coast. I felt they were unhappy that even though I was moving in the right circles, I wasn’t moving in the right circles. I was letting them down and I decided to have it out with them and come clean, but alas this was misconstrued to such a degree that I nearly ended up playing the lead in a Brighton panto.
Eventually the message was received but by that time I was too well established within the impeccably well ironed fabric of their empire. I did turn out to be of some use and was able to pass on the vital secrets about cars, football and general poor hygiene that had alluded them for some time. This information was used to infiltrate various pubs across the country so as they could be turned into tasteful wine bars as soon as the old management was removed.

This writing thing is hard, (stop thinking what you’re thinking). After the initial enthusiasm is used up the next blogs will really take their strain. It gets even harder when you realise that you’ve just written your life story in only six hundred words. That’s a word for every month and a half I’ve been alive. That’s means my entire existence would fit onto a few sides of A4. Even with a fancy font that’s still only about a few dozen kilobytes of computer memory.
I’ve just realised I’m actually a walking ZX Spectrum 48K. Life’s not all bad though, at least I’ve got rubber keys.