Homer And His Giant Neighbour

Noteworthy publicity stunt by the promoters of the new Simpsons film in the news today, where a huge image of Homer holding aloft a giant doughnut has been painted onto the hill alongside the Cerne Abbas Giant. This is much to the chagrin of local pagans who’ve been chanting gripes, getting their pentangles in a twist and flinging up their cassocked arms in protest.

Ann Bryn-Evans, joint Wessex district manager for The Pagan Federation, said: "We'll be doing some rain magic to bring the rain and wash it away." Righto then Ann, good luck with that.

It’s all a question of relativity. If Armageddon happened tomorrow and all civilisation was instantly destroyed, in thousands of years time, when silver-suited space archaeologists unearthed the twin images of Homer and his neighbour it would be entirely debateable which will appear the more ridiculous – the image of a portly man in underpants holding up an oversized doughnut, or a giant with his nob out brandishing a wobbly club .

And who’s to say the Cerne Abbas Giant itself wasn’t some grand centuries-old publicity stunt long since forgotten, advertising mead or medieval strippograms or, err… something?

Chuck Norris’s Unique Hidden Gusset

The world of celebrity-branded jeans is a competitive one. Sean “Puffy” Combs has his own line, as does pouting android fashionista Victoria Beckham.

And here’s a rather splendid example from hairy all-American martial arts maestro Chuck Norris, whose own trademark denims boast a solution to a perennial problem, containing, as they do “…a unique hidden gusset which allows greater movement without binding or ripping.”

Such features are no doubt perfect for scissoring through the air with a minimum of chafing, or administering deathly roundhouse kicks to hapless henchmen (a situation I often find myself in strolling round Tesco on a Saturday).

Chuck’s strides have a lifetime guarantee and are available in all sizes, though I believe an accompanying ginger ‘tache is mandatory (sold separately).

Fashion-Conscious Fat Birds

We’ve got loads of fat birds in our garden. They spend their mornings cheerfully yomping the contents of the string bags full of assorted seeds embedded in beef tallow that we suspend from a convenient hook, and when these run out they hop gaily round the place plucking worms out of the recently tilled ground. (For clarity, these “fat birds” are of the feathered variety, not the more rotund examples of the young ladyfolk of rural Wiltshire.)

They now seem to associate our house as the location for some kind of daily orgiastic seedy banquet, which is a bit worrying as we’re shortly to lay a lawn, (eschewing the jigsaw patterning of turf in favour of scattering boxes of grass seed cos it’s infinitely cheaper). As such, we’re understandably keen to prevent flocks of the little bastards from scromfing what we throw down before it’s had a chance to grow.

We’ve discussed the idea of erecting a scarecrow, dressed in a strategic selection of my old clothes to act as a sufficient deterrent (which wouldn’t be the first time my clothes have had that effect on birds):
“Eeurgh, there’s a bloke standing in the garden dressed in corduroy combat trousers and a pseudo-kids’-TV-presenter jumper [two of my wonderwife’s least favourite items and long since consigned to Wardrobe 101]. Let’s go next door and decimate his veg patch instead.”

Cereal Versatility

There’s a contentious topic I’ve avoided for some time, but I witnessed something on TV last night which has made me decide to break my silence and vent my spleen to all.

What on earth are the people at Weetabix thinking? Ice cream and chocolate sauce?! I completely appreciate the need to diversify and develop a product in order to appeal to as many new consumers as possible, while at the same time taking care not to alienate existing purchasers (hence the succession of grinning, uber-normal nuclear families in previous ads with each member a electing to pop a banana, “fruit compote” or even chocolate milkshake on top), but it’s not a dessert! It’s Weetabix – you pour milk on it (and optionally, sprinkle it with sugar) and hey presto! Keep it simple…

It seems Mr Weetabix has had a recent crisis of confidence regarding his flagship cereal and has briefed an ad agency to come up with a multitude of alternative ways to enjoy it. Judging by the bizarre concoctions promoted, I’d love to see the ideas they rejected – “why not smear half a tube of Macleans and administer a generous drizzle of HP Sauce on top?” Because it doesn’t go, that’s why. And neither does bloody ice cream.

Odds & Sods

I’m cheerfully stealing an idea from Dan’s blog today in which he ruminated on the bits of content that pop into his head, but never make it as far as his webpage.

He has a running document on his phone in which he logs snippets of ideas. I also have a document on my ‘puter (inspiringly entitled “Blog”) that I add to whenever something occurs to me. Currently it’s clogged up with a fragmented collection of oddments and miscellaneous deadwood gumph that it’s entirely likely I’ll never get round to writing up, so instead I’ve mashed them together below by way of a therapeutic purge:

"Best song on the album is the fourteen-minutes-long O’Malley’s Bar in which one member of the clientele embarks upon a killing spree, dispatching his fellow drinkers in a highly unsavoury manner. I don’t like Irish theme pubs either, but this seems extreme."

"Sub-Christmas-cracker humour in the ads around Corrie - “These are really EGG-cellent” and “I like to EGG-speriment”. There’s so much emphasis placed on the one-dimensional pun that even the slowest-witted of viewers (admittedly, many of whom are in the Coronation Street demographic so someone’s done their homework) can’t fail to get the gag. If indeed it can be called a gag. These exhibit all the comic sophistication of a blacked-up Jim Davidson calling himself “Chalky”. "

"His nickname of Jaffa was ultimately ironic, given that he was completely devoid of “smashing orangey bits”. "

"Magnolia paint, cheddar cheese, vanilla ice cream, John Grisham. Is it better to be bland or crap?"

"Bird’s Custard – the first ever convenience food, borne of Mr Bird’s labours to produce an alternative to the run-of-the-mill stuff his wife was allergic to (due to the eggs from which custard is traditionally made), but of which she was so fond."

There.

Prize Draw Fishermen And A Month's Worth Of Cheese

Strange couple of competitions in our local paper, The Wiltshire Times, the other day…

The first offered some lucky reader the fantastic prize of “a year’s worth of Fisherman’s Friends”. I assume they meant the unpleasant menthol lozenges rather than actual sea-faring individuals, as the prospect of having a succession of Sou’wester-clad nautical folk with ruddy cheeks and aggressive facial hair turning up at your front door every day for a year would be unlikely to appeal to many entrants.

The oddness of the giveaway aside (I don’t think there’s a person alive who could benefit from that many medicinal pastilles), it immediately reminded me of something that’s always puzzled me in competition rhetoric: the actual definition of “a year’s worth”. How many packets of Fisherman’s Friends can the lucky winner expect to receive, and who decides?

I like Fisherman’s Friends as much as the next man (ie. not an awful lot), and the thought of lorry-loads turning up at our front door is the stuff of nightmares. However, I suppose to a complete Fisherman’s Friends junkie (and no doubt proud owner of the clearest sinuses in all England) who crunched them morning, noon and night, it would be menthol manna from heaven. But if so, who’s to say that his notion of “a year’s worth” matches the competition people’s? In these days of legal exactness, it seems uncharacteristically vague.

Personally, I found the second competition far more appealing, offering as it did, the opportunity to “Win a month’s supply of cheese!” Now that’s more like it. Though with the quantity I’d be likely to eat if I won, I’d also need to win the first competition in order to subdue my rancid breath.

Olde-Worlde (and -Peopley) Pubs

Because of the smoking ban, many pubs are concentrating on offering high quality comestibles to entice customers into their gloriously smoke-free environments. Wetherspoons have just made their low-price grub even cheaper, though this appears to have had a curious effect on their mid-morning clientele.

My ladies (my wife and four month old daughter – the boy was in nursery) and I popped in for a cup of tea and a fry-up the other morning and found that, even adding our three ages together, we were collectively the youngest person there. Great herds of wrinklies seem to have eschewed their traditional haunts of greasy caffs to migrate across to a more pubular watering hole.

Nothing wrong with it of course, the atmosphere was charged with life and noise (though that could have been because they were all shouting due to their dodgy hearing), and an ironic glitterball effect could be seen with shards of light rebounding off fifty pairs of bifocals, but it felt odd to encounter so many in a town-centre pub.

The throng at the bar was resplendent in taupe and grey, topped off with either shiny liver-spotted chrome-domes or purple rinses. In some places it was three-deep (there were adequate staff to serve everyone, it’s just that they were probably all paying in pennies “Three pounds eighty you say? Let’s see now, there’s ten, twenty, twenty five, six , seven, ni…? No hang on, let me start again… my son Michael lives in Australia… half past three… yes… etc.”)

It was a like a day centre, or that bit in the Thriller video where hordes of mottled zombies halt their cheesy ‘80s dance moves and start stumbling around, walking into trees etc. except these living dead were holding hot cups of tea. Alternatively, it was like being caught in an episode of Last Of The Summer Wine, and ironically, there were two old fellas on the leather settee next to ours, though neither were sporting tweed jackets or were slowly rolling down a hill on it, accompanied by a jaunty noodling cor anglais melody and hilarious laughter from a canned audience.

Talking about Last of the Summer Wine, the stunts were always crap because the actors, given their age, were fairly fragile, and no doubt the production company didn’t want a hefty insurance claim for incapacitating a number of them. Now that Die Hard 4.0’s out and Bruce Willis is gettiing on a bit the producers should consider drafting him in as he always insists on doing his own stunts. He might even encourage the other chaps to follow suit:

“Right Mr Sallis, I’ll be abseiling down this burning cowshed in a string vest to blow two henchmen away with a harpoon. In the meantime, I want you to ride this rickety old bicycle into a wall at breakneck speed but in an amusing fashion.”
“Ooh, ‘eck Mr Willis! That’ll smart…”

I don’t think Brucie will be appearing in Wetherspoons anytime soon though, not if he sees the queue for the bar anyway.