Welcome!

Hello everyone, thanks for coming! This is my blog, it's where I largely write about things that maybe 3 people read, but I do it anyway because they matter. Have a flick through, read ones with interesting titles, and check by every once in a while and see if there's any more. You can also follow me on twitter at @MikePasquale or you can visit my website which has got all my illustration on it: www.smash-rockets-to-mars.co.uk

Anyway, thanks again, and hope you enjoy your reading!
Mike

Friday 15 June 2012

Blog 130: The Ad Dominizer, Part 3

Back to adverts that proper wind me up

11) The Sainsbury's/EasyJet one where the confused man is confronted by questions usually only heard in the context of an airport, but in Sainsbury's. It winds me up because 1) if he's so confused, why doesn't he just ask what's going on and 2) his lips are far too pink to genuinely belong to his face.

12) The Foxy Bingo ads either side of Jeremy Kyle... I'm sure I've done this one before at some point, but there's too much awkward silence in those ads, and between the silences and the winks that the fox does and when he asks "are you a foxy lady?" it just kinda becomes a little bit creepy, like perve creepy. A dirty pervy little fox. Yukk.

13) PPI ads. I really don't care. Plus one of them's got a guy in it that looks too much like the Jack Davenport, the actor who plays Norrington from Pirates of the Carribean or the questionnably named assistant to the baddy in the Boat that Rocked (Good film).

14) Urgh, there's sooo many bad adverts. The Sun's one with the 'The Sun will come out tomorrow' song from Annie. This one's actually not too bad, it annoys me because when it came out and I saw it for the first time I was captured by it and sat there wondering to myself who it's for, trying to think through big brands..."hmmm, who's going to bring out the Sun tomorrow with their products?" and then it's the Sun. It's so obvious and it made me realise how dumb I am. So, even though it's quite good, I don't like it.

15) "If you feel you have to go to the toilet too often" Yeahhh I'm trying to eat lunch.

More to come...

Friday 8 June 2012

Blog 129: The Ad Dominizer, Part 2

Here's some more of those pesky crappy adverts that wind me up... if you're gonna waste my time, at least do it well.

6. Adverts where the child tells the parent not to eat something but then the parents get caught out eating it and the child disapproves. Currently this has taken the form of an ad for oreos. You're her dad, put your foot down. If you wanna be up late eating oreos, you can. If she wants to be up past 9, tough luck, she can't. She sits around drawing stick pictures of you, which are frankly unflattering, while you're at work earning the money that pays for her to 'go to school' and 'learn'. Tell her off, and stop buying her oreos if she gets cheeky.

7. Similarly, the one for bread pockets... I'm not sure if its Hovis or not, but it's basically a pocket of bread which you put stuff in. Quite a good idea, although it's completely pointless and obviously would be stupidly expensive what it is: really thin, plastickey bread. But anyway, the advert's different. It's basically a teenage girl's eating sandwhiches, of all things, late at night and her dad comes down. And then instead of the realistic "AND WHERE DO YOU THINK YOU'VE BEEN?" "Ohhh shuut uppp dad, I can do what I like, i'm 16 years old now, stop treating me like a child" "WELL I'LL STOP TREATING YOU LIKE A CHILD WHEN YOU STOP ACTING LIKE ONE" "Oh leave me alone, I'm going to Trent's house" "NO YOU'RE BLOODY NOT, YOU'RE GOING TO YOUR ROOM, AND WHO THE BLOODY HECK'S TRENT?!" "He's a really nice guy, actually" "WELL I DOUBT IT IF HE'S DATING MY DAUGHTER" "Sigh, huff, stompy shoe, throws sandwhich in bin violently and slams door" "AND DON'T YOU THINK YOU'RE GOING TO THE PROM NEXT WEEK, YOU'RE GROUNDED"...woah sorry there, I got a bit trapped in my own psyche... Anyway, instead of all that realistic stuff what happens when you're up late eating...not sandwhiches but like, chocolate or biscuits, let's be honest...instead of all that, THIS teenage girl stands in the kitchen talking like it's a professional pitch about how these bread pockets are really good because they're tasty, healthy, etc. As if.

8. The muller one with people singing that song that's on EVERY advert "i got my something got my something," you know the one. Except this time it's not a professional singer singing it, it's mediocre singers singing it, and singing different words to show the flavours of muller. "I got my apples got my blueberries" etc. Obviously, the word blueberries doesn't have only one syllable in, so it doesn't really scan, this song. It's very clumsy. And it's made a hundred times worse by the woman who sings, and this is no joke, "I've got my cherry". Before the watershed.

9. Ads for Supersize v Superskinny... this is kind of an attack on the whole show to be honest. When I heard the name of that I thought I'd be watching a really fat woman beat the heck out of some twiggy little man. When I saw what it actually was, I wasn't angry, just disappointed. Very disappointed.

10. The Trivago ad. Basically, the idea is go on their webby and you can get cheap deals on Hotel. They demonstrate with split screen showing different hotels. One with a gorgeous dark haired woman in a black bikini, and another of an aging overweight man in a rubber ring with a stupid hat on. But the main difference? One hotel was £115, the other was £78. But they don't seem to realise that I don't want to go to a hotel with an awful loud overly-typical 'Brit' in a rubber ring. By that logic I'll just go on Coach trip. Yeah, you spend the entire time with some of the worst people ever, but hey, it's cheaper. So basically, their ad doesn't work. By the way, if anyone knows the lady on that advert can you give her my number, thanks.

Sunday 11 March 2012

Blog 128: The Ad Dominizer, Part 1

While doing my dissertation, I get a lot of time sat in the lounge, typing up stuff with rubbish tele on. And of course, bad tele is complimented with bad ad's. So here's some of my fave's:

1. The one that tries to encourage you to quit smoking by convincing you that to do it, you need the right tools. (No, you just need to stop smoking.) But it does this using a visual metaphor of a man trying to clean a window with a trampoline instead of a ladder. But at the end he's got a ladder and he can clean the window. But the trampoline definitely looks more fun, plus he's managing to do it. Lesson? There is no difference to a life time smoking and a life time not smoking, other than the first one is way more fun.

2. The one for a program which looks Hannah Montana-ish but it's called Tori Locked Up or something, and it's basically about some kids that get into prison but don't worry, they can dance and sing! So they'll get out. Lesson? Go mental, get in prison, it's fine. Literally nothing bad in prison. You won't get sexually assaulted or beat up, you'll have a lovely time and plenty of opportunities to sing and dance, and if you're good at it (you will be, you'll have tonnes of practice plus you're young and attractive) you'll even get out free. And it's not like the guy you murders got a family that'll hate you still after putting on such a good show.

3. The one where a dog humps the E4 sign. Literally, nothing about a dog humping the logo makes that company more appealing. It's pointless. It's not even a real dog, dogs are horny as hell, why couldn't they have done it properly rather than with crappy graphics.

4. The uneccessarily grim Aviva life insurance one. Everyone knows what Life Insurance is for. There is literally no need to bring all the grim bit when the little girl goes "I miss daddy" into it. I'm sure she does, but I'm halfway through episodes of The Big Bang Theory, and as much as I like that program, it's nowhere near funny enough to cheer me up after watching the Aviva ad.

5. Adverts that have a list of logos of the shops where you can buy that product at the end, usually cleaning items. Come on guys, it's not the 90s.

Saturday 25 February 2012

Blog 127: Media Madness

On the Independent's website today I saw this headline: "Father, 11, hides as pregnant girl faces the media".

YOU ARE THE MEDIA! Don't turn on some poor 11 year old who's ONLY 11 because he's hiding, as kids do, whilst the pregnant mother has to face the inevitable media alone. What about leaving them both alone, you ever think of that?

Other bits in this article that wound me up:

"Six weeks on, they [her parents] have adjusted to the news and are impressed by the way the youngsters have handled the situation." So apparently breaking the law and getting pregnant at 15 is 'impressive'.

"Sean's mother, Theresa, is said to be unhappy with the situation." Really? You mean his mum thinks her 11 year old son being a Dad isn't an ideal situation? I thought the news is meant to tell us stuff we don't know.

"She reportedly said, before disappearing to an unknown address: "He [Sean] is only a child. He doesn't really understand what is going on. This has put him under tremendous pressure. She [Emma] is much more mature and experienced than him, and I worry as any mother would.""

Um...she's only 15, she's not THAT much mature and experienced than him. Bloody hell. Although, to be fair, at 11, Sean is now much more experienced than me.

Sunday 19 February 2012

Blog 126: Groovy Graduation

At the end of this year I'll be graduating from Leeds Uni, and joining many other graduates, many of whom were at the top or very well known within their fields. These include Jack Straw, former Home Secretary and Foreign Secretary as well as former Lord High Chancellor for Great Britain, Mark Knopfler, lead singer of the band Dire Straits, Piers Sellers, veteran of 3 space shuttle missions, and Harold Shipman, one of the most prolific serial killers in recorded history. So it's nice to know that I'm graduating from a University that produces the best of all fields: politics, music, science and murder.

Saturday 18 February 2012

Blog 125: Emotional Over Emoticons

Hey, it's my 125th post! That's gotta mean something right? I dunno if I'm meant to do something special... although I now realise I've probably done about 25 posts in the last year which isn't very much if you think about it.

SO, emoticons, we all know what they are because you're on the internet right now and if you've been on the internet EVER you've no doubt been pestered by tiny little yellow faces mimicking expressions so that the robots can learn how to do our emotions back to us so we think they're human and then they suddenly reveal the little switchboard under their tummies and shred us up with their suddently metal razor hand.

But obviously, as they're learning, the robots haven't quite got it right yet. The facebook robots have probably perfected the :P face from the amount of times I've done it, let alone everyone else, but skype hasn't quite got the nack, and when you do :P on skype, which I do alot because of my facebook-learned habits, there's a little yellow man doing a very explicit tongue gesture at whoever you're talking to: possibly a girl you kinda have a crush on, or a guy mate who's very homophobic, or even you're own mother :/

Then there's the progression of the standard smileys. So you start with the best of the best :D a smiley grin. Next step down :), then :/ then :( then :'( and they're progressively getting sadder and sadder, which makes me feel :(. But they never go far enough, and this is my main complaint. Where do you go from :D or :'( ? the amount of times I've written :( followed by :'( and then realising I need to burst into tears is mad, and yet there's never any emoticon to satisfy this needs. However, on facebook you can get these faces: o:) angel, 3:) devil, <(") penguin (^^^) shark, :3 man with inexplicable cat expression and even a robot that I can't remember the code for. But seriously, when was the last time something was said to you on facebook chat that made you feel like a penguin, shark or catman? But if I wanna cry all over facebook, I can't! It's ridiculous.

Of course the only reason I wanna cry on facebook is because I'm clearly unstable. Crying on it's own is a sign of sadness, but crying via facebook emoticons is wrong. But the fact that I want to and I can't just makes me want to cry more, so yes it's screwed up but it'd get more screwed up if they don't fix it.

:'(


Wednesday 18 January 2012

Blog 124: Twevenge

Last year at university they decided that we should all get twitter. Now I already had twitter, but for some reason they wanted me to get it again.

So I did. I set up @Red_Wine_Design and followed myself from both accounts, and got that module over and done with and then signed out of that other account and stayed that way for a long time.

Then this morning, I decide I'd get rid of the bloody thing, and so I deactivated it. Done. Dusted.



Or was it?

As you know, Zombies and Vampires are all in fashion at the moment. I mean, ever since Shaun of the Dead and 28 Days Later it seems everyone's coming back from the dead.

Including my old twitter account. I got another email about 30 minutes ago.

Welcome back, Red Wine Design.

Your Twitter account has been reactivated. You can now log in with your current account password.

Bit weird...

But it gets stranger. Because now my old twitter account is hell-bent on revenge-haunting me for killing it.

I got another email, with the subject heading "Red Wine Design has sent you a direct message on Twitter!"



Want to lose any weight? go here: newsmedia25.com best product for losing weight
Direct message sent by Red Wine Design (@Red_Wine_Design) to you (@MikePasquale) on Jan 18, 3:12 PM.

It's calling me fat. What a twonk.