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.

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.

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.

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.

:'(

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.

Blog 123 - My Cow Experience

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i47HoiM0Au8

Watch this, but beware it's got strong language plus some pretty disturbing stuff is said.
And then I'm gonna rip her apart the only way I know how. Point by point dissection of what she says swivel kicked into her silly little head. She'll never read this, because she's probably illiterate. But I'll write it anyway.

It begins "what's this country come to, a load of black people and a load of ____ing polish?" she then slurs a bit, and goes "see what I mean?"

Instantly, and I'm not Sherlock Holmes, we can see she's not all there. I mean, 1) she can't talk, and 2) anyone else think it'd be silly to sit there slagging off foreigners on a tram full of foreigners? She even goes on to point out everyone who's not english. Good idea.

Next up, "sort out your own countries, don't come and see mine. Britain's nothing now...my britain is F__ all now, britain is F__ all."
Cos of people like you.

When it's pointed out to her that there's little kids, she says "yeah fine, I've got a little kid here". You shouldn't.

"go back to where you come from, go back to F__ing niggagriga" (or something). So she didn't get an A for geography, I imagine. At this point the guy behind her stands up and I'm so annoyed at the person next to him cos this woman needs a slap.

The african woman points out that if they weren't here to do the jobs they do, they wouldn't get done. Which is definitely true. The racist goes mental saying that she works and this is her British country, and that the african woman isn't british because she's black.

Then the other english woman goes sick on the racist which is wicked. Good for her.

How many times will people have to keep reminding people like this that nobody's pure english anymore. In fact, it's because england was so rubbish that we're a mix of almost all of Europe. Britain's greatest time was probably the British Empire (made up of lots of different countries) and that was WAY after pure englishness had been lost in a sea of french, spanish, italian, german, scandinavian etc.

Sorry this post is a bit serious. But this blog's mainly for me, to be honest. And my one reader, James :P

Blog 122: Random Romance

This is a blog with a bit of a difference... and maybe it's a possible twist from a teenager's ranting blog into a grown man's (because apparently that's what I am now) more grown up blog. Don't worry, I'm not going to start writing about politics, and hopefully it won't actually be serious or anything, but instead of undirected rants and attacks on those around me, perhaps this blog can bring more to people who read it and make some kind of point?

Or perhaps not. Let's see shall we?

Maybe it's just me in my lonely little room who sometimes, very occasionally, completely over reacts when the smallest attention is payed to me by a pretty girl. For example, I've basically fallen in love with a girl on my course (actually to be fair, she doesn't give me any attention... she's just amazing) and I don't know her name and I've never ever spoken to her. Not to mention the Chicken Stock girl you may remember from my stories (have I ever posted that in a blog?) who laughed at one of my jokes, and I decided I would make it my life's mission to make her my wife. Needless to say, that fell apart after about a week, when I realised she just laughed out of politeness, and out of 10 there was 0 chance of her ever being interested. Don't forget the woman in NYC who I never even saw, I just heard her voice behind me, and I instantly fell in love with her because of it.

But I have spoken to other people who get the same thing (sort of). And so it must be more common than just me wandering around falling in love with everyone all the time. So I thought I'd write something nice just to capture those feelings, however stupid they are, just because it's funny and I'm very bored more than anything else. And so here it is. I call it "Letter to the Girl in Wilko"

To the girl in Wilko who told me that you have no facepaint left in stock,

Firstly, don't worry that you had none left, I understand that it's not your fault, and obviously, due to the fact that I was looking for some the day after Hallowe'en, it was probably my bad timing that was the root of the problem. I'm sure you haven't been upset about not being able to find me any but in case you were, I'd like you to know that it doesn't bother me.

Secondly, and I hope this doesn't seem to forward, but I think I might love you. For those brief 10 seconds where we exchanged words, you looked at me and it was at that moment that I fell deeply into the biggest, bluest, most beautiful eyes that I've ever encountered in all my time on this earth.

I never believed in magic up until today, but when I met you, albeit briefly, I knew that no normal earthly force could have conceived you and that you must have been the creation of something super or even supra natural.

Now I'm not the most confident of men, and obviously I'm not James Bond, partly because he's a fictional character, but also because I'm not a secret agent. In fact, I'm just some guy who lives in a small room, draws pictures for his relatively unimpressive university degree, and occasionally watched films or plays on his X-box 360. Because of this, there's no way that I can even begin to think of any reason why you would want to talk to me. For this reason, I didn't try and speak to you longer, I didn't ask you out, I didn't get your number and I didn't tell you how incredibly gorgeous you look despite the tacky wilko uniform. And so instead, I went home and wrote this letter which you'll never ever see.

I wish I could be more confident, but I'm not. So instead of getting to know you and entering into what could have been an incredible time in my life, I returned home with my newly purchased toaster and I sat down and wrote this. And after this I'll probably make my self some beans on toast (and see how good the toaster is) and then carry on playing the new batman game.

Maybe one day I'll pluck up the courage to talk to you, maybe you'll somehow find me interesting and maybe something will happen. But I doubt it. However, I thought I'd write all these feelings down, because it would be wrong if they were to be lost forever.