On the offensive…

I can’t help thinking that we keep getting upset over the wrong things. The government has just given away billions of pounds of tax payer’s money to bail out the big banks, money that might have been spent on our hospitals, schools, insert-your-societal-concern-here etc., and nobody says a word. But put up a contentious and edgy advert that attempts to discourage people from smoking and everybody is up in arms: Sex, violence and don’t forget race: the most distasteful commercials of the year.

Personally, I can’t think of any recent campaign that even got close to this advert in terms of showing up smoking for what it really is. It’s unpleasant, addictive and dangerous, and the visual metaphor is totally justified. I also imagine that the morally bankrupt PR minions of the tobacco companies were having a celebratory drink or two over this particular campaign being pulled. And who knows, perhaps they even had a hand in it?

Complaints that the ads were “offensive, frightening and distressing” are entirely missing the point, as this is after all exactly what they were meant to be. Never mind that it might just have done some good and made some think twice before indulging in the disgusting habit, we can’t have the precious children seeing images like this!

Personally I think we should have seen a few more pictures of bodies on mortuary slabs, but that’s just me.

I wouldn’t attempt to defend any of the other adds mentioned as they were all crass at best, and perhaps racist at worst. But like all of these issues, I’m sure that more people take offense because they feel that they should rather than because of any real slight or personal injury. The Trident ad was crap, not because it was racist, but because it was an exemplar of the type of stinking and gone off cheese that passes for advertising creativity these days.

Currently…

Reading James Whale: A New World of Gods and Monsters.

Listening to Dark Matter by I.Q.

Playing Mario Kart Wii.

Humphrey Littleton R.I.P.

Jazz legend Lyttelton dies at 86

I’m not a jazz fan, but loved I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue which I was lucky enough to get to see being recorded at the Victoria Theatre a while back. Humph was one of the most charming and witty of men and will be missed greatly. I’ll be playing my audio CD of the show in tribute today!

The Killing Joke

DC have re-released Alan Moore’s classic Batman story, The Killing Joke, in a special deluxe edition. I’ve got a first-print edition wrapped up in nice plastic bag at home, but will probably pick this up as well as it’s been some years since I last read it. Along with Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, this has to be one of the greatest Batman stories ever inked.

The First Post website has a great gallery of images from the story here.

Rebranding cock-up?

Cribbed shamelessly from The Times website, this story had me giggling: When Government branding goes wrong…

The UK Office of Government Commerce has spent a fair few quid on revamping their logo to look like this:

Yes it’s dull and unimaginative, but it does get a bit more interesting when you turn it onto its side:

Perhaps it needs to be adopted as emblematic of the government as a whole?

A load of Horlicks…

I was waiting to see how this one panned out: Live Q&A with Nicola Horlick.

I even considered posing a sarcastic question of my own to the ’supermum’ herself but then thought better of it. You see, I’ve never really understood the fascination that Nicola Horlick holds for certain sections of the media. Assuming that the above link contains the only questions that were fit to print, I’m obviously not alone.

Far from being an inspirational figure, Horlick seems to draw nothing but derisive remarks from most people. Yes, it’s something to do with the huge amounts of money that she earns, but I think that it’s also about the deep suspicion that many hold for anyone who really takes their career that seriously. With millions in the bank and a large brood of children, surely she was in a unique position to spend quality time with them away from the rat race. Instead, it all seems to be about a ‘look at me, aren’t I special!’ attitude.

Hell, my mum had five kids and carved out several different careers over the years, but it was never bragged about in the local papers…

Harry Potter and the case of indefensible greed!

I’ve been reading the stories coming from the shameful case in the US where JK Rowling (© Warner Bros) has taken some guy to court over his attempts to publish a lexicon of the Harry Potter novels: Potter book ‘threat’ to authors.

It would be lazy to accuse Rowling (© Warner Bros) of just being greedy. Yes, we know that she’s one of the richest women in the world and doesn’t need any more money and all that. What really puzzles me is how she can defend her work as some sort of precious thing that is being appropriated by a shameless opportunist. Though lets face it, the target of this case is one of those equally baffling things, an adult who seems to have made the Harry Potter stories into the focus of his whole life. But he’s a fan, pure and simple and his website, upon which his book is based, is apparently so comprehensive that Warner Bros and even Rowling (© Warner Bros) herself have used it in the past as a reference source.

Rowling’s (© Warner Bros) position is frankly laughable. Yes, her books may be fun for the kids to read, but she’s cribbed characters, plot-lines and themes from just about every other fantasy book out there. She’s just a children’s author who got lucky, she was in the right place at the right time and she sure as hell is not great writer. At best she’s a competent wordsmith with a nose for a good yarn.

And let’s face it, she seems to have very few qualms about selling on rights to her creations as long as the deal is lucrative enough. She sold the rights to Warner in order for them to produce a series of ever more convoluted CGI ridden merchandising vehicles disguised as movies, and more recently we hear the news that she’s got a Harry Potter theme park under construction in Orlando Florida.

We all know the arguments about intellectual property rights, but this just seems mean-spirited and greedy. And judging by the other comments I’ve read from around the news sites and the blogosphere, Rowling (© Warner Bros) has lost a lot of respect and admiration from many of her erstwhile fans over her histrionics.