Musings about adverts

MAY 2012 - ADVERTS DRIVE ME GRRRY


So my plan to write regularly to keep things building up in my head totally failed, then I realised I was waiting for something to happen to provide inspiration to make me want to write again.

Adverts in the United States of America are crazy, I don't really see adverts back home as I don't watch much normal TV.  I caught an advert trying to sell some product to aid weightloss and it's final line was "Being thin is great", no wonder some people have an issue with their body image when they are bombarded day and night with both images of airbrushed perfect people and lines like that during adverts.


People who work in advertising/marketing only have one agenda which is to make people buy more shit that they don't need.  I don't get how advertising works, I realize half of it is to inform people about certain products being out on the market but the amount of lies they tell in adverts is astounding such as Lynx with the offer that if you wear it you will become irresistible to the opposite sex, don't get me wrong I understand the appeal of that but its horseshit. Or adverts for cars which suggest you will be luckier in your love life which seems to be the focus of a lot of adverts, and seriously who takes their partner to McDonald's for "make up coffee", get some fucking class in your life if you are one of those people, or maybe your ex/soon to be ex- partner just wants a McDonald's breakfast and wants you to pay.

I hadn't really forgotten the amount of adverts that get thrown at you in the USA but how do they sit and watch so many adverts during a 22 minute program stretched to 30 minutes with adverts....8 minutes of adverts and then you get in the car and the billboards....oh the billboards especially the ones pushing political agendas such as the anti-abortion ones which in Florida are seemingly everywhere.

Another phenomena we don't have in England, although I may be wrong in this respect is the sheer amount of adverts they have in the USA for restaurants/fast food places, it's mind-boggling, it really is.  "eat here, no eat here, use this coupon and get this free, buy this one meal and get 5 kiddies meals free we know you don't have 5 children but we are preying on the fact you're a fat lazy dumbass who will think it's a bargain!" .  


Also free refills, that's what a nation with an obesity crisis needs! easier free access to sugar and sweeteners, the waitresses look at you like you're mental when you turn down a 3rd drink, granted most of the drink is fucking ice! Oh the ice! So much ice!! That's probably why they can do the free refills, anyone agree? I remember playing Theme Park and cranking up the amount of ice you put into the drinks to ensure that one drink does not quench the thirst!

We live in such a consumer capitalist society in the US and Britain that I can't see things getting better in turns of consumption and people only buying what they actually need which if were to happen would decrease the pressure on the rapidly depleting world's natural resources. Just saying ya know? New ways of thinking have to be approached 

A Blog Spread Across 2 Months (Ish)

5^th December 2012  blog # 2

Excuse the rather weak current title, it is simple a Work-In-Progress (WIP).

Today’s musings will cover a great amount of topics but not the chocolate bars, so all you chocoholics may wish to stop reading and get yourself a bar of chocolate before continuing on reading words which will open your eyes and mind to a whole other way of thinking, or not, and I will have merely wasted some of your precious time away from looking at videos of cats on Youtube. 

Damn, I really should take notes about what is in my head before sitting here with a keyboard because it flies all over the place, not literally though mind you.  Be a bit weird that a head floating around, unless of course it was dispensing wisdom. “Eat less red meat” “smile more” “don’t use facebook to whine about your unfair life”

On my toddle home last night, (this is a continuation of yesterdays writing so we are now on the 6^th.  It came into my head about sponges/leeches, and the various forms these people take, and how greed seems one of the main tenets of the human condition.   We probably all know someone who is a sponge personally and we know how people “sponge” off the Welfare State.  I am of the firm opinion of the necessity of the Welfare State, and the massive help it can give, but like most things it is open to abuse or people feel they are entitled to it like the MPs and their expenses, and executives and their massive unwarranted pay rises whilst the workers receive paltry increases. And when they talk about pay capping executive pay in the UK for executives we receive the same excuses, we will not get the best talent in the world to run businesses, but from the outside looking in, some are not doing a very good job at “running” the business.  Most of the time it is about trying to squeeze more work from a smaller workforce and placing unrealistic demands on sales so that people get a bonus so that they can get a decent wage, much I guess like the model of waiting staff and taxi drivers are expected to have their income boosted significantly by tips. (something I know of by speaking with a taxi driver who told me there is an expectation of the powers that be that they will make an extra 10% on their daily earnings through tips)

This writing was pre-Christmas as you can tell by the date, (please do not take that as an insult to your intelligence) I just wanted you to know that this part is post-Christmas writing with all the optimism that a New Year brings which can be quickly deflated by opening the newspapers.  This writing initially was about sponges that we all meet in our life, and maybe you are one of the sponges of life and you have no shame.  Maybe you leech off your friends, your loved one or family/parents.  One of those who takes without ever giving back. And you’re not a fun sponge like spongebob squarepants, you’re an unfun sponge!

I seem to have deviated about sponges/leeches so I am guessing that I what was narking me off has subsided into the background.  This is not a call to communism, but how that sponges take many forms from those who directly impact on our own lives to those who possibly seem like they don't but in all likelihood do,