Profound messages printed on T-shirt packaging at NEXT – Published: 25 Mar 2009

NEXT, makers of blue, grey and brown clothes, lead the way when it comes to making everyone in the UK look roughly the same.

Well done I say. Having to coordinate colours, if we’re honest, is beyond us. Go into any living room in Britain and you’ll know this is true.

Limiting clothing to two and half colours is a weight off, frankly.

But for Next, the help doesn’t stop there. Oh no. They have plans for our minds, not just our legs, arms, rude bits and upper torsos.

Witness Next making big strides into to world of high street, off-the-peg Confucianism (see picture).

Whether you work hard, play hard or both, from time to time we all need to relax.

That’s just beautiful, that is. On a packet of three t-shirts they expect you’ll sleep in (consecutively, not all three at once).

If you analyse this profound message, it breaks down like this: whether you a [where a is any activity] or b [where b is a different sort of activity], or a and b, from time to time you’ll need to x [where x is a not-necessarily-related essential bodily function].

So, let’s try reworking it with new a, b and x‘s.

Whether you lick the end of pencils, see visions of death in puddles or both, from time to time we all need to visit the toilet.

A suitable maxim to stick on the packaging of an air freshener, perhaps? 

Whether you enjoy touching the surface of your eyeballs, collect things you find on buses or both, from time to time we all need to reproduce.

Actually, I wish I hadn’t started writing this. I mean…if you stop and think about this too deeply you’ll despair.

Grown adults, paid wages, intelligent graduates all, working in teams, and they get out of bed each day and think up a massage to print on the plastic wrapping of a packet of t-shirts.

That’s what our economy is based on. People doing jobs like that.

There aren’t emoticons to express…

Hello sir, welcome to Next.

Modolf – Published: 27 Jan 2009

Of course the big question that Political Historians have so far failed to answer is just what would the 20th Century have looked like if Hitler had been a mod?

For a start it’s hard to imagine anyone goose-stepping in bowling shoes. And the Blitzkrieg would surely not have crushed Poland quite so effectively if it had been the Lambretta-krieg.

A more positive hypothesis puts forward the idea that the whole of World War II may have been reduced to no more than a weekend of brawling with greasers and pigs on the seafront at Brighton.

A bottle of Pepsi, a snog with a local girl and a dance to The Who might have pacified the ambitious young Austrian. I suppose we’ll never know.

Next week, we look at what a New Romantic Joseph Goebbels might have been like.

Your heritage is safe with us – Published: 16 Dec 2008

Take a look at this amazing, grade one listed building in Leeds…

And then read about how well they’re looking after it…

I remember studying this building for an ‘A’ level in art history. I thought at the time this structure should be a major attraction and celebrated, locally and nationally. Now parts are falling down.

Though this is a rather extreme example, you see this sort of thing all over in the North. Visit Liverpool and see dozens of fantastic buildings simply falling to bits.

Temple Mills collapses

Critical Mass – is a legal protest event – Published: 1 Dec 2008

It’s now official. The Police had tried to ban it, on the grounds that they needed an application in advance of a protest.

The Judge said not so.

Read about it here on the BBC. 

 

 

 

It is inconceivable that Parliament could have intended, by a sidewind, to outlaw events such as Critical Mass

 

With Remembrance Sunday approaching… – Published 8 Nov 2008

…I thought I’s post this. Another sobering reminder of just why we had to fight those Germans. 

One One Eight – Published: 7 Oct 2008

The 118 118 guys will never be endearing and it’s time everyone involved just blummin well grew up and accepted that.

You can’t just keep throwing money at the problem.

Sisyphus-like, 118 118 have pushed this pair of mustachio’d boulders, year after laughless year. God knows how many millions they’ve spent or how many different out of work actors they’ve wigged and tached-up.

‘You’re crazy athletes from the 70s! Just run! Be endearing!’ yells the director and off they go again.

They’ve been frozen in blocks of ice, they’ve turned them into the A Team, they reduced them to mimi-me 118s; every almost-quirky, slightly-not-good-enough trick in the book.

Six years have passed now. Still no one cares.

Comments

‘A visitor‘ left this comment on 10 Oct 08

Can you name another directory service… 118 er, something?

‘UrbanCrap’ left this comment on 10 Oct 08

Good point.

____________________________

At last a religion I can really believe in…

www.tarvu.com
It’s so easy to join!

Total Film – Four Stars **** – Published 28 Sep 2008

Has anyone ever noticed how movie magazine Total Film gives (more or less) every single big budget film a review of four stars? 

Total Film ****

If you don’t care about integrity, it’s actually a great idea. 

Every major film release can count on this one reasonably positive endorsement from this one reasonably well-known movie magazine. Distributors can breath a sigh of relief and slap it on their poster.

Total Film can count on remaining reasonably good friends with the stars, get reasonably good publicity by appearing on all those posters and continue to be reasonably sure of being invited to all the junkets.

As a business model I’d give it (yes) four stars.