tptb dragoon

Classic poses

Here's a flier from the AA. The AA are a big organisation with decent revenue and a long history. So how come they consider it good sense to send out such basic advertising messages? OK, I'm no expert in these matters and I'm only showing you the front cover and maybe people much more clued up than me can point to the good points in this but I just don't see it.

Perhaps we should write in with some suggestions to solve the poor girl's dilemma? Here's a few:

1. A life

2. Not an acting job

3. Not the bloody AA anyway who increased my premium by 50% because I called them out a few times. Aha! Now my prejudice shows through. I switched to the RAC by the way and haven't called them out at all so everyone's a winner there I guess.

Of course the imagery is deliberate: vulnerable blonde woman on the front and inside is a comfortably mature roadside engineer to whisk her off her tyres. Not quite gratuitous use of the female form but that still goes on - I can't find the example of this I was looking for but will post it when I do.

A Thorough Cleaning

A guest picture (thank you Sarah) from Spain. This stuff is probably biological, pop-o-matic and clean round the bend (like Lord Harpic was apparently).

Insurance is Hell?

I hate Northern Rock plc. Well why not? You don't have to be rational about these things but as it is, I am and they suck. Just take my word for it. Anyway, they have sent me an annual mortgage statement. The "Subject" line of the letter is

Paying too much for your Home Insurance - why not give us a call?

Well, first off, because I don't like you and secondly, they add: "There's nothing worse than paying too much for your Insurance". What a load of rubbish, I can't think of lots of things worse. Like having a mortgage with Northern Rock for instance.

Free Lunch

We ordered a chinky take-away last night and they gave us free fortune cookies and two green teabags. Apparently the teabags are a valuable gift so I intend to auction them, separately, on E-bay and see what I get.

Christmas Card Danger

The cover-your-own-arse approach to life is getting out of hand. We received a rather expensive looking christmas card from my cousin. On the back was a warning "Warning! Not suitable for children under 36 months due to small parts". It's a card for goodness sake. Who sends a baby a card? Who lets them play with it? Who cares? Anyway, I am perfectly aware that babies have small parts.

At the end of the warning it said "Please retain this information for future reference" so I have cut it out and chucked the card away.

Here is the evidence:

There's many a slip

between cup and lip. Not sure what that means. However, it is a Slinky Link (tm) into the slipway a few yards from the house that is being rebuilt.

As you can see that caterpillar digger thing is going to struggle to get through the gap. I'm not sure what the Cornish wheelbarrow is for either:

The Xmas Party

Christmas, as well all know, is an over commercialised excuse for having fun and here is Roy joining in on the actvities with the hat he wears most of the year anyway.

We went to Jongleurs in Camden Town and it was good fun although the comedy wasn't as good as it good have been (have a listen).

A few more random piccies....

Light Wars

You have probably got a street near you where this stuff goes on. Promoted by the electricity companies who are falling on hard times are the street wars of shame where normal, shy retiring people battle to have the most rediculous Xmas display going. I love it although I have almost crashed my car whilst rubber necking. The problem is how to take a photo of them? Here's my first sad attempt.

Anyway, its that time of year so I thought we would have another competition. Send in your photos of rediculous over the top Xmas displays and you could win a candle. Yes a whole candle. The only rules are that it you must take the photo and it can't be of your own house.

Remember these?

We've all needed these in the past at some point or other.

Dick and Dom

It's always been very fashionable, in TV terms, to have a dynamic due like Morecambe and Wise, Hale and Pace, Tom and Jerry etc. On Children's BBC on Saturdays they have Dick and Dom who are pictured here with a very happy Ryan. They, and us of course, were at the preview of Holes which is a pretty damn good new Disney film which was being shown at the Phoenix in East Finchley. The Phoenix is an old cinema that is struggling to keep going and is run by volunteers. It was a very pleasant afternoon, augmented nicely I thought by my loud questioning of the subjects in the photo along the lines of "Who's the Dick around here?". I should get a job with kids.

Die young, stay pretty

The Gov just don't get it. Here is one of our vital youths gloriously rebelling by proudly holding aloft his packet of death sticks emblazoned with "Smokers Die Younger". I predict that there will be T-Shirts with this on. In fact T-Shirts with all those crazy slogans on. If you want to stop people from smoking then a) put the tax up by 1000% and b) have pictures of Alan Partridge smoking on the cover.

Dangerous Talk Costs Lives

Well those goons at Microsoft have been at it again, as you know, by closing the chatroom service. Of course one to one webcams are inherelently safe and you can't chat to people using the messenger service can you. Idiots. It's nice to see them spending a lot of money advertising this on the Tube.

Competition winner

As you probably know, or couldn't give a monkey's expletive about, I run fabulous competitions on here and the winner of the most recent one is Martyn. Martyn's entry was his bus pass which matched irrelvance with hilarity and resulted in a tatty bit of plastic with a stupid photo and he won because a) nobody else entred b) in fact he didn't enter c) we have just given him the old heave-ho from work d) I charged the company face value for the watch so ripped the company off whilst making the rest of us happy.

I think Alex was doing his Julian Clary impersonation. Martyn was obviously suprised and...

....no doubt delighted to receive such a wonderful prize:

especially as the customer statements I had wrapped it in would have been so dear to his heart. He is obviously very proud but what the hell is going on with Alex? Can't he control that face?

Unfortunately for Martyn he was a bit surprised to learn he had been sold a dud:

but at least now he knows how I feel now about him. I'm only joking Martyn!!!

ID Cards

Despite the back-lash against photo ID cards there are a lot of people who carry them. Sadly the photos on the cards are about 20 years out of date as we see here. Nice of The Finger to join in again.

Identity Parade

Do you recognise these young funky people? ID cards are funny things. We need to design ones for our company so I thought I'd run a competition. The winning design will win a watch...more of which later.

Nice finger pointing don't you think?

Advertising

Adverts can really get on your nerves and the web is exceptionally good at this. And I'm not talking SPAM here. Annoying pop up boxes that obscure the text and those with fake "close" buttons. And don't start me on those multiply generated new web browser windows you get when you, ahem, accidentally come across a porn site and you close the window and 15 sons of satan spawn themselves across your monitor and you can't close them and the kids are banging on the door and you have to throw a brick through the screen. No, don't start me.

Having said that, here is an advert for blogstop which is the sort of tedious word jiggery that keeps me amused and you might like it too. Oh and I like anagrams, my favourite xurrent one being "do rush my email" as an angaram for Summer Holiday as it seems an increasing amount of people read their email on their summer holiday (and I don't - other holidays I do though. I know - I'm a hypocritical, self-righteous git).

Odd job titles

This is Jules and he works for me. I didn't realise that he had a job title of Lateral IP Engineering which could explain the state of our network.

Be Secure

You can't be too careful these days and this antique shop, where the owner plays with the goods in the street, has gone to a lot of trouble to protect themselves by sticking this note in the corner of the window. I am reliably informed that the police aren't alarmed and they don't give a monkeys.

Road Enquiries

You can't have missed, assuming you are in the UK and reading this around the time I am posting it and of course that you can read, or possibly hear things. That's a lot of assumptions so I'll rephrase it. In fact by now you don't even know what I am talking about. Which (may) make two (or many more) of us. Take two:

You have probably (cunning eh?) seen the adverts for the new directory enquiries numbers. Dave has. So that's one person at least. Anyway, these guys had been shipped over in van and were putting on their uniforms. It's a tough life learning your lines when you're an actor. As I walked past one of them was rehearsing: "Double-one, double-eight, double-eight". It's beyond my capabilities. It's a crowded market place so this company has obviously decided to sort out the direction enquiries of people who get confused by new road systems. Cunning!

Telecom trouble

The photo shows one of these signs that they put up saying who is digging up the street. Against the title where it says "contract work on behalf of..." someone has added "they made me do it". I have long suspected that there are street vigilantes forcing people to dig up streets endlessly. I believe they are burying answers to long running treasure hunts and that other "competitors" have to dig up miles of tarmac in order to "get a clue". It is clear that most Telcos remain clueless.

Papers from heaven

Outside of my office is just a small light well. Not much of a view but it's home. Well it's not home of course but you know what I mean. Or do you? I often wonder what people mean by you know what I mean because of course you can't know that they know so you are trying to project the knowledge as a given and move on. But I digress. (Or do I?). Enough! Ed. These papers came fluttering down the other day, flapping in the breeze and came to rest in front of me. Your intrepid blogger ventured out to retrieve them and also to make sure that no valuable information that may be contained was left unscanned and unpublished on the Internet. Well at least someone has some moral fibre around here. Sadly it was just the chinless wonders who pass for my landlords who had a left a window open with a pile of papers stacked on the sill and a fan blowing directly at them and the contents simply showed how much they were ripping people off.

I shouted up the well - "your papers are down here" to be helpful.

Crapidges

The picture shows the staff entrance to that top hotel and restaurant Claridges (the restaurant is run by the appalling loud mouth Gordon Ramsay and they don't put their uneaten food into useful black binbags for the tramps to eat).

They got a company called Bright Ideas or something who must have a website but it's probably cringeingly bad so I haven't looked it up...on the other hand maybe I should, to get ideas from the staff on how to improve things. So the idea is that they press gang them into giving ideas by using blonde girls flashing their cleavages at them. Oh and they call it Claridea. I only hope they are being paid either 5p or £500,000 for this masterstroke of genius - I am not sure which would be more fitting.