Humour

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A turd cannot be polished by increased punctuation

April 24, 2010 in Humour, Internet | No comments

From a video I posted on YouTube (my painful review of the film Moon, if you can cast your minds that far back), where I might have described the place I live as being one of the “sickeningly middle-class” areas of Surrey:

What do you mean “sickeningly middle class” you arrogant twit.

Middle class people are the ones who pay the bloody taxes that keeps the layabouts in luxury while they sit on their fat arses doing nothing but being jealous and insulting of anyone with money, who actually work for a living and deserve their little luxuries, unlike the so-called “poor”.

You must a another bloody loony-left student, arrogant and ignorant, god help the UK is all I can say.

(Incidentally, I believe this to be a repeat troll: a similar comment was posted a month or so back, which I deleted because I took it to be a one-off instance of fuckwittery.)

Not only do I find this comment personally offensive, due to the fact that both my parents are in full-time employment and the only reason I’m not is thanks to education and a general job shortage getting in the way; it also demonstrates precisely the hidden subtext of that brief throwaway remark.

Middle-class people—not all middle-class people, mark you, but a large proportion of them—have a tendency to be incredibly smug and arrogant. This might be because this particular subset believes everything the Daily Mail says, and considers all us common people to be benefit-riding dossers. (I’m not denying that such people exist—in fact, I wish death upon them—but the Mail vastly overinflates/conveniently omits figures to sell more papers.)

Perhaps it was a nasty remark to make: of course it was made in jest. Of course, if you were offended, please take this to be my reserved apology – and grow a thicker skin, for Christ’s sake.

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This ad screams “an American committee conceived me”

March 10, 2010 in Humour, video | No comments

This ad, for Microsoft’s Bing search engine, begins popping up on our screens tonight.

In theory, it ticks all the boxes:

  • Has something distinctly British (the London Underground) to appeal to a British audience.
  • Features people the audience can relate to.
  • Features a small, cute child in a school uniform to appeal to mothers.
  • Everyone is implausibly attractive.
  • It features some zany humour to get people talking about it.

However, it’s not a good ad for two reasons:

  • You have to be either blind or stupid to get lost on the Tube. And you certainly don’t ask strangers for directions.
  • The product itself is relegated to seven seconds at the end of the ad, which doesn’t even show it being used properly. The first twenty-four seconds is junk, with a dramatic segment bearing almost no relation to the “what has information overload done to us?” tagline. It might make idiots laugh, but the fact Bing itself doesn’t appear until the end means you’re likely to miss it entirely.

(Disclaimer: I’m not an advertiser, I’m just applying common sense.)

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How not to give a presentation to a group of high school/college/university students:

  1. Use Comic Sans and shocking pink in the PowerPoint presentation.
  2. Demean your audience by calling them “children” or “kids”.
  3. Fumble with the technology aspect of things and then try and make do by just playing the video that should have played in PowerPoint in RealPlayer.
  4. Attempt to relate to your audience by pointing out that you are, in fact, a pushy parent.
  5. Pick on people in the audience to try and demonstrate your point.
    • Especially at random, with something like a teddy bear or a smiley-face sticker hidden under the seat.
  6. Don’t bother to adapt your presentation for your audience.
  7. Get your audience to fill out worksheets.
    • On dead trees.
  8. Overrun.

March 9, 2010 | 1 comment

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