I have to smile and stop to watch for a minute every time that show is on. It’s such a feel-good show! They build amazing houses in so little time and with the help of so many people, it’s crazy!
Can they build me a house that size please?
Latest adventures…
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A little chuckle on this drab Monday morning
The Washington Post’s Mensa Invitational once again asked readers to take anyword from the dictionary, alter it by adding, subtracting, or changing one letter, and supply a new definition.
Here are this year’s winners.
1. Intaxication: Euphoria at getting a tax refund, which lasts until you realize it was your money to start with.
2. Reintarnation: Coming back to life as a hillbilly.
3. Bozone (n.): The substance surrounding stupid people that stops bright ideas from penetrating. The bozone layer, unfortunately, shows little sign of breaking down in the near future.
4. Foreploy: Any misrepresentation about yourself for the purpose of getting laid.
5. Cashtration (n.): The act of buying a house, which renders the subject inancially impotent for an indefinite period.
6. Giraffiti: Vandalism spray-painted very, very high.
7. Sarchasm: The gulf between the author of sarcastic wit and the person who doesn’t get it.
8. Inoculatte: To take coffee intravenously when you are running late.
9. Hipatitis: Terminal coolness.
10. Osteopornosis: A degenerate disease. (This one got extra credit.)
11. Karmageddon: It’s like, when everybody is sending off these bad vibes,right? And then, like, the Earth explodes and it’s like, a serious bummer.
12. Decafalon (n.): The grueling event of getting through the day consuming only things that are good for you.
13. Glibido: All talk and no action.
14. Dopeler effect: The tendency of stupid ideas to seem smarter when they come at you rapidly.
15. Arachnoleptic fit (n.): The frantic dance performed just after you’ve accidentally walked through a spider web.
16. Beelzebug (n.): Satan in the form of a mosquito, that gets into your bedroom at three in the morning and cannot be cast out.
17. Caterpallor (n.): The color you turn after finding half a worm in the fruit you’re eating.
And the pick of the literature:
18. Ignoranus: A person who’s both stupid and an ***hole -
Voicevertising
So recently, we’ve seen someone sell his forehead for advertising, followed by a woman selling her rather large (and saggy) bosom. When another woman sold her pregnant belly as advertising space, we thought this madness would have to stop.
But of course, if something proves profitable, it’ll keep going! Via Synthesis, I found out that Floyd Hayles has sold his voice to Halls Fruit Breezers.
Floyd Hayes, a Brooklyn, NY resident, put his “voicevertising” services up for sale on eBay, offering to shout out a brand name every fifteen minutes for an entire week — no matter what location or situation, i.e. subways, elevators, bars, clubs, weddings or even business meetings. (Don’t worry…he will be allowed to sleep.) It’s a contemporary spin on the traditional town crier, and what brand could be more fitting to purchase the services than HALLS Fruit Breezers, a throat drop that cools and soothes dry, scratchy throats, which Hayes is likely to experience on this mission.
I’m still unsure whether I find it clever or utterly stupid. All I know is if I ran into him before my morning coffee, he’d get my knee in the gonads and discover himself a wonderful castrato voice. Thankfully, I don’t live in NYC.
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I'm becoming a housewife…
One of the best inventions in the world: The DysonForget your old vacuum, what you need is a Dyson. We bought the DC04 today from Sainsbury’s, after thinking for a long time that we needed to get a Dyson to clean this place up properly before we moved and because our new place would have much more carpeted areas.
We filled up half the tube by hoovering only the main area of the lounge and bedroom. For those who have seen our flat, that’s only a few meters square! The carpets look SO much cleaner! I can’t believe how much dust and crap was in the carpet! :S
Les Débrouillards m’ont fait découvrir les acariens, Dyson me fait découvrir une façon de m’en débarrasser!! I feel like a dust mite Ghostbuster with my Dyson!
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My furball of a brain
I’m willing to sell or part-exchange this brain for a working one, one that can reach some kind of calm and relaxation every once in a while.
I’ve been dreaming (nightmaring?) of driving tests, of house purchases, of job interviews and computers crashing. Closing my eyes doesn’t help me calm down, I see lists in front of my eyes and I start getting tense again.
So this weekend, I’ll go lay on the grass outside, I’ll look at the stars and try to find that feeling of Zen again.
Time for a good thorough Spring cleaning in my head.
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Product Placement on TV
The BBC Magazine brings up an issue that has been bobbing around quite a bit recently…
Advertising has creeped into every part of our life. We don’t even blink anymore when a movie’s plot is centered around a commercial product. (Think Cast Away and FedEx?) But now, this has become a regular occurence on TV in the US, through blatant placements like Coca Cola drinks in American Idol, and the taboo in Britain seems to be melting away.
The new series of 24 is sponsored heavily by Ford. There was discussion as to whether this would affect the British screening of the show . The key reasoning to let it slide was that it did not affect the plot.
The argument to allow more and more flexibility in product placement now goes beyond the original attempt at “creating realism” in tv shows. (Picture a show where every pub is full of bottles of beer says “BEER” and kitchens full of boxes saying “CEREAL”. You’re laughing? That’s how it used to be!)
The argument is this: TV advertisers believe the advent of personal video recorders (PVRs) such as Sky+, which are also increasingly available on other platforms like Freeview, spell doom for their trade because they make fast-forwarding through commercial breaks a doddle.
The power money can have over the plot of a story or the integrity of a show mixing entertainment and facts is going to prove dangerous. We’ve already seen how easily American TV decisions can be swayed by cold hard cash. Now, it’ll be a test of whether TV producers in Britain choose morals and genuine story lines over easy money through Corrie’s big bad guy popping by McDoodoo’s for a yummy lunch. (Hey gimme a break, I don’t watch soaps and don’t know what the characters are called!)
Check out Brand Channel to find out which brands are shown in which recent movies. Did you actually spot that many when you watched the movie? Probably not, yet the placement was working its magic on you!
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Healthier School Meals
Following Jamie’s School Dinners tv series, the British government is finally reacting to the needs for better food in school cafeterias.
Chef Jamie Oliver has welcomed the government’s extra £280m to tackle the school meals “crisis” in England. At least 50p will be spent on each primary school lunch and 60p in secondaries. Some primaries currently spend as little as 37p on ingredients.
Cynics will say the money will go to the private caterers and never really reach the plates of the students or that Jamie is doing it for personal publicity. Yeah, sure! Both of those comments have truth to them, but how many parents and children will look for chicken breasts rather than re-formed chicken next time they shop for chicken nuggets after seeing Jamie’s presentation on what’s in those nuggets? A good few will at least have the memory looming about when choosing!
Awareness of health and eating habits is a start. Now, it’s up to the parents to teach their kids what good food is, both at school and at home!
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Red Letter Days
Ok this is going to be short and sweet because god knows where the evening’s gone (oh yeah Andrew spent it on the phone to the mortgage lender!)
I just need to get this off my chest – I can’t believe how much of a rip-off Red Letter Days is! For those not familiar with the business, it’s a company that creates vouchers for special days, either spa days, snowboarding lessons, a Zorbing experience or a day out with a stylist.
We received a Red Letter Day voucher from friends for the wedding in July, and we knew the expiration date was coming soon so we picked a Rasul temple Chakra mud spa experience. Since the wedding, the Rasul temple for two had gone up in price. Red Letter refused to honour the voucher and wanted me to pay an extra £25 to get it, otherwise it was only for one person! So after spending 45 minutes on the phone every time I called them, I agreed to paying the extra. Now with all the house and other ongoing things, we decided next Monday turned out to be a bad day, so I called them back and tried to re-book for a later date. Their policy says only death in the family, major illness or burglary/major damage to the house was justification enough to change a booking! Saying it was a wedding gift didn’t sway them in the least.So instead I called the wonderful Elemis Spa in London and re-booked for July directly through them. It should be a really lovely experience for the day after our first wedding anniversary.
In brief, don’t book through Red Letter Days EVER! Use Google and your imagination and pick a nice activity for your friends and book it directly. You won’t get ripped off money-wise and won’t be stuck with their awfully inflexible terms and conditions!
I don’t understand how Rachel Elnaugh on Dragon’s Den can stand proud when she says she created Red Letter Days, it’s a ripoff business and in this day and age of Googling and personal research, it’s an obsolete company. To quote my friend VegCat, “Bite me, Rachel!”
Note: I forgot to say, Elemis Spa even allowed us to change the booking to a weekend or late evening (they close at 9pm), while Red Letter Days strictly limited bookings to weekdays during the day. Again, proving that booking directly with the activity of your choice gives more flexibility!
The Spa people were very friendly on the phone while the Red Letter phone monkeys sighed and moaned like I was disturbing them! Pfft we know who I’m going to call next time!
Edit 30/09/05: If you’ve had problems with RLD, check out this post for advice! A forum has been created for you to discuss problems!
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Orthorexia: A Modern Illness
With the back-and-forth pull between the attraction to junk food some people have and the opposite movement to be healthy and free of toxins, a new name has been given to the more common than ever obsession with healthy eating. Dr Steven Bratman has named it orthorexia nervosa: literally, “fixation on righteous eating.”
I mean who else can identify the nutritional value of a product at 20 paces? Who else keeps a log book of the calorific breakdown of all their meals?
Who else painstakingly coasts the shelves for produce that is organic, no added sugar, low in saturated fats, high in essential fatty acids, locally produced, packaged in biodegradable cellulose, with a big fat fair-trade cherry on top?
Although I wouldn’t say it’s a very common obsession over here in Britain as there isn’t quite as much junk food temptation at all times, therefore less of a backlash into healthy eating. People just seem to eat averagely healthy, with some but less people reaching into the extremes of junky eating or obsessively healthy eating.
On the other hand, I can certainly say some friends in their early 20s over in Canada exhibited these exact symptoms. Of course, it’s fantastic to hold an interest in eating healthy and knowing what’s in our food, but it shouldn’t take over one’s life.
Without going into depths of the why and how of eating disorders, this certainly strikes me as another symptom of the ideals of perfection we all seem to try to reach in today’s world.
Via BBC Magazine.
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We'll Mitt Again!
Via the Canadian Expat blog, a cute discovery:
The National Mitten Registry contains a list of mitts that were lost during the winter months so instead of buying another pair, you can try and find your mate! Unfortunately, at 40 lost mittens across the country, you might freeze your tootsies for a while until you find the lost one!It’s so cute, even for the National Post.
that canadian girl 