Random Quotes and Findings

Because I’m too lazy to actually think, it’s always more convenient to have others do it for you:

• ” [...] a report published today shows the favourite reading material of young teenagers is Heat magazine. The celebrity gossip and news magazine comes top when 11- to 14-year-olds are asked to name their favourite read, followed by teenage girls’ magazine Bliss, which comes joint second with reading song lyrics online (Celebrity scandal and Anne Frank: the reading diary of British teenagers)
• “Face it: Most members of marketing departments are not living the same lives as their target audiences.” (Food for thought)
• A one sentence definition of happiness: “Find something more important than you are and dedicate your life to it.” (Only Dead Fish)

Away Week

I’m in Romania sorting some of my things for a week. Flying is fun. Except for when people at the airport mess things up! I wish I could come back. Twenty degrees Celsius and sunny weather won’t make it sunny on the inside.

Keep a Woman Busy

Dedicated mostly to Gorgeoux and our common love for shoes. And because the weather is crap outside and it’s a busy day. Or well, for no reason at all! Who needs reason when you have shoes?

Men and Women, How Curious

Discovery of the day: people come here searching for terms like ’stupid men’, ‘knickers’ or ‘girl habits’. Since you have a cynic like me writing, it must be that they missed the ‘annoying’ for ‘annoying girl habits’. What a great idea, let’s render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s…

1. Stupid men

It’s unclear whether women or men are searching for this and end up here but I don’t know a lot of stupid men. Secretly I might be able to think of a few but in case you can’t tell you should probably read ‘11 Signs That You Might be a Douchebag‘ and enlighten yourself.

2. Knickers

 

Angelina Jolie, not me! But she’s been kind enough to show us hers while still keeping it civil. Sorry if you were expecting something more raunchy, you can always go to Topshop and browse lingerie if you have a fetish…say it’s for your ‘girlfriend’.

3. Girl habits

We can talk about a few. We collect things that men will never use or understand. At least five creams for facial use, body cream, nail cream, eye cream, hair cream, shampoo, conditioner, three kinds of brushes and a comb, hair straighteners, concealer, foundation, lipstick, kohl crayon, mascara, objects that look like torture instruments. Unlimited amounts of nail polish. And we use them! Regularly! We know you like seeing us without ‘all that make-up’ but we’d look like cavewomen if we didn’t. We enjoy doing it. Any object that resembles a mirror is something we will stare at for a while or just a fleeting second as we walk past it on the street.

We like getting phone calls. Text messages. As a friend used to say, you know we’re crazy. If we don’t get calls we plot worst-case scenarios. If you’re getting a lap dance from another woman when you’re ‘out for a drink’, call us and tell us you’re ok and there’s nothing exciting going on but you’re thinking of us and we’ll go to bed happy. So let’s save each other some time and sanity and do call us.

 

We also like receiving chocolate! (Yes, yes I know) Try this experiment: leave someone at work some chocolate on her desk and see if she’s going to say ‘Oh what a cunt, how dare he give me chocolate?’. Unless she’s allergic, probably no objections!

 

We collect shoes. We love doing things with shoes – piling them up inside our wardrobes, running with shoes on, practising balancing acts…same with bags. We carry everything in them. We fantasize about the above even if we don’t need it. Other girls have it, therefore we want it! If we can’t have it we convince ourselves that we didn’t actually want it anyway. Only snobs would. Hmph. But oh how the thought creeps up on you when you least expect it…

And yeah so what if others don’t. I hang around a lot of girls that do.

Dead Drunk For a Tuppence

“The church is near, but the road is icy. The bar is far but we will walk carefully.” 

You can find the book at Amazon or you can just walk into your local book shop and pick one up. Refreshingly funny. For when I’ve got nothing better to say because my brain needs rest.

“The record for history’s largest cocktail belongs to British Lord Admiral Edward Russell. In 1694, he threw an officer’s party that employed a garden’s fountain as the punch bowl.

The concoction? A mixture that included 250 gallons of brandy, 125 gallons of Malaga wine, 1,400 pounds of sugar, 2,500 lemons, 20 gallons of lime juice, and 5 pounds of nutmeg.

A series of bartenders actually paddled around in a small wooden canoe, filling up guests’ cups. Not only that, but they had to work in 15-minute shifts to avoid being overcome by the fumes and falling overboard.

The party continued nonstop for a full week, pausing only briefly during rainstorms to erect a silk canopy over the punch to keep it from getting watered down. In fact, the festivities didn’t end until the fountain had been drunk completely dry.”

I’ve highlighted those bits that made me go I’ve always dreamt of swimming in alcohol of some sorts, perhaps it’s a woman thing? Bathing in champagne? Blame Hollywood for encouraging shallow self-obsessing! Some other drinking stories in the book or in this blog entry over at mentalfloss.

-1

I don’t feel very bright this week. In fact, I feel stupid and even clumsy and keep spilling stuff, breaking things, saying all the wrong things (in the worst possible cases), forgetting important details. By all means, if I tell anyone to stay away because I’m trouble, this time it’s serious.

Two days in the week and I have

• Spilt liquid foundation on the carpet in my room.
• Spilt coffee over important papers.
• Told someone another person is a c*nt and it turns out they’re friends. (and we later met face to face)
• Discovered that it’s still fun and games if I keep being honest. (‘Doesn’t change things, you were still a c*nt when you did that’ – ‘Yeah I know’)
• Lost my plane ticket and had to call KLM to find my number and code again.

It’s all going very, very bad. But to quote a post from some other guys, it’s zen to keep smiling while getting beaten (one way or another, don’t take it literally). Being a tough cookie helps sometimes but coming home makes me want to fall asleep and forget about things. This too shall pass as they say.

Mad Men

Not many films depict advertising agencies and the lives of those that work there. “Mad Men” on BBC 4 does. The synopsis for the last episode should make anyone in their right mind not want to watch it: “Peggy fends off the advances of a copywriter. Betty consults a specialist about her health issues.” More of that?

If you do decide you want to watch though, it’s available on BBC’s iPlayer and also for download (granted you’re in the UK) or on actual TV, Sundays at 10pm. Scamp was kind enough to give one quote from the last show (“Account executives – they’re all really good at something. But it’s not advertising.”) so I’ll humour everyone and post another one. It is a bit of an exaggeration of course. The head of creative doesn’t sleep with one woman only apart from his wife. He’s the one in the agency getting all the action so they were really portraying it very nicely. If you’re a woman that doesn’t work in advertising or marketing, don’t watch this or it will make you want to cut your wrists. Or you’d have a heart attack.

“You know what they [women] want? Everything, especially if the other girls have it.”

I Bought This Parrot and It Won’t Talk

Did you know that Saturday, meaning the 8th of March was International Women’s Day? Some countries may never heard of it and some would think that it’s just an excuse for other things which I won’t name but we all know – like for instance the Cisco Business Operations Manager talking about what Cisco does wherever it goes; sure a bit of PR is nice especially since women in IT are paid 20% less than men while in other places they might be almost extinct; most companies have been recognised as unfriendly towards women but they’re trying so we can at least give them that.

 

But that’s not my point really. In Romania people used to make a big fuss about it. They gave us days off and I remember this time last year my employer gave us some Jordi Labanda notebooks as a gift which was pretty nice. We wouldn’t go to school either on the day – most of our teachers were women so it makes sense, doesn’t it? If the day fell during the week it was like slowing everything down or just having a day off to chill and treat yourself to something nice. It would have been (and still is) considered rude not to contact (in any way) the few important women in your life – your mum, your wife, girlfriend, sister, nan, your boss maybe, co-workers etc. to give out some nice wishes.

What made it funny is the fact that most of the guys I knew had some moments of reminiscence thinking of all the wise words they heard from their mums or grandmothers. If saying “Happy Woman’s Day” sounded cheesy it was easily replaced by some “I hope you’re enjoying your day off or doing something nice” / “How about  – that sort of thing. With a different agency, a person that used to work in PR bought every woman in the office a flower and gave them out; not only was it the sensible thing to do considering his job but it made everyone’s day a lot brighter.

It’s a shame that it’s not always in the limelight – it deserves a lot more attention and certainly some more eye-candy wrapping; MySpace tried this weekend in its own style in a ’show your appreciation’ but it feels like teaching an old dog new tricks. You can’t do it by plastering Amy Winehouse on your front page background but you can certainly try! It is like trying to make a cat bark or wondering why your parrot won’t talk. It’s not exactly rooted in British culture but there’s still a lot to learn!

And it’s also a shame because it has so much potential. Everyone is trying to talk everyone else into an extra bank holiday day but there are loads more people that would be interesting in addressing women methinks. Boots? Here come the girls? Where?

Paris

Some pictures taken in Paris last year because as a rule of thumb, after two years of having been to a place, I’m either moving again or lose the photos and can only find them again by trashing the whole house and DVDs to which I burnt collections of documents and old stuff from work and other things.

I don’t really like Paris. Most people find it strange – how can you not like the city of lovers, lights, white wine, champagne, mussels, expensive food and shopping? Because that’s all there is to it. Take those away and, to quote a CAKE song, its virtues will go unknown and its cancer will eat it to the bone. Paris is only beautiful on the outside!

Some of the pictures are nice in colour:

Printemps Department Store

An underground McDonald’s

Huitième Arrondissement

While others are best viewed in black and white

Sunday Drinker Wine Reviews

Not my thing to post loads of YouTube videos but this is better than that Drink Aware campaign with superpowers and feeling invincible. Did anyone involved in that one actually get drunk at least once in their lives? Scaffolding? What the shit were they thinking?

Some people might argue that doing this might kill you but it certainly didn’t kill these people, the amount of wine drank is the same as if you were drinking it slowly and enjoying it so you might as well choke and die on water too.

And second, for more class:

Third for a fish meal…

More of the same if you fancy watching people gulp 75cl of wine in one go at Sunday Drinker