09 October 2007

Tasty Bear Recipe

..is not here, it's here. Only a day old but you'll still find fun stuff like bear recipe of the month and sage sayings to light your way in this dark maze we call life :-)

Now on to more serious stuff - messy, serious stuff but I will not make any attempt to sort, sift, organize or anything of the sort. I'll be mean and dark and vindictive - full of negative energy today. I will focus only on the dark forces.

* Darky 1: I hate the TV people - for treating us like morons by subjecting us to ridiculous commercials and parading siliconed-botoxed-collagened-restylaned females as your average girl-next-door and making the rest of us real girls-next-door look like circus clowns.

I have never been fond of the idiot box. I spend maybe roughly an hour or two sitting in front on it in an entire week, and yet I always find a million reasons to hate it more each time. The fact that they actually believe that subjecting us to dumbass jingles like 'Sip the coffee, lick the cream' (Worse than Kindergarten nursery rhymes!) would *actually* con us into buying their stuff is beyond me.

I do admit some are witty and entertaining, even persuasive and coaxing. But it's a sad fact there are more crappy ones than fun ones. In fact, I think I'll make a list of the ones I really hate, all over the place and unprofessional but heartfelt:

1. Sip the coffee, lick the cream. Tra-la-la. Coffee cream gets on the tips of their noses and they lap it all up. Would've been better if they'd shown people licking it off each other's noses instead of their own. (Get up and make self tea.)

2. Nivea whitening cream/lotion (?) for men. (Change to channel 5 and watch National Geographic in Hindi.)

3. All Hritik Roshan commercials. That look, the amused half-smile in the corners of his mouth, the suavity... Overdone, and he's not steak is the problem. I like my steak overdone but it about stops there. From the looks of it, I believe he thinks he's too sexy for his shirt, his cat, or whatever. Can NOT watch anything with the guy in it. (Switch to channel 7 and watch a Telegu religious program. Or close eyes.)

4. The really bad Shampoo ad of Bipasha Basu & John Abraham. That was so bad it was almost amusing. 'It's hot' 'It's not' 'You're hot' 'I'm not' - something along those lines. (Admire hair in mirror during this commercial.)

5. All Airtel commercials. (Make phone call.)

Hutch used to be fun. I'm wary about the new Hutch-is-now-Vodafone ones though. Haven't seen anything interesting so far.

* Darky 2: Yahoo's acquisition of MyBlogLog. I couldn't change my profile pic for a while after Yahoo engineers tampered with it. Any disruption is always unwelcome.

* Darky 3: The Wisconsin shooting. It's sad and all that, and there's no way anyone can justify what the killer did. But as bad as this may sound, I wonder how good it must've felt to shoot someone who just called you a worthless pig.

* Darky 4: Misual is getting boring. It used to be a hot spot for lively, heated, and even once in a while, intelligent discussions. Now it's become a place where someone can't speak his mind or say what he thinks without a whole sinister bunch ganging up against him and shutting him up with a sharp reprimand about how he should not think/talk/theorize/make unchristian-like judgments about other people et al. Very SSS-like. Not at all conversation-inducive. Well, it's true that people don't necessarily cower and curl up in the corner and die after such a rebuke. They still talk. But it's boring to read through a discussion where 8 out of every 10 comments are over-conventional, self-righteous, precaution-packed, and too politically-correct...

14 comments:

Mizohican said...

Advertising is not just about how fancy or "wow" it makes us go. Sometimes Ads are purposely made to be irritating, so irritating that it stays in our subconscious for a long time. And one day when we walk into a Mall, we pick out that particular product because of the order given out by our subconscious. That my friend, is real advertising :)

About misual.com, I won't say it is getting boring, but yes, things aren't definitely how it used to be like those good old days when it first started out. Any discussions like inter-racial and community related topics always saw a good number of open minded discussions from everyone. Now, sadly, there are just too many abuses and personal attacks.

And then there are those who type comments completely not related to the ongoing discussions. Its not just misual.com but lawrkhawm.com and any other popular discussion forums. But what to do. One can't restrict such people from leaving such comments, as traffic is also needed. We gotta live with it. Plus its not like you and I never used to leave such comments too sometimes :)

Jerusha said...

Kim - I guess being in the world of online advertising has mucked me up then :) Here, we like things to be specific and to the point and correct. And your career is over the second you run out of enough wit so that you start irritating your audience. Here things make sense, it's neat and tidy. And for me, I guess this is as real as I'd like advertising to get.

You guys do a great job on misual ( the admins and mods), and the comments - I think I have to sit and give a little speech before I make it clear what kind of comments I was referring to. Example, Rev Chanchinmawia thih thu ah, tumawni in 'A nupui thah anih ka ring' lo ti ta a, midangin 'Mizo mizia lo lang leh thin, police/church in engmah hriat chian hma thu lo sawi vak vak suh' etc - khang kha a tam ltk. Mi rin thu sawi ka haw ngai lo :P Hrethiam deuh em tikhan what I was complaining about?

claytonia vices said...

Most ads are only like, 'How to fool as many millions of people as possible in the shortest time possible!'!

Jerusha said...

I would like to believe I'm not fooled by such crap often. Are you clay?

Mizohican said...

Yessi hrethiam. :)

Actually, I confess I never followed any of the discussions regrading Rev. Chanchinmawia... Because of the reason that he was my LG throughout School (7th to 12th) and I always used to spend the vacation at their home in Vellore and their family was very close to me. And knowing how much we Mizos love to gossip, I really have no heart to read such discussions. I just follow the official news and talk with my parents everyday about it, but, no, I will not read or take part in any discussions about his demise.

claytonia vices said...

I am not, that's why I know. But I am not sure about subliminal... I used to hate the taste of cola as a kid, before I saw the 'Yahi hai right choice baby' commercials...

Tys on Ice said...

yeah! finally i hear from a girls mouth abt hrithik roshan...the only ad i like is that dog one...where this cute dog follows this boy arnd...anyways, it was a nice read..will visit more often

Macabreday said...

i dont know if there is any bigg diff between hutch and airtel.... but i used hutch, just because of its add campaign...!! it made me feel like hutch was a brand i wanted to be associated to...!! this was conscious....and who knows how many products i have got after being influenced at a subconscious level

Pixie said...

oh!! Nice post...
I think most of the Ads are either over-rated or just blah! Like the Fairover or what-ever cream ad in which the boy plays the Sitar...
Or the SRK - Fairness cream AD for men!!! Do guys actually fall for that and go buy that cream??

Jerusha said...

clay - if get convinced, I guess it's mostly to do with cosmetic products. Don't think I'm very gullible when it comes to anything to do with food and beverages. But I'm a sucker for cosmetic products. I'm worse than most I admit :)

Jerusha said...

tys & mac - I agree with tys on the dog commercial. I know so many people who used Hutch because of that commercial, including me, their return on investment from that ad must be humongous.

I switch to Hutch because of that ad, and like mac, for the simple reason that I thought it was cooler. It sucked! My phone simply had no connection in my flat while my friends who had airtel connections had no problem. I went back to Airtel now. I'm happy with most of it.

tys - You would hear more from my mouth about Hritik if you were near me everyday :-)

Jerusha said...

pixie - exactly! I think it's just simply rotten that they would prey on people's hereditary physical traits like this and even sadder that men, of supposedly strong and beautiful minds, would fall for that crap!

I can understand acne creams etc cos ur not born with acne, but your skin color is your friggin skin color, God gave you that skin.

It's so not hot - a guy using fairness cream. Yuck!!!!!! I'd rather be with a dark or even black guy than be with a guy who got fair using a fairness cream.

(Getting worked up as you can see :-). I think I should write next about men and fairness cream)

amna said...

wow! u hate commercials that much? hmmm.. i dont mind.. sometimes they're a welcome break from the horrid stuff my roomie prefers to watch :D

Jerusha said...

nags - my roomies watch crappy stuff, but most of the time I don't watch it with them so they make me queen the few times I actually sit in front of the tv :)