My Squelchy Life

Dasani do you any good

Dasani do you any good after all...

Oopsies! According to the Beeb,
Coca Cola's water isn't as pure as touted:
"Coca-Cola is to recall all bottles of its Dasani water in the UK,
after levels of bromate were found to exceed legal levels.
"The recall is an embarrassment for the drinks giant, which has faced
criticism for selling what is treated and purified tap water."
Schadenfreude, you say? Never! Well, only when it's well-deserved :-)

Wouldn't it be nice... ...if

Wouldn't it be nice...

...if everything could be softer and more comfortable?So
I'm sitting in the barbershop last night, and they have ABC News on the
TV. Up comes this commercial, and it's this sort of cartoonized woman,
sitting on a park bench. The forms of the image suggest it was based on
real film/whatever, and then treated to look all brushstroked, a little
bit arty, all in nice pastel blues and yellows. I guess she looks a
little uncomfortable on the bench, but that's OK, cos suddenly it
morphs, first into a big cushy armchair, and then the whole hog into
big, plush couch, which she leans back into and swivels to recline on.
The voiceover comes in and says "Wouldn't it be nice if everything
could be softer and more comfortable? Well, with Dulcolax, it can!"
Now, I'm sort of half tuned-out, and I freely admit I'm not overly
familiar with the world of marketing, so I'm thinking oh, it must be an
ad for fabric conditioner or something - it looks just like that, whith
the fresh outdoors, the pastel colors, butterflies, birds, etc. I'm
thinking about how soft the fabric of the couch would be to the touch,
the fresh scent, and so on. Then the voice starts talking about hard
stools, and how Dulcolax, unlike traditional laxatives, softens them to
make them more comfortable to pass. So they're talking about this
woman's shit! They're talking about how she's got a smelly brick up her
ass, and how their product is gonna kind of knead it, or something, to
make it softer and more gentle. So when she next squeezes one out,
presumably, it'll feel like reclining on a big, plush couch in the
great outdoors, surrounded by butterflies and birds, all in soothing,
pastel colors.
I love the way these people are so frank about these things. I guess
this kind of shock is what I get for a) not watching network TV and, b)
TiVOing past the commercials. I wish - sometimes - I could set my TiVO
to *only* record commercials. That certainly would provide some
welcome, um, relief to the tedium of the programming :-)

Soft drink is purified tap

Soft drink is purified tap water

I
remember a conversation I had with Pete Sewell on a train about, ooh,
18 years ago? We joked about the genius of putting water in bottles and
selling it - we were thinking Perrier, which was about the only bottled
water you could get in the UK at the time. The jist of the conversation
was something like "I mean, it's *water*! You can get water out of the
tap!"
We went on to discuss, in jest, what a great idea it would be to put
Reading tap water in a bottle and sell it, marketing it as exactly what
it was - tap water from Reading.
Of course it was only a matter of time before somebody did this:
"Judith Snyder, brand PR manager for Dasani, confirmed "municipal"
water supplies were used"
What really makes me laugh about this stuff (I've seen it over here),
is that the water is so pure they have to actually *add chemicals to
it* to give it a watery flavor! ``Coca-Cola says "reverse osmosis", "a
technique perfected by Nasa to purify fluids on spacecraft", is then
used to filter the water further before minerals are added to "enhance
the pure taste".''
They go to all the trouble of taking the bastards out, only to have to
put them back in again!!!
What an amazing world! That's why I love it so much - and it's all
thanks to folks like Coca-Cola :-)

Something to ponder Here's

Something to ponder

Here's what my horoscope said today (among other things):

"Other than remaking the world in your image of utopia, you don't want much."

I think that just about covers it :-)

Ooh! Will you look at

Ooh! Will you look at that!

Regarding Ms. Jackson,
it seems like I was one of many who missed the, um, event. So I'm
relieved to be able report that, thanks yet again to the valiant people
at Slashdot, who provided the
link above, I am no longer in the blissful state of ignorance. I'm
especially fond of the fake varicose veins.
Is it just me, or are these cyber-chubbies really nothing to write home
about?

Boob is close at handI

Boob is close at hand

I was beginning to think it was too late
for me to comment on Janet Jackson's "Tits Out for the Superbowl"
initiative, but the BBC has come to the rescue at the eleventh hour
with Janet's breast makes net history.
Good old Auntie :-) And so the 'Net continues to mimic life. Now the
major search engines have confirmed Vic's brilliant insight: What we
want is bare-naked breasts.
Well, who knew?

Help is close at boob."We

Help is close at boob."We could be on to something
with this." How often has that phrase heralded a glorious new dawn in
humankind's timeless and ongoing ascent from the mire of ignorance in
which our ancestors presumably wallowed? How many times in the history
of civilization has this simple sentence betrayed the quiet lightbulb
of inspiration over the head of someone about to change the course of
history?
Such were the words uttered in an act of unparalleled - and alarmingly
unmacho - selflessness by an anonymous benefactor upon hatching a
scheme to get his sweetheart to plaster her knockers all over the
Internet in the name of medical research.
Tits out for Multiple Sclerosis
is the result, the latest remarkable (I was going to say "beautiful",
but take a look at the site...) example of the way the Web unleashes
the innovative power of the common man, to the benefit of us all.
A simple idea, yet who'da thunk? You see, Vic, the lady of the website,
has multiple sclerosis. She also has tits. Two, all in all. Put 'em
together, and what have you got? Well, yes, a cleavage, but what I had
in mind was more the juxtaposition of Vic's unhappy affliction with her
undeniable lady bumps... The correct answer is: An unprecedented
approach to raising money for a good cause. The unlikely combination of
chubbies and MS brilliantly targets the sweaty-palmed cash (I'll leave
it at "sweaty-palmed", though the imagination wanders...) of tit-oglers
the world over and aims it at the coffers of The Multiple Sclerosis Resource Centre
(slogan: "Please visit VixPix and support Vic and MSRC - this is an
outstanding effort on her part!").
With a cheap digital camera and a few lines of HTML, Vic has broken
into a huge and hitherto untapped market, until recently controlled
almost exclusively by the purveyors of even sleazier websites. What a
coup! A magical idea just waiting for the Web to let it happen. Sir Tim
Berners-Lee, eat your heart out!
Seems the idea got started with a bet in a pub. Vic looks like a woman
who spends a lot of time in pubs. Two guys bet ten pounds (about $15)
that she wouldn't get her tits out. And this is where Vic had her
stroke of genius: she would indeed get her tits out for ten quid, if
she could then donate the money to to MS research. No offense, but Vic
also looks like the sort of woman who would get her tits out for ten
quid. And from there the idea snowballed. I think it will continue to
snowball - the notion could well take the Web by storm, growing
exponentially, as such innovations are wont to do. First, the number of
tits available for guiltless eyeing ("I'm not looking at pr0n, I'm
helping to end suffering!") on Vic's site will grow and diversify; then
more, copycat sites will pop up (out?); leaner and meaner competition
will oust the pioneering original (at which point Vic can retire and
put her top back on - that's just wishful thinking, not a prediction);
and finally the supported causes and the nature and presentation of
the, erm, exhibits will also diversify (multimedia, etc.). Forget spam:
by 2008, 95% of Internet traffic will be charity pr0n pageviews and
associated PayPal transactions (with a modest further 1% on anonymous
online purchases of "spillproof" keyboard and mouse covers ;-) ).
So what's on the horizon? Pricks stand up for Parkinson's? (Yeah,
girls! We wanna see Vic's mysterious boyfriend's meat-and-two-veg!)
Labia for leprosy? Arses out for asthma? Buttocks bared for bronchitis?
Big Bouncy Balls for irritable bowel syndrome?
I've got an idea of my own: Cum shots at World Hunger. I can't think of
a nobler calling than to feed the world on the product of my
e-ejaculations. On my site, though, punters will have to cough up
*before* they see the spunk up :-)

DUSTY BIBLES LEAD TO DIRTY

DUSTY BIBLES LEAD TO DIRTY LIVES...or so it says on
the board outside my beloved Apostolic Lighthouse. No danger of me
getting a dirty life, then - worst luck. I'm always careful to inhabit
a bible-free zone...
It did get me wondering, though. I got to thinking that maybe the
slogan was originally intended to boost productivity at the Gideons'
warehouse: ship them bibles out quick, or you'll have nothing to look
forward to but sin and evil! Then I thought that one of the guys who
worked there, desperate for some, shall we say, action, maybe kept a
box back - hid it in a forgotten corner of the complex, with the top
open, visiting it every day to check on how dusty his bibles were
getting, hoping against hope that each day's deposit would finally
swell the accumulated grime to the point where his new life could
begin. Finally, he could quit the miserable Gideons and embark on a
sex-, drugs- and alcohol-crazed career of utter debauchery. Maybe even
get a write-up in the Weekly World News...

Bats in the belfry.My porch

Bats in the belfry.My porch is the same as it ever
was, I'm afraid, with the possible exception that it's more "organic",
in the sense of nature encroaching, slowly but inexorably, on it -
which I guess is another way of saying that it's dirty and has dead
leaves, etc, on it - not to mention the bat shit! That's right: bats
have taken to roosting in the nooks where the porch roof meets the roof
of the house, which is fine by me except that, bats being nocturnal,
they spend the day sleeping and defecating, the results of the latter
ending up falling on whatever lurks beneath. As a matter of fact, there
is only one small area which is batshit free, and that's where I have
my chair, right next to the front door. I actually moved my chair on
various occasions to avoid the, um, showers, and settled on its present
location as it was the only dry spot. Until one day I felt the telltale
sensation of something small and dry falling on my head - actually, I
think it may have gone down my back... So what was I going to do? The
house, and thus the porch, is over 40 feet long, and I'd given the bats
the run of the porch, with the exception of 5 feet or so around my
chair - was I to lose this, too? Should I buy a golf umbrella? I'd be
lying if I said I wasn't somewhat incensed at being shat on, so I'm
afraid I took the most direct approach and decided on eviction. I was
lucky - normally you can't see the little beggars, as they get right up
into the crack where the roofs join, but this particular culprit had
chosen to nestle in plain sight, up against one of the log beams. So I
got a broom and started poking at him with the handle, which he was
none too pleased about. However, after much protestation and baring of
tiny yet lethal - under the appropriate circumstances, i.e. to bugs -
I'm relieved to report that he abandoned his roost and flew off across
the yard. Never to return. At least, not yet...

Church broadcasts scathing attack on

Church broadcasts scathing attack on geekdom.I
suffered quite a shock this morning. As I drove past the Apostolic
Lighthouse, our local hand-clapping, knee-slapping church (for more on
which, see below), I was horrified to read the following on their
"moral of the week" message board:
THE BEST THINGS IN LIFE ARE NOT THINGS
Aside from the dubious logic employed in this phrase, I mean, WTF???
What about Powerbooks? What about portable MP3 players? Linux? What
about aquarium PC case mods? WiFi? What about *Minis*, fer
Chrissakes???
Are these not things? And are these, indeed, not the *best* things???