There's a bloody 't' in that word, woman.
Since it's January, the media pseudopod of Global Corporate Headquarters has withdrawn the sub-appendage concerned with trying to sell us expensive perfume[1] and has extended the one which is busily selling cheap holidays in other people's misery.
The advert on heaviest rotation features Mr & Mrs Redknapp. Now, while I didn't go a bunch on whatever popular beat combo she apparently fronted, I wish her no ill-will and it's nice to see someone making a decent fist of a second career. However, that glottal stop really does drive me up the wall. I would imagine Thos. Cook (it is that lot, isn't it?) didn't spare much expense on the thing, but the diction and the forced M&S-style vocal langour make it come across as if it were one of the six-bob local ads they had on ATV in the seventies called 'sunspots' . Tacky bikini shots[2], some wobbly captions via a transistor-powered genlock the size of a small lorry and a very local (for Smethwick) voiceover promising us a 'Bostin time in Playa des Americas'.
This of course was entirely impenetrable for small children from rural Gloucestershire who understood 'holiday' to mean 'long weekend on a windswept beach at the pointy end of Pembrokeshire in the space between the last of the winter wheat going in and the Andoversford YFC ploughing match'
This leads me toward the subtext of said advert. We, as passive media-consumption nodes, are understood to spend the first part of the year planning and/or looking forward to this alleged 'holiday' and the second part remembering it wistfully and/or lying awake at night wondering how to pay for it.
An entire year failing to live in the now for the sake of a week or two lying about feeling vaguely guilty you're not having more fun?
Fuck. That.
I reject the entire tree of assumptions inherent in that view. They are too horrible to contemplate.
Other than that, the sun was bright today, so I made a start on the pruning.
[1] The book 'Deluxe' is a fine thing and I commend you all to seek out a copy.[3]
[2] Given the amount of oil being vomited from passing tankers back then, all bikini shots were tacky and smelled of benzine.
[3] Curse my memory. The book's called 'Deluxe' and it's written by Dana Thomas.
The advert on heaviest rotation features Mr & Mrs Redknapp. Now, while I didn't go a bunch on whatever popular beat combo she apparently fronted, I wish her no ill-will and it's nice to see someone making a decent fist of a second career. However, that glottal stop really does drive me up the wall. I would imagine Thos. Cook (it is that lot, isn't it?) didn't spare much expense on the thing, but the diction and the forced M&S-style vocal langour make it come across as if it were one of the six-bob local ads they had on ATV in the seventies called 'sunspots' . Tacky bikini shots[2], some wobbly captions via a transistor-powered genlock the size of a small lorry and a very local (for Smethwick) voiceover promising us a 'Bostin time in Playa des Americas'.
This of course was entirely impenetrable for small children from rural Gloucestershire who understood 'holiday' to mean 'long weekend on a windswept beach at the pointy end of Pembrokeshire in the space between the last of the winter wheat going in and the Andoversford YFC ploughing match'
This leads me toward the subtext of said advert. We, as passive media-consumption nodes, are understood to spend the first part of the year planning and/or looking forward to this alleged 'holiday' and the second part remembering it wistfully and/or lying awake at night wondering how to pay for it.
An entire year failing to live in the now for the sake of a week or two lying about feeling vaguely guilty you're not having more fun?
Fuck. That.
I reject the entire tree of assumptions inherent in that view. They are too horrible to contemplate.
Other than that, the sun was bright today, so I made a start on the pruning.
[1] The book 'Deluxe' is a fine thing and I commend you all to seek out a copy.[3]
[2] Given the amount of oil being vomited from passing tankers back then, all bikini shots were tacky and smelled of benzine.
[3] Curse my memory. The book's called 'Deluxe' and it's written by Dana Thomas.