Yay – at long last I think I’ve sussed the POS archiving. Next all I need to do is make a link to the proper archivey things. Or something.

I can’t be arsed to understand it at this time of night/morning. So I’ll leave it til tomorrow. Or whenever.

There are times where I just come to the conclusion that Americans are weird. This story from the BBC doesn’t do anything to disavow me of these ideas. Why the hell would companys like Macdonalds and PespsiCo NOT advertise on the anniversary of September 11th? Were Pepsico thinking of doing an ad where the Twin Towers of the World Trade Centre are replaced by fuck-off huge bottles of Pepsi Max along with the slogan “almost as good as the real thing™”? No. Were Macdonalds going to do an ad of Ronald Macdonald dressed as a US Marine huinting down the Hamburglar dressed as Osama Bin Laden? I doubt it

To be brutally honest, yes, it’s a day where lots of people lost their lives. But do Japanese advertisers worry about the anniversaries of Nagasaki and Hiroshima? Nope. What they have is this “July 6 – Every year, in Hiroshima, Japan, people float lanterns with prayers, thoughts, and messages of peace down the rivers in commemoration of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Until this year, the only way to join this celebration was to go to Hiroshima personally.” Now that sounds much more how it should be done.

I’ll admit, I think that “Boeing, the maker of the four planes that crashed on 11 September, is in negotiations with NBC to sponsor a special “concert for America”” (© BBC again) is a pretty dodgy and sick concept, but I can also see that if one company needs to be seen to be “doing something for America” on that date, it’s the manufacturers of the planes, and/or the airlines that had such pisspoor security checks. However, the airlines involved aren’t doing any ads that day – that I can understand more than companies like Coca Cola and Pepsi bailing from advertising.

Maybe they should just show the entire first run of Six Feet Under on Sept 11th, or have adverts for funeral homes all day. That’ll be more in keeping with the mood that seems to be desired.

But I’ll stick with the primary concept of “Americans are fucking weird sometimes”.