John Hughes
Posted: Fri 7 August, 2009 Filed under: News, Thoughts 1 Comment »Sad to see that John Hughes died yesterday.
Hughes made some of the definitive “teenager” 80s movies – Breakfast Club, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, Pretty in Pink, Sixteen Candles, St Elmo’s Fire, Home Alone and many others. Just some of the ‘definitive moments’ are listed here.
And then this fantastic blog post shows just what kind of person John Hughes could be. (In fact, if Post of the Week were still going, I suspect this would be a hands-down winner)
Pseudo-Activism
Posted: Fri 7 August, 2009 Filed under: 1BEM, Advertising, Cynicism, Thoughts 1 Comment »If you’re a regular user of Twitter or Facebook, you can’t avoid seeing ‘campaigns’ of one sort or another. Facebook has infinitely more of them – there seems to be a campaign for everything from “Bring back Smarties in round tubes” to “Free [name person of choice here]”
Twitter ‘campaigns’ seem to be more about changing your ID picture. They went green in support of Iranian elections earlier, and now there’s one about Freeing Gary Mckinnon that adds a “Free Gary” (as opposed to charging for him, one supposes) bar to the Twitter avatar.
Personally, I don’t get involved in these campaigns at all. If I wanted to do so, I’d go to something like the ePetitions section at Number 10 (Not that they get any more attention, but at least it’s being done in the right place) rather than the frankly pointless ones elsewhere.
Because the thing is, Facebook et al may be “the voice of the people”, but governments and (in general) businesses don’t really give a shit about what people say. There are exceptions to the rule, of course – such as Cadbury’s bringing back the Wispa bar – but there’s no way they’d have done that without the expectation of making a significant amount of profit out of it.
Iran didn’t give a shit about how many people’s Twitter icons went green. Number 10 didn’t give a shit about the anti-war protests and marches.
Facebook et al like these campaigns, because they add to the marketing profile of the people who sign up for them. That’s it. You sign up to these things – say, “Bring back Smarties” and Rowntrees will start to know how many people extra might buy a “limited edition” round Smarties tube, and thus make profit for them.
And that’s all it is.
Cutting Down on Waste
Posted: Thu 6 August, 2009 Filed under: Customer Services, Domestic, Green, Stupidity, Thoughts 3 Comments »In the news today, there’s a piece about a Plymouth dairy that’s encouraging its customers to use “Milk Bags” – recyclable bags of milk, and a reusable ‘jug’ holding the bags.
According to the story,
Dairy spokesman Richard Pryor said customer research showed people wanted inexpensive and convenient ways to reduce the amount of rubbish they put in their dustbins.
“This development is another important step in reducing the environmental burden of the 130,000 tonnes of plastic used in milk packaging every year,” he said.
Obviously, Dairy Crest in Devon are using plastic bottles for delivering milk.
But it occurs to me, surely the single best way of reducing that tonnage of plastic used in milk packaging is to go back to using glass bottles instead of plastic ones?
Our milk gets delivered every other day (Monday, Wednesday, Friday) to the door in glass bottles. At the same time, the driver collects our used (and washed) bottles, and takes them to be reused. No ‘rubbish’ relating to the milk – the foil bottle tops go in the recycling bin.
On the (exceptionally rare) occasions when a bottle breaks, it gets put into the glass box, to go to the local bottle bank next time we’re in that direction. Again, no landfill, no waste – it’ll get recycled into a glass ‘something else’.
So, who is it who does our milk deliveries? Yep, it’s Dairy Crest – the same ones who deliver in plastic in Plymouth.
Funereal
Posted: Thu 6 August, 2009 Filed under: Cynicism, News, Thoughts 2 Comments »While I do think it’s sad – although hardly unexpected – to know that “the last Tommy” (the last British soldier from World War One) died at the end of July, I can’t help but find the way his funeral has been taken over today to be pretty objectionable.
Harry Patch’s request was for a small funeral party, for just family and friends. No fuss, no pomp – pretty much what one would expect from someone who led as quiet a life as he appears to have done.
Instead, there’s been tickets issued for the funeral, some 1,000-plus people in Wells Cathedral as well as a public parade, and people outside on Cathedral Green to see the proceedings on video screens. It’s turned into some kind of media carnival, with (on one report I heard just now) reporters doing a broadcast from inside the cathedral while the service was going on. (And regardless of everything else, the disrespect of that action just stuns me)
While I don’t really have a problem with people showing their respects to Harry Patch – although how many of them really knew him at all? – I don’t really get why the media et al feel that it’s OK to trample over his last wishes in this way.
Losing Weight
Posted: Wed 5 August, 2009 Filed under: Domestic, Getting Organised, Health, Weight Loss 1 Comment »I know, I’ve said many times before about the way I’ve been planning to lose some weight, and all that shit. And it’s always been “I intend to”, rather than “I am”.
Recently that’s changed though, and I am working on it. I’ve started going back to the gym, although I’m not back in the habit of it yet – I still need to think about it, and force myself to go. Hopefully that’ll improve though.
But I am already losing weight, because of the other thing. Over the last month, I’ve been going to a local Slimming World group, and it seems to be doing the trick.
Basically, it’s about “reprogramming” our food and diet a bit, getting rid of some of the convenience stuff we were making use of – by which I mean things like jars of curry or sweet’n’sour (or whatever) sauces, rather than doing our own. Other than that, I don’t think we’ve really changed a lot about what we eat or drink. We just think about it a bit more now.
One of the things I do like about Slimming World in comparison to Weightwatchers et al. is that you can set your own target for where you want to be – it’s not based on idiot BMI charts etc, unlike our experience with WeightWatchers a few years back which put me off going back. They also never announce your actual weight (nor the weight you started off at) which means no-one else knows/cares what you actually are, it’s about what you’ve lost. And that’s an attitude I quite like.
I’m not shy about it, though. I don’t have a problem with admitting that when I started, I was weighed at exactly 22st 1lb. I’m not happy (or proud) about it, but that’s what it was. And my current goal is to get back to where I was back in April 2005 , to be under 20 stone again. From there, I’ll see what happens – but that’s my current plan.
And I won’t write about it here every week – D4D™ isn’t going to turn into Dummies for Dieting anytime soon. I’ll write about it every so often, I’m sure, but not every week. That’s just dull.
What I will say now though is that in the time I’ve been going, I’ve already lost 8 and a half pounds. Not an awesome loss (just over half a stone) but equally, not bad either.
PR Words to Ban
Posted: Tue 4 August, 2009 Filed under: Advertising, Charm School, Creativity, Thoughts Leave a comment »Just a quickie, but I love this TechCrunch article about “10 words I would love to see banned from press releases”
Thankfully I don’t get too many press releases, but I see enough of them online that I have to agree with pretty much all of what’s been said in this one…