priceless

This poor woman.Pregnant. And she doesn't trust expensive washing machines to deal with her Number Twos. And she's never heard of Trade Me.
She needs to get out from her brick basement more often.
The Haier website doesn't list prices. There's really nothing here to get mad about, but just for your interest, according to this advertorial (ie, Haier paid for the journo to fly to China):
1. Haier has a 5.1% share of the global whiteware market.
2. They've bought 20% of Fisher & Paykel (getting access to their distributors in the process, while F&P will be distributed in China in return, assuming people want their products).
3. Their global branding motto is "get in, stay in and take over". Or may be that last bit is "be a leader". The article isn't really sure.
4. They also sell "a mirror that recognises its user's face and sets the tap water temperature accordingly".
Face recognition technology - and they use it to divine water temperature??
Still, it sounds useful if you have a baby. No more elbow-testing!

artists unite

It was an action-packed weekend, because we also went to the Museum. The Museum is great, but these days is insisting that every visitor wears a sticker for some corporate KPI kind of reason, even though it's free to visit.
Well, we knew where we could stick those stickers:
Thanks to whoever started this communal totem pole, on a busstop post outside the Museum's main doors (we contributed 3 red stickers). Now that's a piece of real "public art".

a girl's guide to bras

Wow, it looks like Girl Guides are a go-ahead organisation these days. On the down side, it means the girls don't know how to bake a good biscuit anymore but on the plus side, they're getting out there and snowboarding all the time, right?

And - I'm not making this up - they're doing really go-ahead, enlightened stuff like getting 5 and 6 year olds at a recent Mt Eden pippins (junior Guides) meeting to decorate secondhand bras with ribbons and sticky tape. Bras! Something they can all look forward to owning with excitement, as a sign they embrace their true final destiny as fecund women. I guessed they move on to getting badges in knickers, suspender belts, corsets and pole dancing in the older grades.
Then I saw this at the Mangere Bridge Walk:

Again with the girly-girliness of the response to the horror of breast cancer.
I hope Boy Scouts are collecting jockstraps for prostate cancer.

of course, darling

We walked over the new part of the Mangere Bridge today, before it's opened to cars, which was pretty awesome. Lots of families with dogs and great views of the Manukau. And construction workers happy to answer questions about scaffolding.
I didn't but I wish I'd asked them about this too:Ay? Is the guy who looks like he's wearing an earring (but it's actually a poster bolt) asking whether he can do a shabby job as he's doing all the work? Is the hunched up guy on the left suggesting ways to get warm? Does the giant model in the ad behind them have a thing for minature men? Is this going to lead to a human-ad threesome?
It makes me wonder what kind of "alliance" the "Manukau Harbour Crossing Alliance" is. Is this a code between managers and construction workers? Are they just about to break out into YMCA?
Whatever, just don't tell the happy kids and pukekos on the mysterious metal boxes to the right. They deserve their innocence for a little while longer, man.

do as we say we do

Man, ASB gotta change their ad people. First, there was that whole "we're a Kiwi bank" debacle, then they kept flogging that dead bird (I dobbed them in to the highest authority in the land - Sideswipe), and now this:

ok, so it's not so much offensive as overbearing, commanding, condescending, patronising, knowitall and smug. "Doctor" with a capital "D"? Because doctors are such important authoritative oracles, just like ASB? Also, shoes can talk, not that well-paid bankers would know about that.
Continuing the medical theme, here's an eye test:

Madly assuming some of you are sober, and are therefore seeing double, here's the translation: "Get behind St John. We are."
More commandments! I have never felt less like helping the children. Or the ambulances. Every time ASB tells me to do something I want to stamp my foot and yell "NO!"
Also, how many organisations are crass enough to use a whole ad just to tell you what they sponsor?
Kashin! You have betrayed me!

because your cancer's worth it

I'm sure this organisation helps a lot of women, and the vast majority of people involved will have the best of intentions. But still, this makes me uneasy:

If you look veeery closely and whisper "global cosmetics industry conspiracy" three times, it actually says "pick make up" (If you look even closer you can see the reflected electronic bus timetable... I like to think of my picture-taking skills as endearing).
Basically "Look Good Feel Better" offers makeup and wig workshops for women with cancer, in order to counter the cosmetic side effects of cancer treatments such as hair and eyebrow loss, dry flaking skin and pigmentation changes.
In itself, the LGFB service is commendable, I think. But why only for women? How come men don't have to look good to feel better? (Women get workshops and free make-up; men only get an online American brochure).
And why only women with cancer - why not also those whose appearance has changed due to burns, car accidents, domestic violence, alopecia, skin conditions and so on?
Author Barbara Enrenreich notes that breast cancer in particular is associated with "prettiness and pinkness...meant to inspire a positive outlook", and that this expectation of positivity can add to the stress of having cancer. Get your free "Cancer Sucks" button here.
More generally - and the LGFB service and its branding are more a consequence than a cause of this problem so I don't mean to single them out - why is self-prettifying (including clothes shopping) the main self-medication option women are given when we're feeling crap? (Followed by eating chocolate, of course.)
From volunteers in the LGFB's July newsletter: "we run our Workshops to empower woman [sic] and give them confidence".
Empowering women with make-up? I imagine those who agree include whorehouse madams, 1950s housewives and perhaps LGFB's Board of Trustees, made up of people from "the Beauty industry, and PR industry, and the Cancer Society".

the creed of woolly thinking

I really hope Senior College students have to recite this every morning, like a pledge of allegiance:


It is as if the PR guys were reading Ayn Rand while listening to Whitney sing "I believe the children are the future" and thinking about how much more awesome NZ is than any other country, while knowing they had to write in a subtle "we know your child is a genius" vibe to lure in the Parents.
But - ay? If greatness can't be taught, why would the path start at an educational institution? Why is "NZGREATNESS" all one word, but with NESS hanging up in the air like it was left over from a "Beware of the LOCH NESS MONSTER" sign? Why prefix the silliness with "believe" phrases as if this is some religious cult, and they're not entirely 100% certain? How are they redefining success?
This last question is answered around the corner:
Since when did such generic means become the goal? FYI, "highest possible qualification" is not a reference to a doctorate but to the controversial Cambridge examinations.
Sarah, the easiest way to compete internationally is to participate in a minority sport which not many nations bother with.
However this is the preferred "NZ" way to achieve greatness so it's not much of a redefinition of success after all.

baffling poster

This one has me a little perplexed:

The BP logo dripping in oil is a great image. These posters were up for a couple of weeks and came down just before BP plugged the hole late last week, although that plug may not work. Incidentally, it took them three months - 87 days - to seal it off.
My puzzlement is because the poster creators are anonymous. Googling the tiny tagline to the left - 'beyond pollution' - doesn't reveal who they are. Is this the work of some shy environmental group or could it be the work of another oil firm, or even six of the seven sisters, gloating over their scapegoat sibling?
While I'm pleased to see someone is angry over something worth being angry over, I hope nobody is feeling virtuous by avoiding BP and going to Shell and Mobil.

go slaughter

Yes, I know, critiquing military recruitment ads is like shooting fish in a barrel.
They could have at least coloured the 'after' pictures more excitingly instead of the same washed out blue of the 'before' offices... blood red for example.
Then again, perhaps they're going for some realism about how drearily disciplined it all is. At least my messy desk is tolerated in normal offices.
I know some of you are thinking 'all very well you being a smug liberal but the armed forces make your lifestyle possible'. Well perhaps the ads could better communicate the vital work they're doing rather than making the whole thing look like a slightly longer joyride than Speed 2.

all rights

Saving this blog from being all grumpy all the time and saving me from being Crabitt Mc Crabby-Crab is some anonymous, non-corporate citizen. With a wall:


How endearing is this? It was our own live neighbourhood scoreboard. The little smiley went up with the Slovakia score; the HEROS and big smiley went up when Italy went down, and was coloured in with the Paraguay score. So exciting to see it evolve. Proud as? Of my neighbourhood, totally.

can't get over it

This is my current favourite - oh, how I love to hate it.
Ok, I don't take compelling pictures (yet!)... so FYI, this ad is for Australia and it says "Arrived planning to see the whole country. Departed still trying to get over Uluru".
The picture is of some soppy white person looking sentimentally at Uluru while the sun rises or sets or is photo-shopped in. (I at first thought it was some hippy guy with long hair but longer scrutiny reveals it's a woman - I think the ambiguity is probably deliberate... as per the Stop sign by committee, they're probably targeting women... but also men, secondarily.)
Three things we can learn from this ad:
1. White people have no spirituality of their own.
2. White people can fufill their spiritual needs by hopping on a plane and spending lots of money to use the spiritual channels of Indigenous Australians (who are of course, very very spiritual - as seen in Australia! when - spoiler alert - that cute little Aborigine boy stops all the cattle jumping off a cliff by singing to them).
3. Australia is culturally sensitive now, note the use of "Uluru" not "Ayers Rock". It's one big happy, non-exploitative multicultural country.
In other news, the local council no longer feels the needs to fund services for Mutitjulu, a poverty stricken Indigenous community at the base of Uluru.

a few loose screws

Ok, so this is just a box of cereal advertising a box of cereal on the side of a bus stop. Not so nefarious.


But wait.... what's that on the side? Let's look at a close-up:

Remember kids, just because your grass-skirted, coconut-bra'd, sharp-toothed grimacing/ gormless "natives" are robots doesn't make them ok.
What is the TV ad like I wonder?
"Hey, Doris, I feel like I'm just a cog in a machine, hey maybe we need some EXOTICISM in our lives, yeah, I keep reading in our manufacturer manuals that all our problems can be solved under a palm tree."
"Hey Wayne, just eat some of this cereal, it apparently contains a TROPICAL fruit."
"Thanks Doris - hey wow I feel like I've been transported to palm PARADISE and all my worries are gone because I am now PRIMITIVE. Let's make sweet primitive metal music together."