you saw a banana?! split!

This is not technically a billboard, but it was on the back of my bus ticket, so it *is* an image I saw on my way home: Ew, what bad taste fruit! (geddit?) As running away screaming "don't get fresh with us!" (geddit?) doesn't really shout "attitude", I take it the tag line is referring to Mr Banana.
So they want us to buy their products because they're made with dirty old man bananas?
Funnily enough, I have no appetite no more.
Though I guess it is a *flasher* banana (geddit?).

masterpiece

This is soooo bad that I'm in a fluster of angry delight!
A fourth form (year 10) creative writing class has taken over the marketing department of our National Museum:

"OMG" the class clowns said to each other (or whatever it is the kids say these days to express wide-eyed wonderment) "the wikipedia page on Picasso reckons people had sex before 1990! Well, it reckons he did, at least. That must be why he's so famous. This is newsworthy - let's mangle a few synonyms together into a really long sentence."
And so they looked up Roget’s thesaurus google and found that 'many', 'several' and 'prolific' were sort of related, as were 'interesting', 'revolutionary' and 'sensation'; also 'art' and 'work'.
Uh, kids:
1. Picasso was prolific; not his art nor his relationships.
2. How many works of art does a relationship need to equal, for Picasso to have been as prolific a relationship producer as he was an artist? 50 paintings for every lover? A painting a kiss? Are we counting sketches here? What about one night stands?
3. The first half of the sentence is only grammatical as a reversal of the phrase "His relationships with his many lovers and several wives were as interesting...". What you actually meant, I expect, was something different: "As he had many lovers and several wives, his relationships were as interesting..."
4. Why, if his relationships were as interesting as his art, was it the art that created the real sensation?
5. How can something non-revolutionary be as interesting as something revolutionary AND real-sensation-creating?
6. Does a New Zealand audience really need a generalised gloss reminding us that this guy was a real arsehole of a ladies man before they'll go see a picture by Picasso?

in a barbie world

Hoo, banks ads are the gifts that just keep giving. Until I started this blog, I didn't realise just how generous they were. Exhibit # 857:


I once thought about doing an excel spreadsheet course, so let's see if I can figure out the bank's equations:
where "grown up" = responsible: grown up (female child) = bad (reality) and grown up (male child) = good (fantasy).
So in the parents' ideal fantasy, their daughters would be infantile dependents!
Wait -have I got the wrong *financial product*?
Hmm, where "grown up" = having sexy times, grown up (female child) = bad (reality) and grown up (male child) = good (fantasy).
So in the parents' ideal fantasy, their sons would be having sex!
Urgh. ANZ!! How could you! Keep your filthy Oedipal minds to yourselves!
Yeah, stop reminding me, stalkers.

desperado

He's made a career out of being provocative (NSFW), but is this really the attention and the clientele he wants?

Calvin Klein. Garments of choice for the pack rapist about town.

chick nibbles

Proof that this blog not only has an international audience, but also an international photography team! Here's a picture all the way from Townsville, Australia (translation: Towns Town, Australia), snapped by Ian, International Man of Mystery:

Photo credit: I,IMM

Hee, the turkey leg looks like it's nuzzling her, er, white meat. Is it a vampire turkey leg, nibbling at her jungular? I hear vampires are all the rage these days.
Ian and I once attended a school camp on Motutapu Island which featured live turkeys. There is no reason this delicious delicacy - and its advertising - should be denied us here in Auckland!
Thanks Ian.

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.

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".