On being an Influencer

Head Rambles Posted on by 1

A little thingy popped up on my Twitter machine a day or so ago.

How Big Tobacco is using social media to lure teens

This is appalling!  Those people in Big Tobacco are actually paying “Influencers” to advertise their products on the Web? 

This is not an advertisement.

That indeed is scurrilously underhand is it not?

Nor is this.

What on earth do they think they are doing?  Don’t they know that every child on the planet is now hooked into this Social Media thing making it one of the biggest advertising platforms of all time?

Definitely not a advertisement.

Personally I find this disgusting in the extreme.

Where is my payment?  Why hasn’t Big Tobacco been in touch with me?  I’m really hurt.

Disclaimer:

No animals or children were hurt in the making of this post.  This is an unfortunate oversight for which we apologise.  I have no connections with Big Tobacco apart from buying pipe tobacco on a regular basis.  I have received no payment from them ever, and frankly I want to know why!

Smoking is sexy and cool.


Religious conversion

Head Rambles Posted on by 14

I may have mentioned before that I was “educated” by Da Brudders?

Though maybe “indoctrinated” would be a better word?

Now anyone who grew up in Ireland will know about Da Brudders – a battalion of blokes with white collars and black cloaks whose idea of education was the use of brute force with a drop of kiddy-fiddling on the side.  What they said was law and any questioning or dissent meant an immediate beating to within an inch of one’s life.

I remember the day Brudder George went on about Transubstantiation.  He told us as a matter of absolute fact that something like a piece of bread can become something else with the incantation of a few words.  “It looks the same” says he, “and feels the same and tastes the same but it is completely different.” 

Now my father had always taught me to question everything.  He taught me to think for myself and to never take anything as absolute.  So when I heard this Transubstantiation thing my immediate reaction was a loud Bollox!  Fortunately I had learned to keep such expletives to myself in class, or I wouldn’t be alive to tell the tale.  It occurred to me in later years that that was a key moment and probably the start of my journey towards Atheism?

Anyways, up to the present day.

I mentioned that I was recently prescribed eye-drops.  When they were writing out the prescription they warned me [with an element of glee, I thought] that the drops may sting a bit for the first week but that would soon stop and also that they may make my vision a bit blurry.

In due course I got my bottle of drops.  It was a tiny bottle and only about a quarter full of clear liquid.  The time came and I carefully put one drop in my left eye.  It was cold and wet but that was about it.  Then I put a drop in my right eye.  It nearly burned the fucking eye out of my head!  There was no question about it – it was stinging.

It has been like that every night since.  Let eye fine.  Right eye stinging like the bejayzus.

Thinking about it, I realised what the solution was [pun intended].  Whatever was in the bottle was a benign liquid when I picked it up, but as soon as I moved it from left to right it Transubstantiated into sulphuric acid.  It was a miracle!

I tried experimenting, putting in the right eye first where it stung like mad and then the left eye where it was fine.  So somehow it was the transition across the bridge of my nose that was causing this miracle.

I would apologise to Brudder George, but he’s dead.

Mayday

Head Rambles Posted on by 11

They are  wiffling on about Brexit again.

Personally I am heartily sick of the subject but they keep ramming it down my neck to the point where it’s impossible to ignore.

So here is the situation so far, by my understanding –

May has agreed a deal that no one likes apart from Brussels.  So Brussels has signed it and that’s that.

Except that it isn’t.  Brussels may like it but the UK may throw it out in which case they may have to renegotiate it even though it can’t be renegotiated.  In the meantime May may be thrown out too in which case there has be be another election either in May’s party or the UK itself.

So when the UK finally sorts itself out it will have to vote again on the deal which may or may not have been changed.  Or maybe they’ll try another referendum even thought it has been firmly ruled out.  And if they somehow do manage to renegotiate a deal that can’t be renegotiated and manage to vote it through then Brussels will refuse to sign it because they have already signed the old one.

At this point Brussels may get sick of all the bickering and negotiating and refuse to have anything more to do with it.  They’ll tell the UK to grow up, that they are staying whether they like it or not and that they are to spend the next six months on the naughty step.

One way or another I wish they would shut the fuck up about it.


Want or Need?

Head Rambles Posted on by 14

Today is Saturday.

Yes, I have just checked my little task-bar thing and my watch and it is very definitely Saturday.

So why are they still sending me fucking Black Friday messages?

That Black Friday yoke is the greatest fucking irritation the Mercans ever invented and of course we have to import it to Ireland.  It even knocks “Trick or Treat” into second place.  We all know that Mercans are intrinsically stupid and will rush off to buy shit simply because they are told to do so, but I thought the Irish had more sense.

Apparently not.

On the news last night they showed people who had just been conned out of their cash an there was only one chap who displayed an iota of common sense.  This chap explained that he needed a new suit and this seemed like a good time to buy one.  The key word here, of course is needed.

There is a world of difference between wanting something and needing it.  I want a new super duper laptop but I don’t need it because the one I have still has some mileage left [I hope].  Therefore to go out and buy one would just be a waste of cash.  So we have these flaming advertisements demanding that we buy sofas for a mere thousand because they will be two thousand at some undefined point in the future.  Of course people will rush out, pay their thousand and will end up with two sofas and a major hole in the bank account.

So they can all fuck off with their wide screen televisions [I don’t need one] and their half price perfume [I certainly don’t need any] and every other tacky item that they want to clear out of their storerooms because I don’t need any of it.  If I do need something I will probably find it and at a far better price than some fucking Black Friday deal.

While I’m on the subject, I really must make out my wish-list for next month!

A whale of a time

Head Rambles Posted on by 11

There was an item in the news recently about a dead whale.

Dead whale had 115 plastic cups and two flip-flops in stomach.

Of course this was newsworthy because of … well… I’m not quite sure.  A whale died as whales [and indeed any living thing] tend to do after a while.  However, for a reason that completely escapes me, we are supposed to feel all gooey and sentimental when a whale dies.  Now I had ever been formally introduced to this particular whale so you will excuse me if I don’t burst into tears.

Have you ever noticed that whenever all these eco-freaks start on about some animal being destroyed by man, it’s always something cute and cuddly they talk about such as Koalas, Polar Bears or Pandas or indeed Whales?  They never mention things like Leeches, Hornet Wasps or some bacterium or other.  Maybe they should try cuddling a Polar Bear sometime to see how cute it really is?

Anyways, back to the whale.

This news item was a winner because it not only involved a whale [which is hardly cute and cuddly but it seems to be an eco-favourite for some reason] but it involved plastic.  And we all know that plastic is the tobacco of the eco-warriors.  Plastic is evil and must be banned immediately, if not before.

This whale had obviously been on a plastic binge and according to them had 115 plastic cups, four plastic bottles, 25 plastic bags, two flip-flops, a nylon sack and more than 1,000 other plastic pieces in its stomach.  I have to ask who counted these items?  The whale was too far gone for a post mortem so I would imagine that the atmosphere around it was fairly ripe, yet someone had the time to do an inventory?

So how did those items get into the oceans?  Did the Indonesians hold beach parties where they all brought their waste to the local shore to chuck it into the sea?  I doubt it.  My money would be on two things – they probably just dump lorry loads into “land fill sites” which in fact are the sea shore or else the plastic is dumped from passing ships en route from Europe to China which is far more likely. Either way it has fuck all to do with us.  Blame the Indonesians or the ships’ captains.

But this incident will somehow light fires in Europe calling for further bans on plastics on our side of the planet.  Already they are on about Q-tips and plastic straws while completely overlooking the amount of plastic used in food packaging and just about anything else you can think of.  We will doubtless have to suffer laws that leave is with drinking cups that melt when you put something wet in them or glass bottles [which incidentally are a good idea].

Personally I am pretty indifferent to plastic.  It has its uses and it can be irritating in its ubiquity but it does have its uses.  And when I am finished with it I bung it in the recycle bin [because I am a Good Little Boy] which should please the eco-warriors but apparently doesn’t.  What I do object to is the inevitable raft of laws that invariably are just a sop to “saving the planet”.

And all because a dead whale washed up in Indonesia.