Rant!

Amazon Kindle: would you really want to read something that ugly?

  • June 24, 2008 at 5:40 pm
  • Categories: Cool stuff,Ramblings,Rant!

  • Amazon’s UK website is currently plugging its wireless reading device, the Kindle. I won’t be buying one. Firstly, as I won’t even spend £15 on a memory stick because I keep losing them (losing a few kilobytes of data wouldn’t be so bad, but a few gigs is another matter), there’s no way I’d pay [...]

Coca-Cola: clever, or morally bankrupt?

  • February 20, 2007 at 11:24 pm
  • Categories: Design,Rant!

  • Last night I went to a presentation by a ‘branding expert’. He cited Coca-Cola, saying how clever they were to re-brand Santa Claus, commercialise Christmas, and at one point to get a bottle of Coke into the hands of every serving US soldier. Are those achievements really ‘clever’? Plenty of creative ideas are mooted every [...]

Welsh Dragon Sausages

  • December 1, 2006 at 3:27 pm
  • Categories: Rant!

  • Hmm. (‘Dragon’ sausages burnt by trade laws, The Times) Lava bread doesn’t contain molten rock. Rock cakes also have no traces of rock in them (usually), though Angel cakes do contain live angels. Cup cakes, however, are really made from mugs. Apple snow is actually sleet; chocolate bombs are fairly ineffective; Mississippi Mud Pie is [...]

My gripe with puns

  • May 24, 2006 at 2:59 pm
  • Categories: Rant!

  • To me, a pun must make sense in context from whichever angle it’s looked at. For example, there was (and still is?) a London hair salon situated near to the Tate Modern on the south bank of the Thames with the name La Tete Modêrne. In contrast, a number of UK bike shops have given [...]

No sex please, we’re Australian

  • August 1, 2005 at 1:15 pm
  • Categories: Rant!

  • Apparently we may kill but not procreate. Not the most obvious strategy for maintaing a species. This is of course the story that Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas has effectively been banned in Australia because of hidden sex scenes, which can be unlocked by the player. So it’s OK to play at stealing cars, running [...]

Lettuce

  • May 23, 2005 at 4:30 pm
  • Categories: Rant!

  • I’ve just spent five minutes fighting my way into an iceberg lettuce. The plastic straitjackets within which UK supermarkets imprison these unfortunate vegetables appear, at first glance, to be mathematically impossible. And at second glance. In fact, for all my years of liberating lettuces, I have yet to understand how to open the damn packaging. [...]

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