Post by sandbachhatter on Nov 22, 2015 22:50:46 GMT
Evening all
I'm starting this one a little earlier than usual, as I have a lot on tomorrow morning and a new quiz starting! Eppy is your host this week, and here are his suggestions for Week N:
Nescafe
Two big complaints about Nescafe, one slightly more serious than the other…
Firstly, Nestle, the manufacturers have almost single-handedly destroyed the ‘Fair Trade’ logo. If a company decides to put profit over their corporate social responsibility and produce low quality, low price crap for mass consumption, then at least be honest about it. Doing the same, but getting the Fair Trade logo on is causing a lot more harm than good. Rather than Fair Trade being for niche products, it is now part of the mass market. It is driven by marketing, not by a genuine concern for farmers in developing nations. I’ll not go on about Fair Trade here (and it includes cocoa), but it has turned into one big sick joke. Nestle and Nescafe are the worst offenders.
Secondly, if you are actually more put off by my Guardian-sounding rant above than you are Nescafe, then the coffee itself tastes vile. The chemical processes for producing the stuff means it is so far from the original coffee bean as to be bordering on the trade descriptions act.
An abomination of the highest order.
(And yes, I am a self-confessed coffee snob!)
New Year’s Eve
Like almost everyone else, I love Christmas – the food, the TV, the presents, excited kids. It really is the most wonderful time of the year. My watch clicking over from 31st to 1st, however, is not.
What is the hype all about? It’s just another night of the year, except this one has been hijacked to make people feel compelled to go to a party they don’t want to, with people they don’t like, to spend money they don’t have (it is just after Christmas, after all). Standing 5 deep at a bar waiting to be served deliberately overpriced, watered down lager is not my idea of fun. Especially when the good women of Doncaster around you, who have an above average bodily surface area, have got the cloth:skin ratio all wrong. Shudder.
I loathe it. At the heart of it is a cruel false optimism. As Big Ben strikes, there is a belief all the crap in your life will magically disappear. Yay – this year will be the best year ever! News flash: Norfolk Enchants
One alternative to the hideous New Year night on the town is inviting people to your house. This is fraught with danger as you need to spend days tiding up after Christmas, and again, spend money you don’t have. Suddenly you decide everyone drinks champagne, despite never doing so with your friends all year. I’d want to put on my selection of shoegaze and sadcore to reflect my mood, but I think people might expect intolerable modern manufactured toss (see Fudge’s Week M). Most of our friends have kids, so it means the pain of baby-sitters or a mass-sleepover. Yet more stress and hassle.
Yet another alternative is just staying in with the missus and drinking until midnight and then falling asleep on the sofa. But I’d describe that more as ‘every Friday night’, not a special celebration.
The final alternative (and one which has happened most years chez Epworth since having kids) is to set the London fireworks programme on BBC to record, and have an early night, asleep well before midnight. Then have pancakes for breakfast and watch the fireworks as a family in the morning. Although, that describes ‘every Sunday morning’, albeit with less fireworks.
And don’t even get me started on New Year Resolutions…
Name of car colours
I decided to play this one safe, rather than a libellous rant against the odious Nicky Campbell!
I appreciate this is very much a personal bug bear, and a bit of stretch for N, but here we go.
What is it about car manufacturers and the names of car colours? What happened to Red, Blue, Grey and Green? Oh no, trendy marketing types have to get involved and come up with something for more ‘exciting’ to justify their pathetic existence.
“Hmmm, grey is an accurate description and our customers will understand it, but it’s not sexy enough.”
“I know, Hugo, this will trick the public into the buying the car, let’s call it ‘anthracite’. Ok, so it sounds like a fatal poison, but so what? We need to earn our marketing fees somehow.”
“Damn it, those others have got ‘anthracite’. ‘Grey’ is obviously what everyone in the country will understand, but we’ll have to come up with something else; how about ‘carbon flash’?”
“Great idea, Ophelia, it sounds a bit like ‘hard on flash’, but let’s go with that…”
“I think this mini will look great in dark brown.”
“Well it might, Cressida, but we can’t be as sensible as that – we’re marketing people, after all. Let’s go with ‘iced chocolate’.”
“A choc ice to describe a car colour, are you serious?”
“Yes, yes I am.”
“I like yellow cars, but we obviously we can’t call it yellow. Any ideas? Crispin, what about you?”
“Lemons are yellow”
“No, no, dear boy, we can’t call it a lemon, but I like the fruit theme, let’s play with that.”
“Erm, ‘sunny melon’?”
“Brilliant, Giles, that’s exactly what our customers will think of when they see the car. We’ll sell lots of sunny melons.”
“Erm, aren’t we selling cars?”
“No, darling, we are selling a dream of summer.”
“But it’s a ‘king Fiat Punto. Won’t our customers just see it and think: it’s just a ‘king yellow Punto?”
Not to mention such classics as: Crazy Plum (purple), Freudian Gilt (gold), Amberlite Firemist (orangy brown). Stop it right now!
Off you go then, get voting…
I'm starting this one a little earlier than usual, as I have a lot on tomorrow morning and a new quiz starting! Eppy is your host this week, and here are his suggestions for Week N:
Nescafe
Two big complaints about Nescafe, one slightly more serious than the other…
Firstly, Nestle, the manufacturers have almost single-handedly destroyed the ‘Fair Trade’ logo. If a company decides to put profit over their corporate social responsibility and produce low quality, low price crap for mass consumption, then at least be honest about it. Doing the same, but getting the Fair Trade logo on is causing a lot more harm than good. Rather than Fair Trade being for niche products, it is now part of the mass market. It is driven by marketing, not by a genuine concern for farmers in developing nations. I’ll not go on about Fair Trade here (and it includes cocoa), but it has turned into one big sick joke. Nestle and Nescafe are the worst offenders.
Secondly, if you are actually more put off by my Guardian-sounding rant above than you are Nescafe, then the coffee itself tastes vile. The chemical processes for producing the stuff means it is so far from the original coffee bean as to be bordering on the trade descriptions act.
An abomination of the highest order.
(And yes, I am a self-confessed coffee snob!)
New Year’s Eve
Like almost everyone else, I love Christmas – the food, the TV, the presents, excited kids. It really is the most wonderful time of the year. My watch clicking over from 31st to 1st, however, is not.
What is the hype all about? It’s just another night of the year, except this one has been hijacked to make people feel compelled to go to a party they don’t want to, with people they don’t like, to spend money they don’t have (it is just after Christmas, after all). Standing 5 deep at a bar waiting to be served deliberately overpriced, watered down lager is not my idea of fun. Especially when the good women of Doncaster around you, who have an above average bodily surface area, have got the cloth:skin ratio all wrong. Shudder.
I loathe it. At the heart of it is a cruel false optimism. As Big Ben strikes, there is a belief all the crap in your life will magically disappear. Yay – this year will be the best year ever! News flash: Norfolk Enchants
One alternative to the hideous New Year night on the town is inviting people to your house. This is fraught with danger as you need to spend days tiding up after Christmas, and again, spend money you don’t have. Suddenly you decide everyone drinks champagne, despite never doing so with your friends all year. I’d want to put on my selection of shoegaze and sadcore to reflect my mood, but I think people might expect intolerable modern manufactured toss (see Fudge’s Week M). Most of our friends have kids, so it means the pain of baby-sitters or a mass-sleepover. Yet more stress and hassle.
Yet another alternative is just staying in with the missus and drinking until midnight and then falling asleep on the sofa. But I’d describe that more as ‘every Friday night’, not a special celebration.
The final alternative (and one which has happened most years chez Epworth since having kids) is to set the London fireworks programme on BBC to record, and have an early night, asleep well before midnight. Then have pancakes for breakfast and watch the fireworks as a family in the morning. Although, that describes ‘every Sunday morning’, albeit with less fireworks.
And don’t even get me started on New Year Resolutions…
Name of car colours
I decided to play this one safe, rather than a libellous rant against the odious Nicky Campbell!
I appreciate this is very much a personal bug bear, and a bit of stretch for N, but here we go.
What is it about car manufacturers and the names of car colours? What happened to Red, Blue, Grey and Green? Oh no, trendy marketing types have to get involved and come up with something for more ‘exciting’ to justify their pathetic existence.
“Hmmm, grey is an accurate description and our customers will understand it, but it’s not sexy enough.”
“I know, Hugo, this will trick the public into the buying the car, let’s call it ‘anthracite’. Ok, so it sounds like a fatal poison, but so what? We need to earn our marketing fees somehow.”
“Damn it, those others have got ‘anthracite’. ‘Grey’ is obviously what everyone in the country will understand, but we’ll have to come up with something else; how about ‘carbon flash’?”
“Great idea, Ophelia, it sounds a bit like ‘hard on flash’, but let’s go with that…”
“I think this mini will look great in dark brown.”
“Well it might, Cressida, but we can’t be as sensible as that – we’re marketing people, after all. Let’s go with ‘iced chocolate’.”
“A choc ice to describe a car colour, are you serious?”
“Yes, yes I am.”
“I like yellow cars, but we obviously we can’t call it yellow. Any ideas? Crispin, what about you?”
“Lemons are yellow”
“No, no, dear boy, we can’t call it a lemon, but I like the fruit theme, let’s play with that.”
“Erm, ‘sunny melon’?”
“Brilliant, Giles, that’s exactly what our customers will think of when they see the car. We’ll sell lots of sunny melons.”
“Erm, aren’t we selling cars?”
“No, darling, we are selling a dream of summer.”
“But it’s a ‘king Fiat Punto. Won’t our customers just see it and think: it’s just a ‘king yellow Punto?”
Not to mention such classics as: Crazy Plum (purple), Freudian Gilt (gold), Amberlite Firemist (orangy brown). Stop it right now!
Off you go then, get voting…