The most disturbing 'If' in advertising

Cathy pointed this out to me yesterday. An advert for Aptamil came on and she said 'listen for the most disturbing sentence on an advert.'

The Narrator starts talking as a woman brestfeeds her baby... "There's nothing better than breast milk for your baby. But if you decide to move on, then use Aptamil follow-on milk." (is the general gist of the ad).

The problem is the 'If'. 'If you choose to move on...' - Does anyone choose not to? Surely the right word here is 'When you move on...'

Religion or racket?

I watched the Panorama show about scientology last night, narrated by the guy who went crazy last time he investigated the 'Church' of Scientology and end up shouting at one of the scientologist goons sent to intimidate him.

This time round the guy, John Sweeney, was interviewing one of the goons from the previous show, who is now a "defector" and has had to leave everything behind him to leave the 'church'. He can't speak to his family. He's lost friends. But, strangely, he hasn't lost his beliefs. He is apparently one of a growing number of 'reformer' scientologists who want to break the power of the established 'church' and rediscover the true heart of the movement.

It takes most belief systems a few hundred years to reach the point of schism like that.

Also in the show, Sweeney talked to ex-scientologist and minor celeb Jason Beghe (who? I hear you ask), who says he ploughed up to $1 million into the cult before giving it up. Sweeney asked him whether he thought scientology was a religion or a racket.

"Are those two terms exclusive?" asked Beghe wryly.

Disconcerting tech*

I'm not a tech person so to be left in charge of the sound desk for an event is a little disconcerting.

But nothing went wrong. I just paid attention when the bod told me which dials to twiddle and what flashing lights to look for. I'm convinced that often the fear of tech is what makes you make mistakes.

In fact the biggest problem we had was trying to fit a wide-screen projector's projection onto a normal screen, possibly the most non-technological tech problem you can have.

*This title deliberately apes the title of the previous post. I wonder who will spot it...!

Disconcerting texts

Got this text from a friend yesterday:

"We've received a notice in work from the [workplace name] christian fellowship offering dream interpretation to quote 'please send it (dream) with as much description as possible. Email it & I will ask God for the interpretation'. That's a little odd, surely!"

To which a sensible person's answer would be. "Yes. Yes, that is a little odd."

(My answer was "Awesome! Make something up and send it to them!")

Disconcerting things #1

When you have an unwrapped chocolate in a box of wrapped chocolates (e.g. a loose Fudge in a box of Cadbury's Heroes).

Eat it or bin it? Eat it or bin it? Hmmmm.