Book cover comedy - dinosaur edition

Here are a couple of book covers I spotted in a charity shop today that are crying out for humorous captions. 

This demure dinosaur is clearly saying "Who, me? Be the cover star?"

Meanwhile, this suggestive guy is saying "Hey, baby, do you like therapods? Yeah, you do!"

Neither book came home with me despite making me chuckle.

Add your own caption by leaving a comment!

Three quotes from Coming Up For Air

This month I read Coming Up For Air by George Orwell. (Review here.) I like Orwell's prose and he has a sharp wit. Here are three quotes that made me laugh or nod in agreement.

As the main character ruminates on being married...

"When a woman's bumped off, her husband is always the first suspect - which gives you a little side-glimpse of what people really think about marriage."

I knew exactly the kind of day he meant with this...

"You know the kind of day that generally comes some time in March when winter suddenly seems to give up fighting.  For days past we'd been having the kind of beastly weather that people call 'bright' weather, when the sky's a cold hard blue and the wind scrapes you like a blunt razor-blade. Then suddenly the wind had dropped and the sun got a chance."

And as a driver of an older car with a lot of mileage on it, this bit about his car rang true too...

"You wouldn't believe any machine could vibrate in so many directions at once. It's like the motion of the earth, which has twenty-two different kinds of wobble, or so I remember reading."

It shows how good a writer George Orwell was that 85 years after this book was published I was smiling and nodding as I read it.

Discovering how people see me

A couple of week's ago we had a team day in work that included a session using the "Insights Discovery" colour toolkit. It's another one of those profiling tools that reaches various conclusions about personality based off a questionnaire. As part of the day we were given several cards each, which we could either keep, give to a colleague, or hand back to the people running the course. 

The cards all had a characteristic on them and we were supposed to keep the ones we felt applied to us, and redistribute the others. We all started with 12 cards. I gave six away and was given another eight. This is the selection I ended up with.

The six I kept were:

• Encourages structure and order (well, I try)
• Gives and receives trust
• Quickly gets to the root of the problem
• Rapid reasoning
• Imaginative problem-solver, and
• Identifies the possibilities in every situation

Some of them I strongly identified with, but I'll admit some of them I kept more because I would like to be like that.

The eight I was given reflect how my colleagues see me - or at least what they have seen so far. We have only been working together for a couple of months.

The cards my colleagues gave me were:

• Can facilitate resolution of interpersonal conflict between others
• Good situational analysis
• Will find ways to work more effectively (I call this tactical laziness; other people call it ergonomics - that's an idea for a future blog-post!)
• Realistic and systematic
• Sees adversity as just another opportunity 
• Knows the importance of detail within the process
• Gets the job done and done right (too right!)
• Brings boundless energy to any situation (this was surely a joke)

These are all fairly nice things to be told. I'm aware this sort of thing is not far off from those horoscopes that use vague compliments to make you feel positively about what they are telling you. We are almost always more likely to accept a compliment as a true statement about ourselves. 

Later I got given a detailed profile of my personality based on the answers I had given to the quiz. Strangely, there wasn't much overlap between the cards and the profile. In fact, some of it was in direct contrast - apparently I am likely to delay making a decision until I am in full possession of all the facts rather than deploy rapid reasoning. But from the perspective of living in my head, once I have those facts I reach a conclusion quickly. 

The only sour note of the whole exercise was that someone in my team handed the card saying 'Good sense of humour' back in to the facilitator. I felt mildly offended that they didn't give it to me. But maybe that's telling me something that I really ought to know...

On the trail of cartoonists at the Shrewsbury Cartoon Festival

Last weekend we were in my one-time hometown, Shrewsbury, for the Cartoon Festival. It's been going for 13 years and this was the first time we went.

On the Friday night we went to an illustrated talk by Tony Husband, who draws the comic strip 'Yobs' in Private Eye. Tony was talking about his book of cartoons called 'Take care, Son', which chronicles his father's descent into dementia and the impact that had on the family. It was by turns moving and funny, and as you'd expect given the subject matter, very sad. Tony presented it very honestly - talking about how difficult things became when his father was phoning him up to 80 times a day, and how he felt when he visited his father in the care home. "He always used to stand by the window to watch us leave to make sure we felt the maximum amount of guilt."

Tony is now presenting about his experience to a wide number of organisations and companies who are training staff to help customers who have dementia. The humour in the talk was never at his father's expense and I'm sure the way Tony manages to explain the situation and maintain the dignity of his father is a great lesson in itself for people who come into contact regularly with people who have dementia.

We bought a copy of the book and posed for a photo after he had signed it and drawn a Yob in it for us.

Also present at the presentation was Hilary Price, an American cartoonist whose comic strip is called 'Rhymes with Orange'. We discovered this years ago on the web and one of her cartoons, 'True Microwave Settings' was stuck on our microwave for years. Hilary was there with her mum and her aunt. We had a book of her cartoons and when Cathy pulled it out of her bag to ask Hilary to sign it, her Mum told us "I love you already!"

After getting over her surprise that we had her book, and signing it, and asking us if we were cat or dog people and drawing us a dog when I said dog people, she also posed for a photo with us.

The next day we went into the town centre. Next to the mediaval market hall, the festival had several gazebos for the cartoonists to draw large scale cartoons.  Tony had redrawn several of his Private Eye cartoons. The one bottom left (ho ho) is one of my favourites. (Click on it and it will be readable.)

Hilary was there, drawing a large scale cartoon as well. She remembered us from the night before, hopefully not because we came across like stalkers. It was a sunny day but bitterly cold as can be seen from the very necessary coats.

There were quite a few activities available and even I had a go, drawing my 'man with eager to please expression' on the blackboard they had out for the kids.

We came back later and he had been rubbed off. Ah well. Maybe I should actually draw some cartoons with him in.

It was an enjoyable event and I'm really pleased to have met two cartoonists whose work I admire. I'm very lucky to have met a few of my cartooning heroes over the years and if this festival carries on I may get to meet some more.

Marketing b*llocks!! (Literally.) "Camel Balls" bubble gum - a branding case study

I saw these sweets being sold in the independent shop at the end of my street. I had to take a picture.

Look tasty, don't they.

Yep, that's right, bubble gum "Camel Balls". I stuck the photo on Facebook with predictable results from adults who were stunned by it and the one teenager who commented saying they were "actually surprisingly good".

In a way, I kind of admire their marketing. These are not sweets for grown ups. No Lindor master confectioner swirling delicious creamy chocolate in a bowl here. No, instead we have a pervy looking camel ready to teabag us with his over-sized camel nads. (Strangely no penis. Perhaps not so strangely...)

I can imagine teenage boys in particular taking great delight in these, and in that sense they are brilliantly marketed. They are deliberately gross - why else the emphasis on being "liquid-filled"? - but they are just about borderline indecent to be amusing rather than out and out offensive. The company know who they are aiming for and they just about manage to do it without making parents testy and writing outraged letters to the paper.

I also love the additional selling points tagged onto the box. These are gluten free, folks. Gluten free! Because the last thing you'd want to have to check is the small print on a camel ball bag to find that out.

What can we learn from this? Know your market and pitch to them. This isn't a product for everyone. And if you are going to be 'gross', then you might as well be as gross as possible. Even though the sweets look disgusting (to me), I like the way the marketing doesn't hold back at all.

Please leave a comment with your thoughts

Read another blog about marketing: The psychological basis for what makes a TV ad memorable
Also: Branding brilliance: How to make your Death Metal band stand out

Interim bookey post - an extract from Burmese Days by George Orwell

The other reviews are coming soon. In the meantime, I've finished my first book for 2016: Burmese Days by George Orwell. It's a novel set in Burma during the British Empire. This bit amused me highly.

An hour passed, and a melancholy, earth-coloured Indian loitered up the drive, dressed in a loin-cloth and a salmon-pink pagri on which a washing-basket was balanced. He laid down his basket and salaamed to Flory. 

‘Who are you?’ 

‘Book-wallah, sahib.’ 

The book-wallah was an itinerant peddler of books who wandered from station to station throughout Upper Burma. His system of exchange was that for any book in his bundle you gave him four annas, and any other book. Not quite any book, however, for the book-wallah, though analphabetic, had learned to recognize and refuse a Bible. 

‘No, sahib,’ he would say plaintively, ‘no. This book (he would turn it over disapprovingly in his flat brown hands) this book with a black cover and gold letters—this one I cannot take. I know not how it is, but all sahibs are offering me this book, and none are taking it. What can it be that is in this black book? Some evil, undoubtedly.’

Thomas the Tank Engine gets off his face

I saw this from the window of a train on a tourist steam railway. I really don't know how parents would explain this to their kids.

Some advice

I have been collecting a few pieces of advice lately. Here are two.

First off, from a random place on the net, comes this reminder to retain perspective:

"Don't sweat the petty stuff, and don't pet the sweaty stuff."

Then via my good friend, Matt, a reminder that no job is too hopeless:

"Remember - you can't polish a turd. But you can roll it in glitter."

Aphorisms to live by, methinks.

All you need is vole!

I'm not sure why you would want eight inch high letters L-O-V-E as ornaments, and neither it appears did someone in John Lewis, Cardiff...

Quick film review: The Losers

Apparently this is based on a comic strip that I haven't seen, and evidently it's the first in the summer slew of OTT action flicks to hit the screens, and maybe it's the one people thought would be weakest so they put it out first.

++++SPOILER ALERT++++
It's also pretty violent for a 12A. Although I objected less than Cathy did to the way one of the bad guys met his end. And for once a traitor was actually a traitor and it wasn't all an elaborate double bluff that was revealed right at the end.

There was plenty of humour too. I loved the bit with Jenson singing Journey in the lift. Watch it if only for that and the line "Do you like the angle of the dangle?" The shoot out with fingers was very clever too.

Jongudmund's rating: 7.5/10 Surprisingly good.

Waiting for the fatwa

The NSS put me on to this video from Pat Condell. Brave man!

Bowling for Soup

BFS are hitting the big time. When we saw them 14 months or so ago, their support acts were absolute rubbish. This time round they were Wheatus (of ‘Teenage Dirtbag’ fame) and Son of Dork (of ‘one of the guys used to be in Busted’ fame), and some other band I’d never heard of, and missed seeing because we were late to the gig.

But we’d only really gone to see the Soup and they didn’t disappoint. They started with their anthem about growing up in a hometown, ran through some of their better back-catalogue and a couple of songs from their new album. I pogoed/shouted along to Come Back to Texas, 1985, Almost and Girl All the Bad Guys Want as well as my favourite – introduced as a song about Eric’s mom – The Bitch Song. The new stuff sounds not unlike the old stuff, and High School Never Ends is very catchy.

But the strength of a BFS gig is in the interaction between the band and the crowd, and even the band and each other. Stopping mid-song for beverage breaks and "the official BFS photo opportunity" posing time, is humorous and makes it worth going to a gig, unlike bands that just seem to want to play the same songs again and again in identikit concerts. The important point is that BFS seem to have as much fun onstage as the moshers offstage, which makes the gig fun to be a part of.

And any lead singer who launches into a rambling story about how he’s been warned not to call Welsh audiences sheep f***ers and then shouts "Good evening sheep f***ers!" has got to be a rock and roll hero.

[A big thank you to Sarah Mac who bought us the tickets for Christmas. You rock!]

Given enough rope...

Scott Adams has been stung by criticism ever since he blogged about Saddam Hussein being hanged. But then calling your post ‘Good Noose from Iraq’, while clever, is likely to attract complaints.

Having said that, NewsBiscuit’s reportage of the ‘outrage’ felt by many Western politicians is equally offensively clever. And it made me laugh like the proverbial drain. Particularly the bit about how the stakes have been upped for 'happy slappers'.