Beware the nut factory

This really got to me:


I bought a pack of peri-peri cashews from a local supermarket yesterday and made the unfortunate mistake of reading the packaging. Here's what it said>>>


"Nestled in the fertile valley of the Langeberg Mountains and refreshed by the waters of the Keisie and Kingna Rivers, lies the idyllic town of Montagu. It is here, in the this abundant green haven, that we've packed the tastiest dried fruits and nuts and brought them to you to enjoy time and again."


While reading that little story my imagination was taken on a journey through these amazing mountains, diving into cool clear mountain streams and... hay wait a sec, did they say "It is here that... we've packed the tastiest dried..."???


I must investigate, why would they say 'packed' when they could use awesome words like harvested, plucked, nurtured... that single word threw me off. So I picked up the packet and examined it more carefully before I noticed the horrific truth. There in font size 2 next to the bar code at the bottom corner of the pack "PRODUCT OF TANZANIA / VIETNAM"!


AHAAAAAAAA!


Deceiving Bastards! You've described the idyllic and pristine location of your FACTORY. The depot in Montagu where all the trucks carrying imported goods (from third world, war stricken, human rights abuser, child labour driven countries...) which arrive for repackaging and distribution in South Africa! An even bigger slap in the face is the fact that they confess they are running an industrial operation in such a naturally beautiful "haven". Why not stick your factory in a designated area within a city? It's rather suspicious... I could go on, instead I suggest printing this label:


"Chugging smoke and pollutants into the fertile valley of the Langeberg Mountains and poisoning the fresh waters of the Keisie and Kingna Rivers, lies our Nut packaging factory. It is here, in the this abundant green haven, that we've decided to build our evil empire by importing the tastiest dried fruits and nuts and selling them to you at ridiculously high prices to fund our weapons of mass destruction project."


So there...

This chicken licken ad had me in stitches

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdhiQs29zgs

New on supermarket shelves in SA

I was in Pick 'n Pay today when I noticed this product on the shelves for the first time. Why did Kellogg's think it would be a good idea to name a breakfast cereal 'Smack' (unless said cereal contained a certain 'secret ingredient')! I mean honestly! do they think people will need their fix of smack in the mornings? Does the name guarantee a long term customer from a particular segment of buyers?



I'm not so sure... The frog/lizard thing seems to be very excited about the whole deal though, suspiciously so in my opinion. Have you ever seen a cereal box character with as big a smile???



Stay well away from this one friends, it gives me the heebee djeebeez

Proof that Facebook Marketplace is bollocks

Click to enlarge

Do you use lotion? Read on if you do...

So there I am, minding my own business typing at the pc. I get a bit uneasy after a while and adjust my seating position to find a new comfort zone. Suddenly it strikes, an itch attack of a magnitude only achieved on the driest of winter days. It feels as though a hundred fleas materialize onto each of my forearms and simultaneously feast off my cells.

Emergency lights and alarms go off in my head. It is time for me to dig out the lotion and apply it as a last resort. This bottle has lasted me 3 years and is still pretty much full. Guys don’t use lotion unless their arms are about to fall off you see. We’d sooner scratch our legs till we bleed (Done this before guys, haven’t you?) than simply squeeze out some lotion from a tube and painlessly massage the itching away within seconds. If you’re a guy and you haven’t done any of these things you are either a mommy’s boy or a homo. So there…

There is a point to all this rambling. You see after applying the lotion to get rid of 200+ fleas on my arms I started wondering about the contents of said lotion and how those work to eliminate itching and dry skin. So I take a gander at the ingredients on the label.

· Cucumber

· Aloe vera

· Honey

· Buttermilk

· Mint

· Palm oils…

…the list went on and on naming these ingredients, which would probably make a good light meal on their own, each sounding more soothing and cool than the previous. After the list of recognizable ingredients came a bunch of chemicals, and this is where the average person would stop reading. No, not me, I had started reading and wanted to get to the very end of the list of ingredients. So I tried (in vain) to recall some of my first year chemistry as I slowly pronounced the names of each compound. That’s when I spotted it! There! Between Dihetrasulphoxychlorisomthing and Hydramethdoodyvonphospholux…

It said very quietly in Arial font, size 0.5

Urea

UREA!!!!

WTF!!!???

Those bleddy, dishonest, deceptive, backstabbing, lairs! I’ve been lathering myself up in urea whenever I get all itchylike. That’s just not cool. Laxatives in chewing gum is alright, but urine in lotion crosses the line! I wish people were honest about their products. Sure you wouldn’t sell much lotion if you call it “Cool Aloe, Cucumber and Urine” flavour but that’s not the point! You need to exclude mixing in random excreta with your products!

Why, oh why, do you have Urea as an ingredient in any case? Is it some sort of joke? Do employees just relieve themselves in the mixing vats to have a laugh? Who was the guy that decided it would be easier to just make urea an ingredient as opposed to firing the employees involved in taking a dump in the lotion?

I WANT ANSWERS DAMN IT!

Stop abusing Mandela!

How could one stoop so low as to insult this man!

I gave up listening to the radio a few years ago. Things were getting pretty bad and I couldn’t take it any more:

1. All the good DJ’s were being canned and replaced with nauseating teens (or adults with teen temperament)
2. Advertisements ruled the air. I’m sure 90% of the time between rambling-nutter teenage DJ’s was just a swarm of insurance, Coca-cola and CTM tile ad’s.
3. The other 10% of the time was filled with the monotonous banshee like droning of Rihanna, Beyonce, Shakira, Natasha Beddingfield…

I was quite content listing to my own CD collection and MP3 compilations for a while after I left radio. Then one day I got bored of music and turned on the radio to look for something with which I could drown out the tyre roar from my Corsa on long distance trips. I found SAfm, talk radio. Awesome stuff (apart from the daily soap and Sunday preaching) minimal adverts (the occasional reminder to pay your TV license) and an occasion track from a local band (outdated yes, but familiar and enjoyable most of the time).

I was really pleased with my new FM companion till Nelson Mandela day started encroaching on us. For those unfamiliar with the event:

“Mandela Day is a call to action for people everywhere to take responsibility for making the world a better place, one small step at a time, just as Nelson Mandela did.

Nelson Mandela spent more than 67 years serving his community, his country, and the world at large. On Mandela Day people are called to devote just 67 minutes of their time to changing the world for the better…”

Sure I have no beef with the principles behind Mandela day, It’s a great way to get people to be helpful and blah blah blah… There is one thing that did get to me though. Quite a few companies have seen this as yet another opportunity to take advantage of good natured people by using Mandela in their advertisements. I call these deceitful ad’ campaigns Black Mandela Ops (or BMO’s).

For example

A normal CTM tile advert: “Come to CTM for high quality imported tiles at low low prices. CTM More than you expect for less than you think!”

A BMO’ed CTM tile advert: “2 million children DIED from cold last year because of poorly insulated homes. We at CTM will donate one tile to these children for every 100 tiles that YOU buy to make a difference to their lives. CTM, we care about children, just like Nelson Mandela does. DO YOU?

Example number 2

A normal KFC advert: “The Colonel made sure he always used the finest secret spices and chickens to make KFC. We carry on that tradition with our new rounder burger with a hexagonal bun! KFC, it’s Fickin’ Good.”

A BMO’ed KFC advert: “Nelson Mandela reared chickens when he was a boy growing up in the Transkei. He loved those chickens, they provided eggs and nuggets on the cold winter days when he and his dear old mum were hungry. In fact if it weren’t for chickens Nelson Mandela might have starved to death as a young boy. Imagine a world without Nelson Mandela! We at KFC would HATE to live in THAT world. Thankfully we provide chicken to prevent such a catastrophe from ever happening again in the future. Buy KFC, do it for Madiba.”

Even the Blood donor notices have been BMO’ed: “…Donate blood, or Nelson Mandela will hate you…”

I can’t stand it! Even talk radio has been infiltrated by Black Mandela Ops. The whole 67 minutes thing… I bet there is some red eyed profit monger behind the entire ordeal. People should be nice to other (deserving) people all the time. Not just for 67 minutes for one day every year! I hate that Mandela’s good name is being used for promoting all this rubbish. People have lost the plot!

We have finally run out of words

I was cooking up something in the kitchen the other day while listening to background MTV. Well to be honest, someone else was watching MTV while I was cooking. The reason I don’t want to say that I was listening to MTV is because these days it’s quite an embarrassing place to be caught channel surfing. Think about it, most of the music is complete and utter rubbish. Advertisements make up around 50% of the broadcast content (you know the channel content is bad when you actually look forward to the advertisements… like SABC). As for moral values… well you can throw those out the window what with Beyonce constantly filling the screen with her… junk. I’m drifting; the point of this post is modern pop music.

Back to the kitchen...

There I was, innocently cooking a meal when I heard this terrible groaning noise accompanied by loads of uncoordinated bass tracks (seemingly put together by a ravenous three year old slamming his fists onto a jelly tot encrusted keyboard hooked up to cheap electro composing software…or Justin Timberland). I HAD to investigate, so I bravely left my meal prep to sneak a peek at the screen. Who could possibly make such an awful din (only worthy of an MTV line up)?

Well, the answer believe it or not, was Janet Jackson. I thought the groaning was perhaps a form of tribute to her late brother, you know, a sorrowful and mourning sister expressing her grief through the medium of agonizing vocals… I peeked for a few seconds longer to try making sense of the whole thing from the music video.

This was a very bad idea.

Mine eyes were greeted by a pair of bodies writhing against a wall. One Janet Jackson, the other, some scantily clad sweaty black dude…and no they weren’t mourning. This ‘music video’ was actually just a sex scene and the lyrics to the ‘song’ were basically Janet having an orgasm for four and a half minutes. What was the reason for this? All I could do was assume that the music industry had finally written and made several cover versions of every possible combination of words and lyrics for commercial gain. The options currently available to song writers at the moment:

1. Make up words (Rihanna and Nelly Furtado have taken this path)

2. Distort existing words so much that peoplebarely recognise them (Shakira and Lady Gaga seem to have this method down)

3. Just make random noises with your vocal chords to accompany music (Janet Jackson, above)

4. Distract viewers so much with raunchy music videos they won’t even realise your lyrics and music are complete shite (Pussycat Dolls and Madonna… just make me want to barf, it’s a miracle these tracks even get aired on the radio)

It seems as though song writers around the world have been hit by this phenomenon. There are no current tracks that appeal to me. None, nada, zilch… gone are the days of meaningful, emotive and moral music. A small part of me died as I copy/pasted the final track from my ‘New Music’ folder into the ‘Oldies’ folder.

I think 'American Pie' would be an apt song to describe days like this (by Don McLean not Madonna's treacherous cover version)

WTF is Ayoba!?

One of my pet hates of late is manipulative advertising. Without fail every summer vacation sees a torrent of crafty businessmen taking way too much advantage of the bonuses and savings people have worked so hard for. I’d imagine that the average Joe's thought process over the festive season would be something like this:


“Wow! This product is useless and doesn’t make sense at all, but it’s Christmas and I have bit of extra cash to throw around so what the hell…BUY BUY BUY”.


Staring ashamedly away from the screen aren’t you. Don’t feel bad, I’m guilty of thinking the exact same way, in fact I go so far as to save up and be über conservative over the duration of the year just so I can go extra AWOL over summer and spooge on random useless things I would never dream of buying at any other point in the year. For me December is the only period I don’t feel bad about buying Computer games and techy stuff like RAM, graphics cards and copper heat pipe cooling (yes, I am indeed a Nerdbob-geeky-pants). Why don’t I feel bad about it? Because of all the friggin manipulative advertising!!! Christmas special catalogs from every department store litter the streets and jam our postboxes to capacity. Bargains never seen before and NEVER TO BE REPEATED must be taken advantage off. Kids running through the streets shouting ‘Ayoba!’ on their way to the cellphone shops to literally spend their vacation allowances on discounted AIR!


What the hell is AYOBA in any case? I see and hear it everywhere but still don’t know what it is. As far as I can see it’s just some random word with an exclamation mark behind it. Vodacom just spent millions inventing a word then put it on all their adverts to enlighten the masses hoping to achieve…-BLANK- (this is the bit I can’t make sense of) … so more people buy their product. Have we, the most advanced species in the known universe, fallen so far that these brainless sheep tactics actually have an effect on us?


AARGH!


I’ll leave you with this advert as a classic example of what I mean.

Drink Moet, It’s your best chance to make jolly with Scarlet Johansson. PS: She may even touch your winky ;)

Eat your heart out hello Kitty

Numbered are the days of Hello Kitty


(Geez! even I had to think long and hard before putting this image I found on Photobucket up here... don't judge me)



Fear not cat lovers of the world! You can now follow a more worthy role model, I give you...


Who could resist eating the brown ooze filled biscuits, shaped like decapitated panda heads.

NOT ME!!!