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 ;)

The problem with New Years

So here we are, the beginning of the year 2010. I just can’t believe that it has already been 10 years since this…

So all the crazy ‘end of the world’ folk have moved their apocalypse date to 2012 because some stupid Mayan (or was it Inca?) calendar carved out of stone by an ancient man (who also had a thing for throwing people off the edges of pyramids, putting large bones up his nose and castrating Portuguese explorers with blunt instruments…) who didn’t bother to carve dates beyond 2012 because his wrist got sore and nobody really cared back then in any case…

No, the end of the world is coming but not yet (we still have a good 200 years or so). Besides, with all the dosh being invested into finding another planet for us to colonise as opposed to, …I don’t know, FIXING THE ONE WE ALREADY HAVE! We are sure to be right as rain to simply pick up and leave when the shite hits the fan (HAH! FAGS! Who do they think they are fooling… honestly!?).

Enough ranting about the change of years... It really doesn’t mean a thing at all. Just another opportunity for people to celebrate… because people get bored with the olde ‘eat, work, shit and sleep’ schedule, they feel the need to do something different. Breaking the monotony of a working class life probably does wonders to maintaining ones sanity. New Years is a great way for the average person to recharge them batteries and be optimistic about the future. Make that resolution, strive to improve yourself and become what you always wanted to be.

It’s sad in a way, I get the impression that people only have this outlook on life on New Years eve and the 1^st of Jan before it’s back to the old… ”screw it I’m happy with things the way they were” school of thought. People should treat every day as New Years day (no I don’t mean get pissed and stab someone with a broken bottle before being stopped by the cops and booked for being over the limit on your way home), they should wake up EVERY morning and make new resolutions, then stick to those resolutions because every day is just as important and filled with potential as the last. You can’t just lump 365 days together in a year then pretend as if one year was better or worse than the last! That’s like liquidizing an entire gourmet 5 course meal before eating it then saying it tasted like puke and asking for your money back (did that make sense just then…? Oh well, it did to me.).

My point remains nevertheless, anyone who looks forward to the benefits a new year can bring are observing life from the wrong scale. These people, in my opinion, are missing out on the finer details of day to day life by progressing annually rather than daily.

Happy New Year!!!

(and I should probably apologise for ruining it for everyone… NAH!)