Monday, October 02, 2006

Animal Magic?

No, this isn't a title designed to titillate the velcro-wellies brigade, but, I hope, a neat parenthesising of two of my themes.

So I sit down with a faceful of carefully prepared and lovinly cooked nosh in front of me, turn on the telly in anticipation of a weekly fix of Paxo despising what the great Paul Calf might describe as 'fockin shchewdunce' on 'Universally Challenged' only to find that it is 'Autumn Watch' with our old chum Bill Oddie, the do-able but almost certainly leaveable Kate Tedious, and Simon King, who I suspect has a personal hygiene problem, because he always gets to spend a lot of time on a remote island with notoriously smelly wildlife.

Now, when he's not looking at the wrong camera, oure hooste is increasingly seeking to plunge me into some kind of temporal trauma. As I learn that it is time to grow up, to stop the wobblies everytime I don't get my way, that it just isn't on to point out to people just what a stupid twat they are and that this tendency is probably somewhat responsible for social and professional retardation, Bloddie is attempting to imitate this dear old character.
I realise for some of you he will be a complete stranger, but for anyone who grew up in the UK in the sixties and seventies, within range of a telly, he was as much a part of childhood as Ribena and Spangles. I'm trying to leave childhood in the past, at last, and get on with adulthood. [N.B. if any attractive ladies would also be desirous of getting on my adulthood, drop me a line.] So it is just a tad confusing.

In retailing there is a concept of 'adjacency' which is about putting one type of goods next to another type of goods (wow, sounds complicated) and trying to make them 'relevant' to one another to encourage sales. E.G. bread, butter, jam. You will realise from your own experiences that it doesn't really work out, but next time you're hauling your arse around Tesdabury's in semi-zombie mode, realising what a distasteful experience it is, how there are too many people in this aircraft hangar-like structure with tellies and Tannoys (it's a brand name, I have to capitalise it) bombarding you with exciting offers on loo roll and tampons and tins of corned beef that you just can't afford to miss, and there are screaming children demanding more sweets, their older siblings crashing the trolley into your ankles then challenging if "you gotta problem?", then consider just how it is possible to put it all together in there in anything approaching a rational manner; there are about 40,000 different items for sale in a large British supermarket these days. [There's a rhetorical question buried in there, and no '?', so if anybody has an offer on a better delivery, I'm interested.*] On the other hand, consider how TV scheduling works. Adjacency might be a concept there too, hence the increased tendency for invariably shit and consequently disappointing theme nights. So following 'Autumn Watch' with a programme about the Nuremburg trials strikes me as just a tad abrupt. Now don't get me wrong, I'm all in favour of telly that reminds society of what a bunch of bastards they were, although I'd like a bit more of reminding that a) vigilance is still required and b) it isn't, as a former work associate - in this instance I don't want to use the word colleague as that carries hints of comradeship - put it, "all a long time ago". No, it's just a strange adjacency.

I love liquorice allsorts, and I have to say, Bassett's Liquorice Allsorts, because the supermarket where I do my shopping, whilst noted for having relatively high quality products, does shit confectionary, and especially shit licky allsorts. I binged a bit on the allsorts this weekend, as well as also having my first drink in a month (ok, I had a glass of shampoo for Cupcake's christening toast, but that doesn't count), and have suffered the inevitable consequences. Just thought I'd share that. Interestingly, they do not have the same quality as chicken livers.

Enough of the chit-chat and small talk. To Business. I want to return to an issue which troubles me, and which I'm prompted to mention as it came up here, and so I am not the only one troubled by it. What is it with this pubic hair shaving thing? I need to understand this. Do women do it because they want to do it? Because it is more comfortable? Or do they do it because they believe it to be expected, the societal norm, and what is deemed to be 'sexy'? If the latter, this is tragic. And do men prefer it? Isn't it just a bit unnatural? At best a denial of our own animal nature, and at worst, well, do I need to spell it out? So, let's hear it for a thick dark rug of lush pubic hair, as animal as it gets, and something to be celebrated.

At which point, I must depart for my pit. I am curious as to whether this post elicits any comments. It never ceases to amaze me which bits people want to comment on. Will it be Bloddie, Bassett's, bastards or bush? Or none of it? Or *? I need a punctuation refresher course. Such is the burden of pedantry. Love yer, folks, K.

9 comments:

Zen Wizard said...

They use the adjacency concept in TV but they call it a "lead in."

E.g., "Friends does so well on TBS because its 'lead in' is Seinfeld." (I don't know if that is true or not--but that is an example of the logic.)

So if you have a strong enough "lead in," presumably, you could have a show about gerbils running on those wheel things they have in their cage and presumably somebody somewhere would be too lazy to change the channel.

(Gerbils crawling up somebody's ass might actually be interesting, but the FCC might throw a hissy fit.)

In radio, the goal is to have a strong "pillow talk" show at night (the "Love Mumbler") so people (mostly people with vaginas) will set their clock radio and wake up to the morning drive. I forget what we called it, but that is not exactly the same concept anyway.

Zen Wizard said...

Oh, I just finished the rest of it.

I don't know why women shave their twat.

Ironically the ones that do are the same ones that want to save the rainforest, so go figure.

krusty the baker said...

It's bastards and bush thus far, then. Thank you Zen, for the insight and correlation there, but we still haven't answered the question.

Oh, and I think 'Friends' is shit. Always have done. The most generous thing I can say about it is that it is twee, and it provides an opportunity to look at Jennifer Aniston.

VintagePurseGal said...

Never liked Seinfeld. Never liked Friends. The only thing I like about Jennifer Aniston is Vince Vaughn, so would that make her his adjacency?

As for licorice, I like Good 'n' Plenty and ouzo, although not together. Still, it would be interesting to see them situated next to each other at the supermarket. What a lovely, sticky mess when those rampaging children run their carts into the displays!

As for shaving, not every woman who does it is a tree-hugger. And that's all I'm gonna say about that.

FirstNations said...

all i CAN comment on is the shrubbery issue since i dont know what all the other crap is. xpt liquorice. which smells nice.

anyway, hairy bits.
they're good.

Betty said...

Bill Oddie was getting a bit carried away narrating that hedgehog's emergence from hibernation. More so than Johnny Morris would have, actually.

There seems to be a bottomless pit of Nazi-related TV programmes, and I have a feeling they're all watched by the sort of people who, on the one hand would say "wot Hitler done wuz terrible, you know" and on the other would say "I'm sorry, it 'as to be said, there's too many immigrants in this country, we're a soft touch".

Anonymous said...

Bush. I have to admit feeling a little queasy when women feel they have to look pre-pubescent to be attractive.

The red and blue bobbly allsorts are the best.

johneffay said...

richard wrote
The red and blue bobbly allsorts are the best.
The technical term for them back where I come from is 'wormcakes' because the insides look like they've been made out of jellied worms.

Shaved pudenda: Never seen the attraction myself, but presumably somebody somewhere must go for it or you wouldn't get all that pornography consisting of young ladies using razors on each other...

Cherrypie said...

I was going to try and solve the ? riddle being the wordy nerd that I am. I couldn't bring myself to do it.

I'm ever so slightly thrilled that there are men that don't expect women to be fuzzfree. But do you feel the same about armpits? Surely not.