August 25th – Passing through Pleck, I noted the ‘legal name fraud’ posters are appearing again.
To me, it’s inconceivable that someone could have the wealth to pay for these, yet the stupidity and lack of insight to believe the moronic, pseudo-legal claptrap they espouse.
If you’re puzzled, read this article, and note that it’s all related to the Freemen of the Land muppets…
Beware: googling any of this opens a whole world of rambling rubbish.
June 20th – One for the occasional series on the silliness of advertising billboards.
I find myself paying more attention to roadside ads when cycling, as they take me longer to pass than if driving and some, after a few weeks, really begin to irritate. This one is a particularly fine example of the Photoshop failure art form – this example is on the Walsall Road in Darlaston.
This is an advert for the BMW Mini Cooper. Nothing wrong with that (unless you can remember how much character the original had…) but this ad exists in several forms for different length billboards. Notice the bike in the background? In all but it’s longest format, the lamppost is slightly behind the car, and you can only see the rear of the bike, a steel 1980s racing bike.
In common with most 80s bikes, it has a self-added prop stand, mounted off the rear wheel nut, and an aluminium circular spoke guard between the gears and wheel on the back axle.
Quite what’s passing through the wheel at ground level I have no idea.
Now look at the front wheel. It has the ghost of the propstand mount, rotated around 105 degrees. The aluminium spoke guard is on the front too. The end of the front fork is straight, with no dropout.
The forks and position of the wheel suggest the top tube (between handlebar quill and saddle) is unfeasibly huge.
The front of the bike is not real. It’s been created in photoshop, by someone unfamiliar with bikes, purely to fill space when the ad was stretched.
What a load of old tut. This has been rubbing me up the wrong way for a week now.
May 3rd – Some advertising wonk was paid to come up with this for the Halifax building society (or are they a bank these days?) – and it irritates me as these posters are all over the place – in this case on the Walsall Road in Darlaston.
Top Cat appears to be advertising mortgages. That’s right, Top Cat. That’s a cat, who lived in a dustbin and survived from the proceeds of theft and confidence trickery and really wouldn’t ever be considered for a mortgage, although he probably would be suited to a career in the City.
Although I suspect the bankers learned the coin-on-elastic trick from him…
October 22nd – In the offices of Smarm, Smarm, Bignob and Braces, advertising agency for SSE Power:
‘Nigel, it’s a great advert for energy. But it’s lacking a certain gravitas. What it needs is a completely irrelevant, wistful, ennui-laden orang-utan, gazing meaningfully into the distance.’
‘I’ll get right onto it, Gideon’
As is the photoshopped buildings and van weren’t shitty enough. What would the librarian of the Unseen University make of it all?
‘Ook!’ probably.
Both spotted in Darlaston.
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