Tuesday, June 07, 2005

Meaningless slogans once more

On the way to work today, I overtook a lorry with the legend: "Rawlings Transport - keeping it real". I don't know where to begin on this - "keeping it real" was what hippies in Haight Ashbury did in 1967. Why a transport company - sorry, logistics solutions provider - should feel the urge to keep it real is beyond me, and, I suspect, them. I imagine the MD has a tragic pony tail.
Arriving in the bustling heartland of West Lancs, I was confronted with a sign for the upcoming Ormskirk street festival, which is being sold under the tag "Ormskirk Comes Alive". Hmmm - does this confirm, as many people think, that it's usually dead? Uncomfortably close to the Royston Vasey slogan, methinks.

Monday, June 06, 2005

More Meaningless Slogans...

The OU's new expensive advertising campaign campaign hit the TV screens last night. The slogan they've gone with is "Powering People", which makes it sound like they'll be plugging students into the National Grid. This might not be such a bad thing, on reflection...
Even so, there's an ever-rising number of these mindless taglines, and I suspect I'll be returning to them in the future.

Sunday, June 05, 2005

The Internet and Associations

The Observer | Business | John Naughton: Log into the confessional, my son
Interesting article from John Naughton, whose Observer column is always worth a read. I hadn't heard of this peculiarly named Vannavar Bush before, but he seems to have had some far-sighted ideas. The idea of association was, of course, very much part of the modernists' armoury in novels such as Joyce's Ulysses. In fact, Molly Bloom's soliloquy at the end of the novel is nothing more than an extended exercise in associative thinking. Yes and yes...

This guy's hot...

Guy Fawkes' blog of parliamentary plots, rumours and conspiracy
Came across this blog by accident. I'm obviously not keeping up very well, since it's clearly a pretty famous blog. Entertaining, intelligent and, as the Grauniad says, incendiary in places.
Unsurprisingly, Guido doesn't have a full profile, so I wonder who he is. Obviously London-based, and clearly someone with insider knowledge. Maybe a media hack? My left-wing sensibilities were a little disturbed to see that it was named blog of the year by the Adam Smith insitute, and a line in the Guardian calls Guido a "Tory boy"- but from what I can see he's equally withering about politicos of all persuasions. Good stuff.