Japanese TV Adverts
I don’t speak Japanese. I think that will become very obvious very quickly as I try to work out what these old TV adverts from Japan, home of bewildering imagery, are actually for. Let’s see. There are giant, flying insects, a man in a baseball uniform, crabs holding yellow boxes with chicken symbols on them, and a wind-up power cord winding in. This is probably an advert for Click Clack Cluck, a natural compound made from crab claws and cockerels that both repels insects and acts as a dampening field for electrical signals. Of course, it doesn’t work because if it did you wouldn’t be able to film the advert because of all the interference. That’s probably why the product ultimately failed in the market if I had to guess. That and the smell. I’m guessing Japanese people sometimes just fork up the money to brag about things. Take this woman who is both proud of her cleavage and her arm wrestling prowess. Watch as she defeats the latest challenger to her crown, an advanced robot killing machine from the Sony Corporation. “There can be only one,” she says with a mixture of pride and derision directed at the nation of Japan at the end. A pretty straightforward public service announcement here. If you’re not a sexual deviant then you can sit down without problems but if you feel the urge to stick things up your back passage then, well, you get what you deserve. In summary: things come out; things don’t go in. A lot is often said about the Japanese attitude towards family, especially elder members of the family, but this advert seems to show that the familial concern goes both ways as a doting grandfather happily shows that where his granddaughter is concerned he’s prepared to give up his arms to manufacture top quality soap for her flawless skin. Some products are so uniquely Japanese – Whale Hunting for Science Diplomas and Godzilla Deterrent Spray are frequently cited in lists like this – and this is another example. Arm Foam now comes in a canister. No more mixing it in a cauldron like your ancestors. If you’ve ever wondered why Japanese people don’t seem to spend much time at the beach – it’s the thought that’s kept me awake at night more often than any other – then the answer may just come from this old commercial which claims to have a juice drink guaranteed to appease the terrifying Bee People, mutant hybrids that inhabit the shorelines of Japan’s islands tormenting anyone foolhardy enough to risk a quick dip in the ocean. Like many adverts I...
Why Charlie Hebdo Was Attacked
Charlie Hebdo was not a nice publication. But it had every right to be not a nice publication. People who don’t like not nice publications don’t have to read them, don’t have to pay attention to them. People who don’t like not nice publications have the right to petition to have them removed from circulation or persuade others not to buy them if they can’t avoid paying attention to them – this is what those of us who oppose dangerous garbage like What Doctors Don’t Tell You do – but there are some rights they don’t have and that obviously includes murder. The question is: were the murders really an Islamic terrorist response to supposed blasphemous images? Is it possible that they were instead opportunistic thuggery by cowards trying to fracture civilised people and boost terrorist recruitment? Juan Cole contends that without a declaration of the reason for the attack (and probably with one anyway because such disinformation is exactly what is desired) we should be sceptical of the motives and that it is the latter possibility in this article Sharpening Contradictions: Why al-Qaeda attacked Satirists in Paris: The problem for a terrorist group like al-Qaeda is that its recruitment pool is Muslims, but most Muslims are not interested in terrorism. Most Muslims are not even interested in politics, much less political Islam. France is a country of 66 million, of which about 5 million is of Muslim heritage. But in polling, only a third, less than 2 million, say that they are interested in religion. […] Al-Qaeda wants to mentally colonize French Muslims, but faces a wall of disinterest. But if it can get non-Muslim French to be beastly to ethnic Muslims on the grounds that they are Muslims, it can start creating a common political identity around grievance against discrimination. […] Most of France will also remain committed to French values of the Rights of Man, which they invented. But an insular and hateful minority will take advantage of this deliberately polarizing atrocity to push their own agenda. Europe’s future depends on whether the Marine LePens are allowed to become mainstream. Extremism thrives on other people’s extremism, and is inexorably defeated by tolerance. It’s not a long article and worth reading for the similar tactics carried out by Stalinists in the early 20th century as well as by al-Qaeda in Iraq which led to the sort of success that Daesh/ISIL/ISIS has achieved recently. If the article is right then the absolute worst thing that could be done is to further isolate Muslims or accuse their religion of not opposing terrorism; that to think in right-wing terms and...
Portsmouth, Alien Invasion – Women’s Defence Force
We’ve already seen that the women of Portsmouth kept their spirits high even as the Squirmy Munge attacked the city during the 1915-1923 war but don’t think for one second that their role in the conflict was limited to playing football under daylight UFO raids; the Portsmouth women were organised, aggressive, and adept in all the ways of warfare. Nothing’s really changed. A familiar sight in the city was that of the Women’s Defence Force patrols of between one and two dozen heavily armed fighters patrolling the streets making sure no Munge incursion took place. The WDF were involved in countless engagements with the aliens and were credited as being the main reason for the Defence of Copnor Road in August of 1921. Membership of the Portsmouth Women’s Defence Force was considered a great honour and rumours were rife of men allegedly donning disguises in order to fight alongside the courageous females of the city although no documented evidence of this actually having occurred...
Religious Revolution In Egypt?
Interesting times in Egypt where President Abdel Fatah al-Sisi recently called for a “religious revolution” at Al-Azhar University in Cairo which, established in 970, is the most prestigious Sunni institution in the Islamic world. It’s inconceivable that the thinking we hold most sacred should cause the entire Islamic world to be a source of anxiety, danger, killing, and destruction for the rest of the world. […] That thinking […] that corpus of texts and ideas that we have made sacred to the point that departing from them has become almost impossible is antagonising the entire world. […] You need to step outside of yourselves to be able to observe it from the outside, to root it out and replace it with a more enlightened vision of the world. I say and repeat again that we are in need of a religious revolution. You imams are responsible before Allah. The entire world is waiting for your next move because this Islamic world is being torn, it is being destroyed, it is being lost. And it is being lost by our own hands. Ordinarily, with words like that you probably wouldn’t anticipate someone in the Islamic world these days to be breathing for very long (tolerant religion of peace and all that) but el-Sisi’s military background might give him a better chance than most. Dar al-Iftaa, Egypt’s government-sponsored religious institution responsible for issuing fatwas and religious opinions responded to el-Sisi’s call by announcing the launching of a national project aiming to correct the image of Islam through social media, foreign visits, publications, and issuing fatwas that “suit the modern age.” It’s a...
Ichthyologist Chat Up Lines
Those poor, lonely icthyologists doomed to a life of solitude, incapable of talking to a prospective sexual or life partner without mentioning fish. Or smelling like fish. Or being just a little bit wet. Like fish. Where are their ice breakers? Where are their chat up lines? Are they here? Probably not. Hey baby, you’re a perfect tench. Is that an eel in your pocket or are you just happy to sea weed? Somebody needs to call Cod because Heaven’s clearly missing an angelfish. My gonopodium is pointing in your direction. Your plaice or mine? You’ve got a bass that goes on forever! I’ve got a feeling we’re going to be sole mates. I want to rockpool your world. And just how long can you hold your breath? Blowfish? I pike you very much. The moment I saw you I got a chub on. You’re giving me an irresistible urge to head to the spawning ground. Just so you know, I’m a lumpsucker. I’ve got ctenoid scales. For your pleasure. Let’s go to sea bed together. As soon as I saw your halibut I thought “bottom feeder.” I think I should tell you up front: I’m into grouper sex. I want to batter you and wrap you in newspaper and eat you by the shore. If I said you had a beautiful goby would you hold it against me? You and me should get benthic right now. I like you. I like you axolotl. Hey baby, are you an anglerfish? Because you’re several orders of magnitude larger than me with an illicium projecting from the middle of your...
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