Cereal Killer

I had Frosties for breakfast today. I haven’t actually eaten cereal in years, ever since I read a great article about it (which I have managed to dig up here). The article tells the history of processed breakfast cereals right back to the nineteenth century in the corn belt of the Mid-west of America. In the article it goes on about how what was once a great idea, became gradually a bad idea (for consumers) and basically a wonderful marketing phenomena (which was good for shareholders and company executives). It was a presidential nutritional advisor that actually made the argument that breakfast cereals should be treated the same as sugar and alcohol, due to the empty calories that all three foodstuffs offered. Now, I am loathe to befuddle correlation with causation, but the two most obese countries in the world are COINCIDENTALLY the two countries where sugary cereal sales are the highest. There are bound to be other factors, natch.

What it boils down to is that fact that some damn fine advertising guys have been on the case for decades. I ate cereal when I was a kid. Everyone did. They probably still do. Why? Because parents bought them as they were hoodwinked into believing that all cereals were healthy. Why would the colourful cereal boxes lie? Well, they don’t exactly lie, but the fact that the cereal companies fought tooth and nail to prevent a traffic light system on their boxes is highly informative. Portion size, daily amounts, the difference between type of milk that should be used all muddy the water and prevent first time analysis in the supermarket aisle. Also, kids screamed for cereal. All the TV adverts showed wonderfully inventive cartoon characters doing funny things. They don’t so much now, but when I was a kid there used to be toys in the boxes too. Or coupons to collect where you sent them off with a few stamps and you would get a Tony the Tiger bike sticker set after a month!

So anyway, I had some Frosties this morning. My normal bowl, which I use for normal stuff, has a capacity for 2.5 times the recommended daily allowance of 30g of Frosties. So I filled it up. With milk. And the calories contained were more than a bacon sandwich which I thought I wanted more but naturally declined as I thought it would be more calorific. Now, I am not saying that all cereals are created the same, but even things like all bran are damn high in salt, and special K is damn high in sugar. Ironically, all of the vitamins that they say are contained all occur naturally in corn and wheat, but the process of creating the cereal strips them out so they have to be artificially added back in.

 I don’t think I will be feeding my son sugary cereal when he is old enough.

Edit: shit, I gave him some sugary muesli for breakfast this morning. Oh well, if it was good enough for me... 

Black Mirror Review

I had high expectations watching Black Mirror (C4) last night. The previous programmes (mini-series? Micro-series? Vignettes?) were all excellent, original and very thought provoking. The theme of near future technology is highly believable and plays an essential part of the programmes but never becoming the focus is eminently laudable. Too many programmes have shiny toys that they over explain and wave in front of the viewer’s faces whereas in Black Mirror they are background enablers of the plot and don’t impinge upon the emotional urgency of the story. I was not disappointed – it was very good and one of Charlie Brooker’s better stories.

The story itself was excellent if a little over-wrought (a modern day Monkey’s Paw) and it is easy to see that if technology was the enabler, then the story would still work if it used bygone or parallel ‘magic’ like the summoning of golems or the friendly undead. The very real loss felt by someone who has had someone close to them pass away was dealt with very well. Having lost someone close to me recently I really could empathise with the main character’s plight. It also raised the spectre (sorry) of what happens to your online life which is increasingly encroaching upon the real. What will become of your facebook page, twitter account, or (gasp!) blog? Will they be eventually purged and deleted or live on by themselves forever as ghostly reminders of the dead? Unless passwords are shared by the person before they die then that might well be their fate.

Maybe this blog will be preserved and pored over by historians seeking to enlighten themselves trying to understand our primitive lives. Hehe. Yeah, right. Yo Future Historians? Things are just XOPOWO, you feel me?

Swill or Swallow? Andrex wants to know.

I rarely watch television. The television I do watch, I tend to watch pre-recorded and I fast forward all the ads.  I hate adverts. With a fiery passion.  So I always tend to be out of the loop in terms of ad discussions that probably take place amongst people. Those sad people that like to discuss the ins and outs of professionally marketed substances. So it was entirely by accident that I managed to glimpse the Andrex advert recently. You know the one. The “scrunch or fold” advert. The most disgusting thing I have ever seen on television. I have seen much worse on the internet of course but this is broadcast television we are talking about here.

Now part of the marketing mindset is just to get people aware of a product. This has clearly worked as I am now aware of Andrex, but believe it or not, I was aware of them before as well. So do I now think positively of the Andrex brand? Hmmm gonna have to say no. Because toilet stuff is private. We don’t discuss it here in this country. Go to Bulgaria for that sort of thing.

What on earth were they thinking?!? Maybe it is just me. Maybe people do discuss these sorts of things with each other and I am woefully naive about this sort of stuff. Maybe people have bowel movement parties where all they do is wait for each other to loudly and joyfully defecate into special troughs they have bought and moved into the lounge. Maybe people inspect each other’s stools emerging and whisper things like “look at it curl as it lengthens...and it’s changing colour already...Christ I’m erect.” Maybe I’m a prude about this. I don’t know. And I don’t really want to know. Which is why Andrex’s adverts bother me.

Given the fact that I am giving this issue oxygen, Andrex no doubt will think that this is a marketing triumph. Well I have a few more ideas for Andrex which they can have for free.

“Do you piss your poo flakes away or wait for the eventual flush to do your dirty work for you?”

“When you lovingly defecate on your partner’s chest, do you sink down and mesmerizingly rub the shit into their chest, or immediately hop off and wipe?”

“Do you furtively masturbate in lifts or merely wait in the opposite sex bathrooms on the middle floor?”

“Bile or cum?”

I am sure you will see marketing campaigns based on these ideas within the next six months.