Monday, September 18, 2006
Criminally Crimson
Indian advertising campaigns have lately reached a new low. As if girls making randy sounds at a watch or tittering over an unremarkably average small car wasn’t inane enough, Pepsi, yes, none of the [insert giant cola brand name here] crap this time around, have come up with a new ad slogan that just hit everything else out of the park. The blue billion is coming. Detestable cretins.As if it isn’t bad enough that this country has more than a billion mouths to feed… imbeciles want to publicize it. I’m pretty sure dysenteric circus elephants could have painted patterns more sensible than making light of your own country’s population crisis for commercial purposes on national television.
Try and imagine the blue billion… coming. One thousand thousand thousand sweaty, belching, swearing, mostly blue collar South Asians moving as one. Almost brings a tear to the eye, doesn’t it? Run Forrest, ruuun!
Now, I’m not ashamed of my country. I am however, ashamed of the way its people are fond of behaving. For example, too many Indians think they ought not to be Indian, which is a great loss to the nation. If they put the same determination into making a living in the land which fed them at birth as they do in trying to escape to foreign shores, my head would hang much less lower and not without good reason. India will forever be tagged a “Developing Nation”, as long as the majority of its population doesn’t realize that it needs to be contributing something to the country instead of feeling cheated out of a birthright. This is why we continue to advance at the speed of dark, while the rest of the “Developed” world surges forward with every passing day. Congratulations. Blue billion my ass.
Hold on there Free Willy, don’t look at me just yet. I’m presently counted among the thinking-but-not-acting slobs who have too much to say but not enough to show for it. Wait till I’m good and dying and if I haven’t done anything worth a mention by then, you can point those curvy index digits at me and loudly proclaim “Hypocrite”. But for now, I’m proud to work for a company founded by smart, enterprising Indians, in India, that has graduated to an international base and Market Leader status.
I don’t remember who it was, but I once heard someone say (I’m honestly hoping it wasn’t just David Blaine) that life isn’t worth living if you haven’t found something worth dying for. It’s a cool thought but simultaneously scary because not everyone has identified their worthy goal by the time they first read this weighty statement. And that’s depressing.
I’ve actually always been searching but can’t admit to having found it. Close sometimes, but never right there and definitely not worth dying for. It’s unfair really, that supposedly, unless your life is centered on one particularly spectacular goal, you could be deemed a waste of perfectly potent sperm. The altruists would tell you they’d devote themselves to family or friends or some other unwarranted sentimental crap like that. The social screamers would always claim to have something worth dying over… some human/animal rights cause, environmental cause, political cause or some other bullshit that the average shmuck doesn’t give a flying fuck about. So let’s tone it down a bit. Maybe you don’t quite have to die. How about moderate-to-severe wounding? (Hospital time means time away from work!) No?
But really, I would like to have that thing which involves me completely while drawing on my talents, however imperceptible they may be; my refuge from the asphyxiation of enforced conformity and a hidden fountain of indulgent intoxication. I’ll have to write that one up as a knight’s quest, to be undertaken when I’ve grown woefully weary of worldly endeavours.
People have many opinions about the force that turns the earth, but I haven’t yet heard this one and I’m pretty sure it has been largely ignored. Penis envy. Yup.
Penis envy doesn’t necessarily have to about a penis, but it is still about the size. Money makes the world go round, love makes the world go round… yeah ok, but take this into consideration too. If penises were never envied, so many millions of men wouldn’t suffer from low self esteem, leaving psychiatrists virtually jobless. Unemployment is better than listening to women whine the entire day.
I remember my school days; the time when I would be insecure about guys who were taller than me or who had bigger feet than me, meaning almost everyone. To top it off, family genes gifted me with unusually small palms, so I really had no physical field on which to compete with those bastards. Pretty sucky times, sizewise.
Competition has got to be one of the strongest factors driving every single human being. The biggest package always wins. How else would you be motivated enough to work at getting better? If there was no penis envy, you wouldn’t have the skyscrapers and super towers that bejewel the skylines of the world’s richest cities, each of which was built in an effort to out-do a similar effort by somebody else. You wouldn’t have limousines and you wouldn’t have Big Macs. And you wouldn’t have the slimmest cell phones or the tiniest palmtop computers. Works both ways, this size thing.
You gotta face it eventually, things don’t quite work the way Tex Avery made them out to be; Droopy doesn’t really slay the dragon and ride off with the hot dame while the Big Bad Wolf sulks in the corner.
So the next time someone has to tell you “Don’t worry, size doesn’t matter!” be ashamed. Be very ashamed.
For over a year now, I’ve been talking about virtually everything, with the exception of religion, politics and my family; three topics I’ve been careful not to stray into because they are respectively A: too vast to cover and might just involve more mindless drivel than actual sense, 2: uninteresting, leaving me under-opinionated because of said disinterest and 3: unfair to the folks at home.
Although I have actually written stuff which did pertain to one or more of these subjects, they never got past my pre-posting review and were thus dropped. They’re still lying around somewhere, so maybe if I change my mind I’ll take a shot at putting them up. Possible, but not probable.
Take a walk on the wild side, baby
but don’t forget to pack your raincoat, trekking boots, insect repellant, Swiss army knife, vitamin pills…
Green Day – Jesus of Suburbia
Justin Timberlake – Sexy Back (I know it’s cheap to jump onto the popularity bandwagon, but in my defense, I didn’t really jump onto it, more like I booked an early ticket)
1 Comments:
Vikthegreat, at 10:12 PM, September 24, 2006
Don't just stand there with your mouth open... say SOMETHING dammit!
you've said a lot in one post though. i agree with you on the fact that advertising is going to the dogs these days. i'm working on it man!! ha ha ha!! :D
no but honestly, every so often you come across a great campaign, one that succeeds not only in inspiring you to buy a product, but also look at everything and everyone around you in a new light.
that is the ultimate dream... one that most copywriters and ad people aspire to achieve, but very few actually manage. mostly because the clients are bastards!!!
anyways good stuff, as usual!
cheers man!
vikram..