Category: quirky

 

 

When I’m flying, one of my favourite things to do is to read the in-flight shopping perfume ads. Perfume is a tough sell in print–I always imagine it’s some poor, drunk copywriter sitting in a dark, smoky, unkempt room who can’t get work doing anything else (his small poetry compilation did poorly) who has to write them. His phone will ring he’ll pick it up, some bored intern from the perfume conglomerate will read out a list of ingredients and he’ll hack out some hyperbolic description on a rusty old typewriter while he chugs a bottle of warm whiskey with a cigarette butt inside.

Something like:

Top notes of gentle jasmine mingle playfully with a smoky woody base of burnt oak and umber. A rush of citrus and watermelon follow through, reminding you of summer days of leisure and fun with your friends and family. Truly, a scent for the season that will bring out the active, dynamic side of the modern woman.

I didn’t really expect to come across hyperbole on something as banal as the HDB description for a 3-room flat, though:

Really, HDB? “infinite space”?

Maybe if by “clever touches”, you mean “become a Time Lord” and renovate your little HDB flat such that it’s internal spacetime exists on a separate dimensionality from the rest of the universe. I suspect even Phua Chu Kang, best in Singapore and even JB might find that a difficult job.

Nanyang schools collecting Barbie dolls for children in China – Channel NewsAsia

I must say, when I saw the article header the first thing that came to my mind was that it was some kind of terrible protest action against China’s poor quality control regulations–in an ironic twist, ship a bunch of lead-lined toys to kids in China and see how those Chinese parents like it.

That would have been a much more interesting read than the altruistic programme described in the article.

Sometimes people make reference to rabbits wrongfully, and I always feel it is my duty to correct them.

In the case of a Singaporean, it is most probably wrong to say that something will last as long as an Energizer Bunny. That is because Singaporeans have probably never seen the Energizer Bunny on television. The confusion stems from the fact that BOTH Duracell and Energizer, battery rivals, used bunnies as mascots.

Duracell’s bunny came first, as a cuddly little collector’s item and which most Singaporeans will remember seeing trotting along to some irritating tune. Energizer, however, also had a bunny as a mascot, though it was produced primarily as a parody of Duracell’s by-then already popular ads:

In Singapore, we have instead a musclebound anthropomorphic battery that serves as Energizer’s mascot, no doubt the result of a marketing team full of homosexuals with disturbing sexual deviancies.

Just so you know.

Jacob’s builds biscuit sculpture in record-breaking attempt

I’m just wondering why just the “Singapore Book of Records” (I imagine it’s a rather small book). Why not Guinness? A search on the website shows no signs of any other record-breaking biscuit sculptures, buildings, or artificial structures of any kind, really.

Answer-it’s a publicity stunt that had to coincide with a slow-news-day, but the Guiness people need 3-4 weeks to process a claim.

Or perhaps even marketing staff know when stupid is too stupid.