04th November 2008

It's not about branding; it's about an institution. There's something grounding and warming about a never-aging face we all know and trust. Like Father Christmas (translation for West-Atlanticans: Santa Claus) - everybody knows his big ol' belly and white fur-lined red suit. And his beard.
Just like everybody knew the good old Captain Birdseye: a loveable old sea captain, who we all suspected was secretely Father Christmas (again) or Bernard Matthews, famous turkey farmer, gone rogue. When they reincarnated the barnacle-encrusted old codger into a young James Marsden-a-like, the world rebelled. Fish prices plummeted and talk of an ecodomic fishession was all over the papers. Why? Because no one (repeat: no one) wants to buy fish from James Marsden.

So why, why, why have they replaced our beloved Mr Muscle - a man so weak and inept that he gave all of us hope that our ovens couldn't possibly stay greasy for long if even he could remove the baked-on remains of grandma's over-roasted duck - with what looks like James Marsden. Why?

Mr Muscles proved to the world that you didn't need to be talented, good-looking, charming or indeed have the ability to walk properly to get your oven clean. Before then, we were in pandemonium. In the late 1960's everyone from fire fighters to Richard Nixon himself were called in to fight the 'greasy oven' crisis. Your everyday layman was ill-equipped to cope with those baked on stains. But then came hope. Then came, Mr Muscle. His dirty vest reminded us our our dirty vest. His lanky limbs reminded us of our girth-deficient penises. This was a man who seemed so incredibly unable to deal with even a coffee spill onto linoleum and yet - somehow - he could clean an oven with a single wipe. The world was changed forever. If he could do it, then why not the rest of us?

Now though it seems that grease is winning the war again, and - just as the troubles of dwindling cod reserves in the North Sea called out for action - James Marsden is back to fight our war for us, and we are left in the sidelines.

Stuart

07th August 2008

I just had a thought as I crunched down the last of my Polos, the minty magic clearing my sinuses and cooling the air on its way through my nose into my brain (right?). They say we should be insulating our roofs and walls, cutting back on energy production and use and using our cars less because of Global Warming. No doubt. But... on a global scale, isn't global warming pretty efficient. I mean, as a planet, we're not letting energy escape the way it used to. We are insulating our terrestrial rooves... er, roofs... rooves. We're insulating our terrestrial ceilings, as it were, and together we're sorted - right?

I mean, I'm no scientist* but it seems that we're already achieving the thing we wanted most of all. Now if only we can convert all this heat energy back into car energy again, we'll have the whole thing licked. And speaking of licked, this global warming is making my ice cream melt faster than I can devour it. Num, num.

*[Stuart's educational background is in physics and maths - Ed]

Stuart

10th July 2008

It may shock you to hear, but there are times between waking up and going back to sleep again when we're not creating Chain Bear. No wait, there's more - we both have day jobs - day jobs! Temporarily (i.e. during the good part of the all-too-brief, glorious British summer), I have been relocated from our glorious capital, with it's parks, lakes and river, to the middle of goddamn nowhere. I was okay with this; I took it on the chin and tripled my daily commute for the good of a company who is fast forgetting I even exist.

Yesterday they replaced the Choc-On-Top flapjacks in the sole vending machine with Crazin' Raizin flapjacks.

I accepted it when they replaced the Kit Kat Chunkies with Alpen fruit crunch bars; there were still standard Kit Kats, I decided. But this - the Choc-on-Top flapjacks were for the moments of dispair, when I could forget I was a place the rest of the workforce has dubbed "Two Towers" (despite there being three towers), and I could remember that I would be going home at the end of the day. But now... raisins? I hate raisins! Raisins are one of two things I just can't stand to eat - only two things and they put one of them in my bloody flapjacks. This is some kind of negligence from the COO, for sure. I can sue.

Stuart

09th July 2008

Seriously, a nineteen-year-old girl, Abbie Hawkins, has found a bat in her bra. While she was wearing it. A live bat. Five hours after she put it on. She said she felt weird vibrations on her way to work, but thought it was her mobile phone; only after five hours did curiousity get the better of her and she dove into her bra (at work, as a hotel receptionist) and pulled out the baby bat. This leads me to a couple of conclusions: firstly, she's wearing the wrong sized bra - no way is should there be enough comfortable room left in there to house a whole bat, it was a pretty sizeable bra after all. Secondly, if she ever gets any real health problems, she'll be long dead from shrugging off the symptoms before she ever visits a doctor. Lumps on her breast? Shrug! Probably just another bat.

Incidentally, the Independent had a picture of the girl, clothed, holding out her bra with a plastic bat inside; the Metro decided to go with the girl wearing only her bra, looking mock-shocked. The Daily Mail went with one of each, trying to look upmarket, but caving under the pressure of having a busty 19-year old in underwear splashed on their pages. The BBC news site had no photo, but was the only one to mention her size. I don't know why I'm fascinated with this story so much.

Abbie Hawkins is my new hero.

Stuart

29th May 2008

The scientists may tell it differently but it seems at last that our primate cousins have begun the first steps towards taking over the world and enslaving all of humanity. Not that we didn't have it coming, of course.

It seems they have duped scientists working among them into creating fearsome mechanical arms which are directly wired to the monkies' own brains. This means that any desire to crush, destroy or mutilate can now be carried out at the simplest whim. Not content with their Cold War style offensive by transmitting both the AIDS virus and the virus that nearly killed Dustin Hoffman and Rene Russo, they are now taking a leaf from the book of the common hooligan and getting ready to punch us straight in the face with their tiny steel fists.
"Monkies have long been jealous of the size and strength of humans," Professor Stephen Hawkins might have said. "but now the tide is turning and with this new found mechanical power, what's to stop an animal threat on the scale of Jurassic Park, or even Arachnaphobia?" We continued to postulate that Hawkins would have suggested the removal of all primates from advanced science laboratories, moving them to theoretical departments to help solve long standing mysteries like gravity and souffles.

Stuart

08th October 2007

Apparently being an apraised radio DJ, writer and former televsion presenter isn't enough for Mike Read, and it appears the next logical step in the media fame game is to make pictures out of sweets. I'm no expert on ambition, nor am I a fan of Liquorice Allsorts, but if you want mosaic-like tools at the ready and cheap to boot, then popping open a bag of sweets does seem ingenious. Though flipping through the selection that is currently on display at the Karen Taylor Contemporary Art Gallery in Twickenham, it's easy to see that Mr Read abandoned the mosaic theme early on, which I did find disappointing. Instead he's opted for the classic acrylic painted background coupled with the lesser forms of artistic sweets, namely Daim bars and Toblerones, which aren't the most pliable or tastiest sources of confectionery available. Saying this, however, these pictures aren't meant to be tasty in the literal sense, and one could say a string of mosaic pictures out of Chewits or Opal Fruits (sorry, Starburst) would be taking the obvious route (if an obvious route exists at all). So I praise you Mr Read. I praise you for trying to make a Lion bar all that it can be. And I for one am in full support of glueing chocolate to cardboard, rather than it residing in the arteries of our increasingly obese school children. I always knew Super Size Me would do the world some good.Getting back to the art at hand, I urge you to take particular notice of the map of the world constructed in Liquorice Allsorts, and push away the thought that it was made by a 56 year old man, and that he seems to have denied the existence of Scotland, Ireland and half of Scandinavia. Maybe geographic accuracy wasn't part of his 'vision', or maybe some wide-eyed child broke into his studio and ate half of western Europe, or maybe we will just never know.

Lauren

19th July 2007

Raaaaawwwwwwwrrrrr Raawr! Grrrrrrrrllllll! Rawr, rawrrr rawrr, rrrrrrrrrr!

http://www.wulffmorgenthaler.com/default.aspx?id=94b9879e-e9b5-4ffb-b083-b6415fa2e802

RR!! RAAAWWRR! RAAWRRWWR!!

Rupert

02nd June 2007

I don't like these bloody women self-reproducing hammerhead sharks. As far as I'm concerned this gives certain species an evolutionary advantage over others, and where, I ask, is the fairness in that? Let me ask you this - what have hammerhead sharks ever done for us? I'm not only talking about bears, I'm talking about life on earth in its entirety. I'll admit strange-shaped heads have been somewhat popular in the past - 'Hey Arnold!' springs to mind, as does Jimmy Hill, and the elephant man never hurt anyone, but is there a good enough biological reason why these hammerheads should be able to wildy populate the earth (or indeed the sea, though it probably won't be long until the rascals have clawed their way onto land, too) without the help of a good man? Speaking on behalf of all bachelors out there, the single life can certainly be a lonely one. Finding that one special lady bear to chain yourself too for all time is not an easy feat, yet these hammerheads just get easy reproduction served to them on a silver platter. You can't even turn on the television, wireless or visit a picture show these days without hearing some desperate lady singleton banter on about her serious lack of man, and we all know, fellows, that ladies are baby crazy - surely having the option to self-reproduce would shut the lot of them up for good. But oh no, lest we forget, then their would be the dreadful re-uprising the that godforsaken feminist movement, which i daresay might in fact be to blame for these lady hammerheads popping out babyheads without the good love gravy that the manheads have spent countless years brewing. It's a slap in the face of manhood, you ladyheads, and I for one will stand for it no longer. Do these ladyheads even realise how many of these babies will be fatherless? Isn't that what's wrong with our society? Surely we can do without the problem spreads to the SEAciety, too. But oh no, let me guess, you ladyheads can manage just fine, can't you? When your damn hey arnold baby starts smoking crack at nine years old and gets another sodding adolescent girlhead up the duff because 'daddy doesn't love me'. You wait, ladyheads, you wait until this child finds out he has no daddy at all. You wait until he's demanding thousands of ocean pounds a year for university - let's see how well you do without that lazy-good-for-nothing manhead now. Yeah. Hahahah. Ha.That's right. And who'll berate me for this? Who? Sharks? You shark folk don't even have HANDS!

CB

21st May 2007

What on earth is all the hubbub about the burnt down Cutty Sark If any of you have bothered to cast an eye over the Thames of late, I think you'll quite agree that the number of stationary vessels greatly exceeds those that sail. The biggest slap in the face comes when you realise that these boats are in fact sea worthy - not only are they basically littering the surface of the river, but they aren't fufilling their marine destiny. Take the HMS Belfast as an example if you will. Looking like its made from cardboard and grey emulsion that's as dull and murky as the depths of the Thames itself, the damn thing can't even pass under the bridges that sandwich it in it's eternal spot. God forbid, some bright-eyed sailor ever suggest that the thing should set sail. But one thing i can say in favour of the HMS Belfast is that at least a floating museum hasn't been its sole and depressing occupation. Gone are the days it cruised nobley across oceans of far lands and battled for our freedom, not only in World War II but in the Korean war also. One is put in mind of a cantakerous elderly gentleman, now resident at a urine-smelling retirement home. There he sits, consumed with Deal or No Deal, adorned with rusted war medals that only serve as a faint glimmer of the glory he once shone with. As far as this bear is concerned, the Cutty Sark never won us any wars. What good is a tea ship when young, fertile men are dying on the battlefields of Europe? I know what you're thinking, but they sweep PG Tips off the floor. You can quote me on that. Would anyone really give a damn if some mumbling old tea delivery man was set on fire? I don't think so. I bet the bloody thing also had a hand in some overseas bear baiting, too. Useless ship arsonists should be acclaimed. In fact, from now on I will strive to ensure that 21st May will forever be known as Useless Ship Arsony Day, and that any useless ship that goes unarsoned should be sunk immediately, along with the nearest bystander who should have had the common sense to light a match and send it on its fiery way. A river is not the place to decorate, boys and girls. If you want to decorate, purchase a Christmas tree. You'd be better putting your time and effort into constructing miniature matchstick boats to hang from its branches rather than reading about the tragedy that has befallen the Cutty Sark in the Metro, drinking the tea that came from its quarters, or visiting the HMS Belfast, even if it is for educational purposes.

CB