todayiamadaisy | Entries tagged with advertising

When I was little, there was an ad on TV for a product called Tarn Off. It was a bottle of cleaning fluid, and in the ad a glamorous lady in a lovely blue dress had a pile of tarnished jewellery and what not, and she would dip each item half into a bowl of Tarn Off, and hold it up to show the half clean, half tarnished brass coaster or whatever. I wanted nothing more than a bottle of Tarn Off. Why, if I had a bottle of Tarn Off, I would be the happiest child in all the world! But my mother refused to buy it, stating (correctly) that I would leave a trail of half-dipped spoons around the house. To this day, I think about Tarn Off more often than you'd expect.

This week, for instance, I found myself thinking about Tarn Off when I went to get a silver chain necklace I haven't worn for a while, and found it was discoloured. If only there was a product that I could dip it into to clean it! You can still get Tarn Off, apparently, but I just used bicarb soda and boiling water and the necklace cleaned up beautifully.

Next problem, though: I hang all my necklaces on a miniature (30cm high) silver hatstand that I inherited from my grandmother, but they somehow manage to tangle themselves up. They seem to be hanging there, motionless, but when you turn your back, they knot themselves together. You can't wear just one of us, they say, you'll have to wear us all at once. I searched for "jewellery storage ideas" and this was one of the first things that came up. So I bought one and it arrived on Friday and I have spent far more time than I should admit sliding it along the clothes rack in my wardrobe to look at one side and then the other. I am so easily entertained.

This week is also the start of the very short period that achachas are available in the supermarket. I bought a bagful, as I always do whenever I see them. I'm apparently the only one, because the kids at the supermarket checkout have never seen them before. Today's checkout assistant was a teenage boy who looked at them curiously and asked what they were. I told him and he poked at the touch screen before saying in triumph, "There they are!"

Finally, this week I went to the theatre. The theatre has a new policy of allowing people to take glasses of wine in with them. I don't know why this annoys me as much as it does. I mean, you can buy water and snacks at the bar and take them in with you. Why should the glasses of wine you buy at the same bar be any different? Maybe it was the smell, just because I'm not used to smelling it in the theatre. (I don't like the smell of popcorn either.)

PS: Tarn Off! (Why did she let all her silverware get into that state in the first place?)

This week: I have struggled, nay, soldiered on with a cold. Monday and Tuesday I was the sickest person in the world. If that was a real competition, I'd have been given a trophy. A bronzed box of tissues, say, or a giant perspex lozenge. Thursday and Friday, meanwhile, were wretched filthy hot: aggressive dry furnace heat that knocked you down when you opened the door. I am glad the cold didn't coincide with the hot, else I'd have just had to lay down and die.

Pertinent to both having a sore throat and needing to cool down: I am not a huge fan of frozen ice-creamy things, but these are a treat, f-list. I recommend them for both illness and hot weather.

My mother is a subscriber to the local theatre, and on Thursday night she had two free tickets to the launch of the 2019 season. There will be some interesting shows next year: Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, Bell Shakespeare, a few small independent plays. She was late booking her tickets for the launch, so we had to sit in row S. Row S, f-list. The ignominy! She was determined not to suffer that fate for 2019, so Friday, my day off, we braved the heat and went back to the theatre to book our tickets for next year's shows. I thought this was very eager of us, but we weren't the only ones. We had to queue.

That done, we headed back outside. In front of the council office was parked a car with fishing rods poking out at various angles, all dangerous. A man in a ranger's uniform was taking photos of it, and he had to step back to let us pass. "Oh, say," he said to my mother, "have you caught that little cat yet?" He, it turned out, was the ranger who had failed to catch Tojo a few weeks ago. My mother filled him in on the Tojo news. "Aw," he said, "that's too bad. He looked like a sweet little fella."

Things I regret doing this week: I saw a knothole in the magnolia tree, a little nub of wood that looked loose, so I poked it. It fell out, followed by a torrent of big shiny ants.

Things I learnt this week #1: Lemon, lime and bitters is an Australian thing. I am genuinely surprised. What does everyone else do when they need "a mildly sophisticated drink that could be served to people of all ages"?

Things I learnt this week #2: A man coughed up a blood clot the shape of his bronchial tree. (He later died. I mean, obviously.)

Targeted advertising update: Thanks to searching for garden products, I've seen less of the hairy chest hoodie this week and more retractable hoses. Also, mysteriously, ads about a man called Josh, who paid too much for his business insurance. Poor Josh.

Daytime advertising during the Winter Olympics continues to entertain. This particular one has been around for ages. I haven't seen it for YEARS. And yet, here it is to bemuse the casual luge watcher.

Eyes should not be there. Any of those theres. Honestly, if any of your underwear-wearing parts sprout eyes and starts singing and dancing, see a doctor. Chafing is the least of your problems.

There are still a few weeks of summer, but autumn arrived about four this morning with a great gust of wind that flapped my bedroom curtains and blew the bins down the street. There's a change in the air.

I have a job interview next Monday. Corporate services manager in a small not-for-profit. Very much my wheelhouse. Fingers crossed.

Of course, with that organised yesterday, New Me rang from Old Work today. Could I — maybe — perhaps — spare them a little time? They are looking for an accounts payable clerk here in the City by the Sea, but their interviews in January didn't find anyone suitable. Or rather, they did, but the person they found wanted to more than the part-time hours they were offering. So they're starting again, and in the meantime there is no-one to pay the bills. Or rather, there is — there are three other accounts payable clerks in the other offices — but one has only been there for two weeks, one is on extended sick leave, and the other is therefore doing quite a lot of extra work. New Me was very apologetic — this is so far beneath you, and we could only pay you the accounts clerk rate — and I agreed to come in tomorrow to see what needs doing. I think it will only be a few hours a week, for a month, just to give them time to find someone, which would be manageable even if this job interview works out. Which I hope it does.

This is the least successful resignation ever.

I've been watching some of the Winter Olympics. Today one of the snowboard commentators said, "As we say in snowboarding, he's one of the best men on a board going around." Honestly, commentator, how am I to understand technical jargon like that?

Watching the Olympics has also exposed me to the advertising they put on during the day. A lot of income protection insurance and funeral insurance ads. There's one where a couple are packing to go on holiday — as in, loading bags in the car — when the wife decides that they simply must talk about income protection insurance and sign up RIGHT NOW. Before they go on holiday. What's she planning?

And then today there was one where a couple was sitting on their couch and the husband wanted to talk about funeral insurance and the wife said that was a good idea, let's look into it tomorrow, and he was all, no, let's sign up RIGHT NOW. Because you never know when you might need funeral insurance. Maybe we'll need it tomorrow!

There must be a less sinister way of advertising insurance.

The December TV guide arrived yesterday. It features an advertisement for a book called Grandma's 1001 Uses For Baking Soda and Vinegar, which is a fairly self-explanatory title, I feel. The advertisement tries hard to build a bit of mystery, though. It says:

You'll discover:
How to kill small tree stumps with these simple ingredients.

What will help with an upset tummy? Turn to page 27 to find out.

To help soothe bee stings, insect bites and sunburn, make a paste from these ingredients to give you instant pain relief.

Cockroaches! Use these two common kitchen ingredients, which are chemical free* and safe to have in your home, to rid you from these nasty and dirty pests.

An unusual way to get rid of warts!

Fun ideas for kids to keep them occupied.

Why so coy, advertisement? I'm fairly sure the answer to all those points is baking soda and vinegar. It's in the name of the book.

A few pages on, there's an advertisement for a figurine of Princess Diana that is "a radiant 23cm tall". Can height be radiant? I don't think so.

* No, they're not, book. Everything's chemicals.

Update 1: It turns out asking the public to name machinery doesn't always result in Boaty McBoatface. This tale of a competition to name two gritting machines is absolutely gripping.

Update 2: Today's "what I'm buying my loved ones for Christmas" advertisement outrage is that the woman selecting the gifts is buying her husband a book about gardening for $59.99 and her brother-in-law a cosy blanket for two for $129. "There's a story there," my mother announced, tapping the page meaningfully.

Weekly knitting update: ( A capelet! )

I planned to write about what a delightful time of year this is. End of winter citrus season, start of summer stone fruit season. Mandarins and nectarines, my two favourite fruits, in my fruit bowl at the same time. What could be better?

Only today, spring decided to do a bit of a sneak preview of summer, and the 43°C (109°F) in my back garden was not delightful at all. AT ALL. Tomorrow is supposed to be 22°C (72°F), and Thursday 16°C (60°F). Make up your mind, spring.

Too hot and not adjusted to it, I spent the afternoon flaked out on the sofa watching an old episode of Vera. And that is how I came to see an advertisement for... well, this:

There is a lot to unpack there. Not least: what is she eating to make it doughnut-shaped?

After Vera, a repeat of Grand Designs, in which the couple building the house budgeted for £800,000 and came in at £2.3 million. They were a particularly irritating couple. And very bad at budgeting. I mean, at some point, you'd just get cheaper taps, wouldn't you?

Something I enjoy about this time of year: not the Innovations Christmas catalogue (well, I mean, yes, I do enjoy it, although this year's was just average, with no outstandingly nonsensical items), but The Store's Christmas advertisements. Not because they're particularly good, mind. They're just regular ads.

( Judge for yourself )

These have been running for several years now, and they're always the same: someone involved with The Store picks a variety of goods that they will be giving as gifts. Fairly innocuous, and I must admit I paid them no attention at first. But my mother? She hates them. They make her splutter with incoherent rage. Misplaced rage, I feel, but, eh, we all have our little foibles.

What incenses her about these ads is:

1. The person's family and friends will read the ad and know what they're getting, thus ruining the surprise and letting them know how much it cost.
2. Unless this is all just for show, in which case the person's family and friends will read the ad and think they know what they're getting, only to get a nasty shock when they get a pair of socks, particularly if they've used the price of the gift as a guide for what to buy the person in return.
3. The cost of the gifts is out of whack. In this one, the woman's gift to herself is a $365 bag, which is more expensive than anything she's buying for anyone else. In the one that really infuriates my mother, a man is buying his wife a $49 trinket, while giving his sister a really nice $200 pair of earrings. There will be trouble in that house this festive season.

I do like that 1000 colour jigsaw puzzle though.

I have a new, system-generated password for some software at work: CorpMan. I feel like a superhero.

I meant to ask when I went to the cinema the other day, do you have depressing warning ads before films? We used to have terrifying driving warnings from the Transport Accident Commission. Then there was the electrical safety one about the man who backed his yacht into a power pole. Then there was the work safety ad about the young chef who spilt a giant pot of boiling water on himself. That was actually one of a series; others included the young carpenter who nail gunned his eye and the young baker who stuck her hand in the bread slicer. And on Sunday, I saw the current effort, which is the sad tale of a man who forgot to get his gas heater checked and therefore died of carbon monoxide poisoning. Because heaven forbid we go out and have fun without being reminded of that one day we will die as a result of our own stupidity.

I am toothless. I mean, not completely toothless. Upper wisdom toothless. The dentist took one look at it yesterday and said, 'Oh yes, that will have to come out,' and then he took an X-ray and then he took the tooth out. No messing about. Just a delightful cracking sound while he worked on it. I thought it was quite quick (I was in and out in half an hour), but he said it was a tougher job than he thought, because of the awkward angle it was growing at. Then he showed me the result and said, 'Look at that, what a monster!' So well done me, for my giant sideways tooth.

I had a droopy face wadded up with cotton pads, so I went home until I was more presentable. My mother and John were cat-sitting, or rather, were sitting outside drinking tea while Alistair hid under the bed. So that's going well.

Last night the blood clot fell out of where the tooth was, which, according to the pamphlet the dentist gave me, means I need to be alert for dry socket. Thanks, pamphlet! I will do that. (The pamphlet also says I am not to drink through a straw.)

At any rate, I am exhausted. My eyes feel like burning embers, I have had a headache since yesterday afternoon and I kept waking up during the night covered in sweat. I am not sure if that's dry socket or just a reaction to the trauma of having a tooth pulled out. I also keep thinking all the rest of my teeth are crumbling, but I'm fairly sure that's overactive imagination rather than dry socket.

Unrelated: a haberdashery store catalogue in today's paper that says this:

Rod and curtain set* 25% off

* Includes rod and curtain

Good to know.

Colour your world with zirconia!, said the jewellery shop catalogue in the mailbox. Are they not colourless?

In yesterday's paper there was a special supplement called HomeStyle, which featured an article on the top ten bathroom trends for 2015. Apparently we are all going to have bevelled edges and coloured grout and timber-look porcelain tiles. And the number one trend?

1. Living room lookalikes
Gone are the all-tiles, cubicle-style pokey service rooms of yore in favour of sanctuaries of style to relax and rejuvenate. Add a chair and a book nook, elegant light fittings, fireplaces or vertical gardens, and the bathroom could easily be mistaken as an extension to a living area.

They illustrated this with a photo of a nice chair next to a hand basin. I can't behind this idea. My bathroom must be the least ambient room in my whole house. There is no room I am less likely to want a comfy chair.

(I think I have mentioned this before, but I once saw a house with a carpetted bathroom. Not just on the floor; this carpet went halfway up the walls to the dado line.)

( Phone fun )

Busy life? You need a _______ that can keep up with you!

That was a billboard I saw at the airport the other day. It didn't have a blank word, obviously. The blank was the type of product you need if you have a busy life. What do you think it was? (Answer below.)

I went to Canberra for a meeting, not last week, the week before. It was -1 degree (Celsius) outside, but they had the heating cranked up so high inside that people were swanning around in sleeveless dresses, so all those of us who came prepared for chilly weather were overdressed.

I am sure that germs live and breed in that sort of artificial heat, so I felt vindicated when I came down with a cold on my way home. The first one I've had in a couple of years, hmph. So that was how I spent my week off last week: snuffling and coughing.

I am currently drinking a cup of lemon and ginger tea. The box tells me it is [b]est served without milk and an upbeat attitude. That doesn't work, does it? 'Without' applies to both the milk and the upbeat attitude. Is there a better way to say it? Best served without milk and with an upbeat attitude? Best served with no milk and an upbeat attitude? (Unless they really are trying to say that it is best served without an upbeat attitude, in which case... well done.)

What else? Oh, I saw a play the other night. Shakespeare, Henry V. It was... well. It was interesting. It was set in 1940s London, and all the cast were students in a bomb shelter, and they were reading Shakespeare to pass the time. So it opened with snippets of other plays (Richard II handing over his crown, Falstaff and Hal in the tavern) to set things up, then they started reading. There were only ten actors. The teacher was the chorus, and one student was Henry V, so the other eight divided every other role between them. Also, because they were students, the actor playing Henry V, for example, was really playing a schoolboy playing Henry V. He pulled it off, but it sort of took away from the impact of playing Henry V.

Halfway through, there was a bomb raid, and a German soldier parachuted in. That was well timed, because they flapped his parachute around to represent the battlefield. One of the characters said farewell to Henry in the play, then another bomb hit the shelter and that student died. So just as Henry triumphed on the battlefield, the student playing Henry killed the soldier. Triumph everywhere.

It was a bit confused. And confusing.

(The actor playing Henry looked really familiar, and I eventually realised he was the character known as Hunky Farmhand in that awful soap my mother liked.)

( Answer )

'Attention all staff members,' said the announcer at Bunnings Hardware and Nursery yesterday. 'There are still three gnomes missing throughout the store.' What was that about, I wonder?

I saw an advertisement yesterday for a vacuum cleaner with 'guaranteed no loss of suction', according to the voice-over man. And later he said it came 'with no loss of suction guaranteed'. That seems a really awkward way of expressing that, doesn't it? Unless No Loss Of Suction is some sort of trademarked property that this vacuum cleaner has.

This will be the last time I mention this, I promise, but in case you missed it: I have created a Pinterest board to keep all my terrible shoe finds for posterity. (I've changed the name and therefore its link, as I found another Ugly Shoe board.) I had all my ugly shoe links in a folder before; more than I thought there were, and some I had completely blocked from my memory. The human-tooth-bottomed brogues, the rat slippers, the fish thongs. Enjoy!

There was an article in the medical newspaper at work today about 3D printing. I knew they could print bones and joints (for hip replacements and so on), but now they can also print functioning livers. That's a bit clever, isn't it?

Also clever, but much, much more annoying, was another article about advertisers developing a way of using bone conduction on train windows. That is, passengers resting their heads against the window will be able to hear ads transmitted through the glass. That will be super, won't it? No.

Today as I walked past a shop called Green Bamboo Massage, the young man sitting at the reception desk was looking at his reflection in the window and squeezing a pimple on his chin. Charming.

Yesterday I saw an advertisement* for something called Easy Meals. Just add water to the packet and enjoy your reconstituted meal. Not my cup of tea, reconstituted or otherwise, and I would normally ignore it. But something about it caught my eye: their slogan of Eat now, pay later. I'll let their website explain more:

The best part about Easy Meals is that you can eat now and pay later. All you have to do is choose your meals and we will deliver them to your door and then let you pay the total price off over 10 fortnightly payments.

That's just... a spectacularly bad idea.

My top recommendation from Amazon today is called The Duckling Gets a Cookie. Thanks for the vote of confidence in my reading abilities, Amazon.

* Found it! It was this advertisement. Savour that acting. I actually laughed out loud when she opens the cupboard and shows her beautifully-arranged shelf of Easy Meals. And watching it again now, it looks like there's another shelf full of Easy Meals below the first one. She really likes her Easy Meals.

I love

vintage_ads. This one made me laugh out loud the other day. That's a terrible slogan.

My mother told me yesterday that getting older is a wonderful thing. Really, mother? 'I get a free hearing test and ten percent off toiletries at Priceline.' So there's something to look forward to.

If my grandmother ever had to take a plate of food somewhere – sandwiches to a CWA meeting or whatnot – it was her practice to stick a band-aid on the underside of the plate and write her name on it in biro. Let me tell you, f-list, band-aids stick to china like nobody's business. My gran has been dead these sixteen years but those band-aids are still stuck firmly, even if the biro-ed name has long been washed off.

I saw my one of my cousins down the street today. She said, 'I was just thinking of Auntie Jean [my grandmother] yesterday. I always think of her when I use that blue plate she gave me.'

'Has it got a band-aid on it?' I asked.

'Yes,' she said. 'I know it's silly, but I can't pull it off. It always reminds me that it's Auntie Jean's plate.'

That's probably why I haven't pulled any of mine off either.

Hello, f-list. I am typing this with one hand, while holding one of my mother's caramelised pineapple tartlets in the other. Delicious! Also, I am watching channel GO!'s Saturday movie, which is ¡Three Amigos!. So I am a happy daisy, full of exclamation marks. Or I would be if the ad that's currently on wasn't the Motor Finance Wizard jingle.

Before this, I saw some of the Australian Open tennis. They had this little filler piece, showing Andre Agassi reminiscing in black and white about his early days. He said one of his earliest memories was of going to the courts one day, opening his eyes and seeing a sea of tennis balls. I don't know why he had his eyes closed before he got there. Anyway, this statement was illustrated by... a lot of tennis balls floating on the ocean. I don't think that's what he meant.

This time of year brings the speedway to the City by the Sea. Some sort of motor race thing. I don't know. It's like prostate cancer: it's a big deal for some people but it doesn't affect me at all. I only know it's happening because there's a motel around the corner from me that has a parking area large enough for their trucks. That's fine. They've got to park somewhere.

The front page of yesterday's local paper, though, had one of the drivers being outraged — OUTRAGED! — because he had parked his truck over someone's driveway and they had complained to the police, who visited the driver and asked him to move off the driveway. And today's texts to the editor are filled with people complaining about the complainer, because these drivers bring a lot of money into the local economy and we should be nice to them. Up to and including let them block us into our houses, apparently.

In the gardening section of the paper today, someone said that the first instinct of people with a rose is to smell it. Is it? I mean, I do smell them, but is it instinct? Or memory of previous roses? Hmm.

This person is doing a 2011 photo a day project that puts mine to shame: the Stormtrooper family. Seeing that has made my day.

I've just seen an advertisement for a medical clinic, which surprised for two reasons. First, because I didn't think they were allowed to advertise. This is certainly the first advertisement I've ever seen for one. Second, it said that you could ring and make an appointment. Even, it said, appointments 'in the future'. As opposed to all those times you ring and make an appointment in the past, I suppose.

Yesterday's board meeting went about as well as the last one. So that was super. I have just about regained my equilibrium now, though, and restored my level of breezy over-confidence to its natural high watermark. Ha.

The conductor on the train stopped for a chat to a woman he knew who was sitting in front of me. She asked about his job and he explained that he worked the Warrnambool-Geelong line. 'It's the perfect job for me,' he said. 'I love travel.' Does covering the same 250 kilometres of track twice a day really qualify as 'travel', I wonder? But there, I shouldn't be mean. I'm glad he's found his calling.

Winchelsea station has roses growing on the platform, which is nice.

Last night, I saw an advertisement for a company that sells water tanks. Their slogan, proudly emblazoned under their logo, was brilliant:

Heritage Tanks
They've got a gutter!

I know I want one now.

Would you recognise this as a giant piece of rhubarb if you happened to pass it?

Happy news! After an international aid mission, I have finally managed to open the jar of marinated capsicum strips. I'm sure you've all been on tenterhooks waiting to know that.

The MasterChef Australia final is on tonight. I am not as enthused as I was this time last year. I've been watching, though, which means I have seen more advertising for Coles (the supermarket chain that sponsors the show) than is good for a person. The ads show staff and customers roaming the supermarket, waving giant red hands and singing. Singing badly. And what they are singing badly is Coles' slogan about its prices being 'down, down', to the tune of either 'Downtown' or 'Down Down Deeper and Down'. If the end of MasterChef means I never have to see this again, it can't come too soon. (There was a little boy singing it as he followed his mum around the supermarket today. There's no escape.)

( Photos of the day )

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Salt and corrosion

The infamous old enemies of the crime fighter

Entries tagged with advertising

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Hello Dear man How are you? How's life?

Nasty fruit salad

pole vault hunger strike

The Fascinating Forties

Book of Health

Scrapbook

Book of Useless Information

The Waters of Love

The Scent of Roses

Safe in Paradise

Bewildered in Berlin

Signpost to Love

Women Have Hearts

The Innocent Heiress

Mahogany

Rust

Felt Grey

Phthalo Green

Gold