Barry Norman Take Two!

BARRY NORMAN WAS KNOWN AS A FILM CRITIC ON TV WITH THE CATCHPHRASE, “…AND WHY NOT?”.

So the LAST thing you would expect is for him to be associated with pickled onions. Of all the things he chose to endorse in his retirement from television, he chose PICKLED ONIONS!

How strange! Click on the picture to enlarge; it requires a closer look!

It says (in the mode of a film clapper board):

PRODUCER: BARRY NORMAN

TAKE: PICKLED ONIONS

SCENE: HOT AND SPICY

SOUND: CRUNCHY.

Yep, things are definitely getting worse!

Booked

WHO SAID CRIME DOESN’T PAY?

Glasgow criminals and gangland bosses such as Arthur Thomson, Reg Mckay, and Paul Ferris, probably make more from book sales these days than from any criminal activity.  Click on the picture to enlarge the picture of a local city book store front window display.

Yes, things are getting worse alright!

Chilling Puns

PUNS ARE BAD ENOUGH FOR BUSINESS, BUT BAD PUNS ARE WORSE!

Look at this Ice Cream Van in the picture (click on picture to enlarge); painted on the back are the words “HAVE A ICE DAY”.

It seems to me that the message the ice cream sellers want to get across is “Have a nice day”, with the implication that an ice cream might help in that aim. They seem to have wanted to somehow merge “ice cream” and “nice day” — maybe using some wit – perhaps a pun?  They must have scratched their heads and rubbed their chins for ages in deep thought on this one.  The obvious solution to most people would probably have been this:

HAVE A NICE DAY
HAVE AN ICE DAY

In other words, simply moving the space makes the perfect pun — an elegant wordplay, the two phrases sounding almost the same, merely the accent or stress moving from nice to ice.  Sublime.

However, they missed all that, and plumped for the ‘orrible:

HAVE A ICE DAY

– Which sounds like a machine gun stutter at best!  Yes, things are certainly getting worse!  Children see this everyday, so it’s no wonder standards are slipping!

By Gum!

INNOCENT OR GUILTY?

The manufacturers of chewy sweets may have acted in complete innocence in producing these “Gummy Lighthouse” confections, however, should you have a mind to it, they do resemble something else — something rather rude in fact.  Click on the picture to enlarge for a closer inspection.

My first thought was that lighthouse are a terrible idea; what child would care about boring old lighthouses?  Wouldn’t kids rather have things that are TV or game related?  Celebrity endorsed action figures or something relating to a film or sport?

As such, one can only conclude that this is not an innocent mistake; I do not think that these were ever intended to be lighthouses at all, they were designed to be rude, and to appeal to the silly teenage market. Bad taste? Yes indeed. And things are getting worse when teenagers can buy and consume rude body parts in broad daylight.  No doubt they get a big kick out of handing the local vicar a “lighthouse” to suck on.

Translation Error

COMPUTERS ARE NOT PERFECT!

When it comes to translation (as we know only too well here “En Afghanistan“), a lot can go wrong, sometimes it is a surprising result, other times it is no result at all.  Click on the picture to enlarge.

One wonders how long it would take before someone who could understand English would notice the problem and alert the authorities to the problem!

Things are getting worse when we overly rely on Computers and the Internet; there is no substitute for common sense.