Scent Off

ANIMAL URINE SEEMS TO BE MORE OF A PROBLEM THAN WE’D FIRST THOUGHT.

After last week’s post on The Urinator, we have received this photograph of a product called Scent Off. I Googled this name, and lo and behold a full page of results all about this product!  How very different from The Urinator!

Clearly the smell of cat and dog pee is a bigger issue than we’d known or suspected.  How come this is not advertised on TV? This ought to be part of the school curriculum.  We have to get the word out about this.

I would imagine that on a Saturday Night, a lot of places could do with being treated with Scent off or The Urinator.  Things are getting worse indeed!

 

The Urinator

I HAD TO TAKE A SNAPSHOT OF THIS PRODUCT IN MY LOCAL SHOP.

The Urinator — well, that caught my attention for sure!

Just in case you thought that The Urinator was some kind of strange superhero, it seems to be a product for potty-training infants!

So I thought I would find out more about The Urinator, and typed it into my browser’s address bar. I then got a pop up dialog box that stated:

Attention: The intent of the manufacture and sale of The Urinator is strictly for protecting your privacy of  a genetically predisposed medical condition

I clicked OK, and was presented with a website at www.urinator.com selling some “product” for nearly 150 US Dollars!  This simply cannot be the same thing as stocked in my local shop!

However, even after reading the page entitled “What is The Urinator?”, I had no idea what it is, does nor why it exists at all!

Another search turned up a tee-shirt at Zazzle.co.uk, so no luck with Google.

Things are getting worse when a product can easily be confused with another product altogether.

I eventually found a site called www.robharvey.com which had The Urinator – a product for cleaning items upon which cats and dogs have urinated. This doesn’t look like the product in my shop, and it is not for the same purpose (pets), but it is a lot nearer than all the other suggestions that the world’s favourite search engine returned. Anyway, couldn’t they have thought up a better name? Shhesh! It took me two minutes on the web, why couldn’t they have done this before naming their product and printing those labels?

Scotch Tat

IF THERE WAS ONE THING THAT DIVIDED GLASGOW FROM EDINBURGH IT WAS TOURIST TAT.

But now it seems to be changing; I have seen tourist tat increasingly in Glasgow shops.  Please click on the picture to enlarge.

The doll girls in tartan skirts, the mugs and teatowels with Edinburgh castle or The Forth Rail Bridge is all very well in auld Reekie — but surly not in Glasgow!

Things are getting worse when  such tat can be in  open display in Glasgow.  How awful!

Danger Pond!

A PLEASANT STROLL AROUND THE PONDS OF QUEEN’S PARK SEEMED LIKE A DELIGHTFUL IDEA UNTIL THIS SCARY SIGN WAS NOTICED.

[Double left click on the image to enlarge, as always]

The picture I took shows a pond with a sign sticking out of it.  The sign simply says:

“DANGER
BLUE
GREEN
ALGAE”

What on earth does that mean?  Will this Blue Green Algae rise up from the depths and grab us by the ankles to drag us off to the deep?

Perhaps it just means we have a slip hazard — that blue green algae is slippery. Thing is, I could not see anything slippery on the paths.

What the devil is Blue Green Algae? Is it a dust? a liquid?  A winged serpent? What ought I be looking out for?  Will it fall from the trees? will it run after us? Is it blue or green — or blue-green — or do they mean it is both blue and green (that both the blue and the green varieties are dangerous)?

Yes, things are getting worse when signs strike fear into English-speaking passers-by.

No Parking Reason

THE SIGN IS PLAIN; IT STATES “NO PARKING” AND “24 HOUR ACCESS”.

The sign uses a nice clear font, black lettering on white, and a good size too — able to be read from the car — no need to park and get out to read this sign!

It contains all the relevant information — no threats of clamping, towing away or a fine.  It is quite to the point and succinct — until you spot the tiny yellow warning triangle at the top right corner.

Know, you do have to park, get out and go up to see what this is about.

How bizarre is that?  The warning triangle has a drawing of a running child, a trike and a ball along with a garage door that seems to be opening and closing at the same time.

As far as I am aware, this is not in the “Highway Code”, so someone has gone to a great deal of trouble to think up this sign and use it in this strange manner.

It may be that the sign maker had a sudden panic; what if non-English speakers wanted to park their car, the sign would not be understood!  This warning triangle seems like an after-thought. It is not a proper size to be seen from a short distance!

Oddly, there is a no-parking sign in the “Highway Code”, which begs the question — why didn’t they just use that instead?

Clearly, they wanted to provide reasons, using illustration.  However, this child and his toys do not really explain the requirement for 24 hour access!

Things are getting worse when we invent road signs that cannot be easily seen nor understood.

Council Cleaning Con

THE CITY COUNCIL ALWAYS AMAZES ME BY THEIR SHIRKING OF RESPONSIBILITY.

Take this poster for example.  Double left click on the image to enlarge.

This is a poster in a charity chop window on Kilmarnock Rd (which is the main street in Shawlands). It is about so-called “Community cleaning of a lane”.

Yes, it is advertising the fact that the council wants local residents to clean their own streets and lane.  Hey, isn’t that what we pay council tax for?

Things are getting worse when the council can take council tax from us, and then get us to do the work ourselves! How Bizarre!

UFO Parking Bay

I SAW A VERY STRANGE THING IN THE CAR PARK OF THE ASDA SUPERMARKET IN GOVAN LAST NIGHT.

Normally (in my personal experience), supermarket car parks contain car parking bays and places for stacking up shopping carts.

Determining the one from the other is fairly straightforward; the bays for the carts have a trolley or two and rails at the sides to demarcate the region and to prevent damage to cars parked in the bays each side.

However, if you double left click on the image, you will see that this is a zone that is completely enclosed!  A trolley could not be wheeled in, and a car, pram or bike cannot be parked there — so this begs the question: what is this all about?

Things are getting worse when valuable parking space is wasted for no apparent reason. How bizarre! The only answer we can come up with is for UFOs.

Plague of Leaflets

TARGETING YOUR MARKET IS SUPPOSED TO BE GOOD FOR BUSINESS. However, evermore companies are choosing to use customers as targets.

I hate these leaflets, and I don’t understand why it is so popular.  A person puts a sales leaflet under parked car’s windscreen wipers in the hope that it will drum up business.

Please double left click on the images to enlarge

However, what actually happens is that it annoys the car owner –  they have to scrape the wet paper that has stuck to the glass. They cannot drive away and use their windscreen wipers until this job is done.

It is especially bad on an expensive car, and it can reveal to a thief, for example, how long the car has been parked there.

Thing are definitely getting worse!

Please double left click on the images to enlarge

Fizz! Theft of a Logo!

ONE THING THAT HAS ALWAYS ANNOYED ME ABOUT SKYPARK IN GLASGOW IS THAT THEY HAVE BLATANTLY STOLEN THE LOGO FROM PEPSI.

I suppose that it doesn’t matter now that Pepsi Cola have changed their logo, but still, I am just amazed.

The above pictures show the famous Pepsi Logo with the word “Pepsi” at the top. The background seems not to be important; the logo is still th elogo whether the background is blue or white.  In fact, if you look closer, it is clear that there is condensation and more photoreality in one over the other.

The positioning of the word “Pepsi” equally seems unimportant — here it is at the bottom for a change…

There are plenty of examples of the Pepsi logo without the word being used at all!

What I am trying to show here is that the logo is the s-shape in a circle.

The Skypark logo is the same s-shape within a circle — and they have it everywhere in all colours and shades.  Can it really be down to the absence of red or the slight tilt? Things are getting worse if it is!

I don’t think so — and the representation of the logo in wrought iron and etched glass renders this logo identical to that of the fizzy pop maker.  Fancy that!

Good For Nothing

I SPOTTED THIS WEIRD CONSTRUCTION IN THE CITY CENTRE RECENTLY, AND WONDERED WHAT IT MIGHT BE (FOR).

Please double click on the pictures to enlarge for better viewing.

Look at it! There is a flight of stairs and a platform with a steel mesh surface.  There are safety handrails all round too — but what is it for?

Can you work it out? We can’t see the point of this thing.  It is sort of like a fire escape or access way, but as it does not connect to anything, these have to be ruled out. There is no swimming pool, so it cannot be an ugly diving board!

Such things are expensive, so things must be getting worse when this becomes a requirement!