Your days are numbered

I have a friend for whom the height of Christmas cheer is to have a Blinky Bill advent calendar - the kind with a chocolate morsel behind each numbered flap. Not, I am assuming, to fetishise the countdown to Christmas, but to meter her chocolate consumption.

It fascinates me how attracted we are to lists. Turn them into a countdown and we go into a lather of excited anticipation…what will be number one.
I came across this little work on art out there in the wilds (via Laughing Squid). It is genius. The only reason for the inclusion of a movie in the sequence is its use of a number. My personal favourite is 35, a line from Harvey (I think), the movie where Jimmy Stewart is Elwood P. Dowd who has a 6 ft invisible rabbit as a friend:

"Well, I wrestled with reality for 35 years doctor and I am happy to state I finally won out over it."

Comments

Go figure

Took my daughter shopping tonight. We had dinner out. Got back home late. She laid her new clothes out in neat rows so she could choose what to wear for tomorrow. She's 5. I see her just every second weekend. How can such incredible errors of judgement (marrying my daughter's mother) result in such a wonderful little human being? Go figure

Mac Air Music

I love the idea of the Mac Air but, call me old fashioned, …no disk drive? How will I watch Ratatouille, Toy Story, The Incredibles, Finding Nemo, Cars and A Bug's Life on DVD? The music on the MacAir launch commercial is terrific. I tracked the artiste Yael Naim's video for you. What is the name for this genre (Regina Spectre et al)? Apparently Steve Jobs chose the track personally for the TVC. Order from Amazon: Splash out:

Sexist Advertising and stereotypes

Advertising lives in the short-form world. Because mass media is so expensive the 30 second commercial is conventional and because there is so much clutter simplified signals are essential to 'cut through'. One form of communication short-hand used as a default is the stereotype - "A stereotype can be a conventional and oversimplified conception, opinion, or image, based on the assumption that there are attributes that members of the "other group" have in common. Stereotypes are sometimes formed by a previous illusory correlation, a false association between two variables that are loosely correlated if correlated at all. Though generally viewed as negative perceptions, stereotypes may be either positive or negative in tone." In the 1950's and 60's when men dominated advertising stereotypical impressions of women as inferior or subservient were not only commonplace but usual. It was normal to show women as housekeepers, largely because most wer...

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