Ultimedia PR blog

What is Public Relations - marketing or advertising?

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Wed, 20 Mar 2013 09:44:00 +0000

It’s one of the most frequent questions we are asked. Many people are unclear about the roles of PR, marketing and advertising, and even within these disciplines there is ongoing debate, so let me try to clear some of the mist surrounding this subject.

Marketing, is about creating and retaining customers. It should be based on a well-researched plan that includes the four basic principles - product, position, promotion and price, and uses a mix of different tools to achieve its goals. Advertising and public relations play a part in the delivery of a marketing campaign.

A Little Effort Goes A Long Way.

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Wed, 03 Oct 2012 13:22:00 +0000

I don't want to come across as a grumpy-guts, but I hate having to go to the supermarket. I don't like how they're always cold when you step in, I find it ironic that they sell you cigarettes right by the front door yet make you walk all the way to the back to pick up your medicine, and I dislike how they compare the prices of two very similar things using different measurements, where they say "this one is £1.50 per 100g" and "that one is £14 per Kilo". Really? Is it truly that hard to get some kind of consistency? C'mon, this isn't politics so don't try and deceive us.

Anyway, I'm going around the supermarket, looking out for one of those shallow trolleys because there are none outside. You pick up your shopping, bung it in the trolley (that you've resorted to picking up in the isle and hope that it is not someone else's) and when you're done, where do you head: the self-service isle. It's not because it's quicker than a normal checkout (apparently you need ID to buy Red Bull, which involves standing around for eleventy million years while a till person runs up to confirm that, yes, you're not five) but because it involves not having to be greeted with a "huuuui" followed by "you wanna bag wiv vat mayt'?" In fact, I was asked by a till assistant the other day if a parsnip was, in fact, a parsnip. Suffice to say I resisted the massive urge in me to convince him, with a "duh!" look, that it was actually a laptop. After this little event, you walk out, load up the car and drive out, making sure you don't hit the mass of trolleys that have congregated around those little plastic shelters that live in the middle of the car park.

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We Might Feel Small, But We're Bigger Than We Ever Thought

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Thu, 23 Aug 2012 16:43:00 +0000

So for those who have wondered if I've been bunking off for the past five weeks, the answer is a resounding: "technically". In reality, I spend all that time driving around the grand ol' US of A in a car that's too powerful, on roads that are too big, spending too much money on too much fuel and eating too much junk food, all while having far too much fun. I won't bore you with the minute details about it, because you probably won't care (have you ever actually sat through a slideshow of someone's holiday snaps?), but I will say this: America is HUGE! I mean, for someone who lives in the UK, where you can drive from one extreme end of the country to the other extreme end in about 15 hours, and where the weather across the country is generally the same (normally raining), this was totally alien to me. One part could have a beautiful summer's day while feeling bad for the hurricane decimating the other. One part has an average summer temperature of 8C. The other: Alligators. It just keeps on going! It's not surprising that nearly 2 in 3 Americans don't hold a passport; there's so much stuff to see before you get to either border that it's almost a waste of time to go to someone else's country unless you have to. And while I'm at it, two things we sorely need to transplant from there to here: firstly we need those fuel pumps that clip in place, so in the 21st century I don't need to stand there holding the switch like some sort of primitive caveman, and second, we need free refills on fizzy drinks in restaurants. Seriously, they cost about 6p in overhead per drink to the establishment, so it's not that unreasonable to expect a bit of leeway on it!
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Why It's Important, On The Big Day, To Do It My Way.

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Thu, 12 Jul 2012 16:11:00 +0000

This time next week, I'll not be sitting at my computer, writing. In fact, I'll probably be fast asleep, ready to start attempting to cope with 30°c heat in Buffalo, New York, having experienced the hell that is driving out of Manhatten. This will be because on Saturday, it's my turn to go through the ritual that is getting married. See, we looked at TV programmes like Bridezillas and thought this was both hilarious and stupid in equal measures. The idea of treating a budget as a fancy word for "receipt", and not the amount you have to throw around, seemed crazy. I mean, a friend of Mrs Max spent £5 on invites for her wedding a few months ago. Now let me clarify that. That's not £5 for all her invites: it's £5 per invite. Each of the 135 people attending had one posted to them. Why would you spend this sort of money on an invite? And I wouldn't expect to pay £80 per head unless I was at the Ritz, so you can imagine i spent a lot of time reattaching my sides after reading the price list for most caterers. Apparently, the "W" word seems to send the digits spinning on the till, and since most of their customers are too busy choosing between the pink or the purple bouquets to go with their new teeth to notice a handful of flowers are £60, then I don't really blame them, but since starting life with a new ring, accompanied with enough debt to buy a 2011 Mercedes Benz isn't my idea of a brainwave, we stayed well away.

It May Be Interesting, But It Doesn't Help With A Mortgage.

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Thu, 05 Jul 2012 14:22:00 +0000

For the majority of the country, school is, as discussed in 80's prog rock, out for summer. This means for countless parents around the country that they had better have arranged some form of supervision for their spawn; normally in the guise of relatives, summer camps, or just plain "working from home". Unless they work in Tesco's, in which case it's a bit of a runaround to take someone's weekly shop home to scan. For those without offspring, the only reminder about this fact is that the roads always seem strangely clear on the commute. This is something I've always found really strange; I've always understood rush-hour to be the time when everyone is heading into work at the same time, hence why 8am-9am and 5pm-6pm feels like the production line of a sardine factory. The fact that the morning commute on a bank holiday feels like a leisurely Saturday afternoon drive (in a suit, with a slight headache) shows just how many people clogging up the A1 in the morning aren't on their way to work, but are on their way to drop their litter off to learn the various skills to enable them to work, and thus further clog up the roads.
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Sometimes I'm Just Too Lazy To Think Of A Good Excuse

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Thu, 28 Jun 2012 13:57:00 +0000

After a lifetime of observation of both myself and others, I've finally concluded that laziness is as natural as having eyes. Just think what you do when, say, the batteries in your TV remote start dying. Do you do the sensible thing and get some more, so you can suddenly change over in case they throw Hollyoaks at you without warning? Of course you don't; You do what everyone else does: press the button harder, because that's clearly how they work these days. Or, if it gets really bad and you want to break out the big guns, you take the cover off and, for reasons that are clearly not backed up by any logic whatsoever, you roll them around a bit in the hope that this will remind them of their duties and they'll buck up their ideas. Then, when they totally give up and the TV remote takes on the shape and usefulness of a child's toy phone, you still don't do anything about it for weeks. What about that squeaky door that annoys the hell out of you every time you open it? You could go and get the WD40, but........ well, it's suddenly not that bad, right? In fact, you could leave it to squeak until it makes a tune! Or, like these people, you might discover that it sounds like Chewbacca, and the Internet absolutely must know!
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Too Busy For TV? Apparently So.

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 11:25:00 +0000

Now I may have mentioned this before, but I don't really watch TV. If I catch an hour a week, then it's a fair bit for me. Not that I have anything against TV, mind. I just don't watch it. I have a TV, but that's because I have an X-Box and it would be a very noisy and pointless decoration without one. Plus, you've got to centre the sofa around something. However even if I was overcome with the swelling and irresistible urge to be able to join in knowledgeably when someone asks "ooooo, did you see what Dot said on EastEnders the other day", I don't know how I would fit it in. I mean, I barely have enough time to do do everything I need to do as it is, let alone joining the rest of the country with four hours a day watching people in Essex say "er ma gerd" and someone in America say "gee" a lot. Also, as I've possibly mentioned before, my house lacks an actual arial in the roof, meaning that I'd have to spend even more time climbing up there, staring at the wall and pretending I know exactly what I'm doing before giving up and ringing someone, possibly called Nigel, to do it for me. Then I can spend many hours sitting in a semi-catatonic state watching other people pretend to be other people, just so I can join in a conversation that I wasn't really that interested in anyway.
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Thanks, Google, For Fixing My One Missing Man Skill

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Thu, 14 Jun 2012 17:28:00 +0000

It's said, by nobody in particular, that men and women are very different. The way they act, the way they interact, the way they think and the way they do things. In fact if you know what to look for, you can see it very clearly. Any man out there who has been in the scary position of being around a lady when she starts crying will, having resisted the very male impulse to run the hell away and hide, be totally perplexed that all the top notch solutions to the problem aren't met with a steely handshake and an offer of a pint, but with a loud "you just don't understand!". Nope, we don't understand. That's because men try and fix problems that their friends tell them about. They will suggest that the solution to a broken dishwasher would be to either remove the front plate and reroute the auto-transponder around the resistor to boost the flux-generation or some other solution with impressive sounding yet totally made up words. If he can't do this, then a simple suggestion of a new machine (because it's a gadget), with some handy haggling tips thrown in before reverting back to the aforementioned beer. If the guy asked a female friend about the dishwasher becoming as useful as a laserdisc player, he'll probably get a response along the line of "how does it make you feel?". Not very good normally, as it means spending all day in John Lewis instead of watching Match Of The Day.

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No More Flags Now The Jubilee Is Over.

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 14:47:00 +0000

In case you didn't notice, this weekend was host to end-to-end, non-stop coverage of the Queen's Jubilee. A total of ten million people spent their weekend watching the whole let's-float-far-too-many-boats-down-the-thames-because-it's-a-party shenanigans, and seeing many more people waving small plastic flags while waiting patiently, and very politely, in the drizzle, along the side of the river for the chance to maybe view a boat or be on the telly. It was about as British as you'll get without apologising to everyone for no reason at all over a cup of tea. Personally, I went to a "Jubilee party" at the weekend, and it was a flags-everywhere, everyone-wears-red-white-and-blue affair. Well, everyone except for me & Mrs Max, mostly because we weren't informed of this dress code. Good thing too, as knowing me I'd have found it immensely hilarious to dress up as... ohh, I don't know, Napoleon! I would have ordered everyone to speak in French, and demanded everyone salute me (in Red Dwarf style) before I allowed them access to the food. It would have been the most memorable party ever, because "themed" parties are normally mind-bleedingly boring without that small minority who take them with a hint of going over the top.
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One Language That Even Google Translate Can't Help WIth

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Thu, 31 May 2012 14:48:00 +0000

A few years back, Mrs Max and I went on a little jolly around the world, because, why not! Oh, the places we went. The people we met, mostly European backpackers, in every country. It was amazing! It wasn't just the locals in the various countries that we met as well, it was totally normal when in, say, Byron Bay in Australia to be surrounded by three Swiss, two French, four Spaniards and millions upon millions of Germans. One of them was also called Max, which naturally won him first prize in life, according to me. It was fantastic! A perfect opportunity to learn about different people, different lives and different cultures that are normally just a few hundred miles across the Channel, while we're half way around the world. I learned that; the Swiss eat far too much pasta, the Germans simply cannot say the word "smurf" and everyone I ever met from Norway had the brightest and blondest hair of anyone I ever met on the whole trip, and we even went to Los Angeles! It was an amazing time, and a fantastic experience I'd recommend to anyone who wants to do it.
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A Career: Not Quite What It Used To Be

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Thu, 24 May 2012 13:47:00 +0000

I've abseiled down the front of a building in Milton Keynes that looks like a giant shoe, I've pulled a loop-de-loop in a small plane for fun, and I've even bared the uncharted territory that is a hen do, but there are few things that bring up as much trepidation as a job interview. Seriously, there are few things that make me worry more than having to find the right suit, doing some utterly pointless research on the company about their operating history and their turnover that bears no relevance to anything you're going to do there, which will probably be the guy who gets shouted at by clients every time there's a day in the week. You've then got to spend many wasted hours sitting in front of the mirror, perfecting your "interview smile". It needs to be somewhere in between Elvis-lip and psychopathic grin but not obviously fake. You also need to make sure that you don't turn up late, as this sits next to punching the interviewer in the face and suggesting that his wife was a "goer" in terms of bad interview etiquette. If I could redesign the world then I'd make sure, right after I remove wasps for being the single most useless insect ever, that I would simply be given a job based on some other medium. If they could make a brilliant cup of tea, then I see no reason not to make them the Managing Director, for example.
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Nothing's Perfect? What About Us!

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Thu, 17 May 2012 15:25:00 +0000

As much as I love my Eye-fone, I think that the idea of buying the latest model as soon as it comes out is as monumentally stupid and short-sighted as describing an up-coming evening with Jim Davidson as "entertainment". As much as I can, oh I don't know, check stock prices and launch a red bird at some green pigs all while on the loo, I'm aware that it isn't perfect. If used often, it has a battery life of roughly 32 seconds, and waits until you're hopelessly lost around Birmingham to tell you "sorry ol' chap, it appears that I need to sleep until I get some more juice", leaving you stranded. It is also mostly made of shiny glass, meaning that it simply won't sit on your leg without one of those horrid green covers that are available, and will inevitably get the tiniest of marks on the screen. Fixing this, however, isn't as easy or cheap as merely a new screen. Nope, apparently, the whole outside needs to be replaced! Now, I don't want to be "that guy" who calls Apple out on trying to profit from this "mistake", but they're blatantly trying to profit from this "mistake". Whinge aside, it's still a fantastic phone and overall, works brilliantly.
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Loyalty Is Dead. Indifference Is Better.

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Thu, 03 May 2012 14:40:00 +0000

If you were so inclined as to rummage through my house, you'd think I was actually about eleventy-two different people. I'm typing on my Macbook with my eye-fone next to me, yet I don't own those silly non-prescription glasses that do nothing for your vision, and exist entirely to make you look more of a geek than if you tried referencing Pokemon in a pick-up line. In addition to the Apple products, an Xbox lives under my TV because it wasn't £500, or designed with "cutesy" in mind. You'll find I used to own a Land-Rover Discovery, yet I have not murdered anyone. The volume of Tesco's bags I have in one of those silly carrier-bag holders is merely because Tesco's is closest, and I am far too lazy to drive another 10 minutes to Morrison's, rather than being impressed by any suggestion of a "price promise" or because Terry Wogan used to tell me that "Every Little Helps"; a slogan that makes absolutely no sense from people who are trying to sell me broccoli and Smarties. Also, I am frequently seen in public wearing a pair of Converse shoes. Not because I'm from the "bad side of town" in 1970's New York, not because I own a skateboard and sum everything up as "totally", but because my lordy lord they are comfy.
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Think You're A Good Driver? You Do The Maths...

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 13:48:00 +0000

When it comes to spelling and grammar, I'm one of those people who you could call "picky". This means that if I see the sentence "your stupid", I'm tempted to reply with "my stupid what?". I froth at the elbows whenever I see or hear the word "irregardless", mostly because it doesn't make any sense. Mis-spell any word that's simple and I will tell Ross Kemp that you've made untoward comments about his Mother, and would happily invite him outside for a spot of pugilism to resolve the issue. Use the wrong "they're/their/there", and I will vigorously campaign to become the next Prime Minister, purely so I can launch nuclear war on your face. I've seen CVs where it seems that, to save paper I'd assume, vowels were judged to be unnecessary and were discarded. Somewhat like their CV, funnily enough. I do get that Dyslexia means some people do genuinely find getting the right words more difficult than others, however it doesn't make you write "hilar". Laziness will do that. Yet if you ask some people whether or not they're good at spelling or grammar, you can practically smell the indifference coming from them.
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Just A Lazy Man, In A Complex World.

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Thu, 19 Apr 2012 14:58:00 +0000

After a lifetime of observation of both myself and others, I've finally concluded that laziness is as natural as having eyes. Just think what you do when, say, the batteries in your TV remote start dying. Do you do the sensible thing and get some more, so you can suddenly change over in case they throw Hollyoaks at you without warning? Of course you don't. You do what everyone else does: presses the button harder, because that's clearly how they work these days. Or, if it gets really bad and you want to break out the big guns, you take the cover off and, for reasons that are clearly not backed up by any logic whatsoever, you roll them around a bit in the hope that this will remind them of their duties and they'll buck up their ideas. Then, when they totally give up and the TV remote takes on the shape and usefulness of a child's toy phone, you still don't do anything about it for weeks. What about that squeaky door that annoys the hell out of you every time you open it? You could go and get the WD40, but........ well, it's suddenly not that bad, right? In fact, you could leave it to squeak until it makes a tune! Or, like these people, you might discover that it sounds like Chewbacca, and the Internet absolutely must know!

Security Or Enjoyable: The Eternal Employment Dilemma

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Thu, 12 Apr 2012 14:39:00 +0000

Last week, I mentioned people who taste cat-food for a living, as well as people who climb 1,700ft poles to fix a flashing light without any safety ropes. I mentioned these because I thought they were the oddest jobs I could imagine. Well, it turns out I was wrong! Ever fancied being a hair boiler? No; how about the person who makes sure that shoes coming off a production line have no wrinkles in them? Don't think that'll be a good talking point at a party? How about the endless excitement and daily challenge of being a furniture tester? Why not be adventurous and dive for golf balls at the local golf course? It turns out that there's tons of crazy jobs out there, all as interesting, mind-numbing or socially awkward as each other. But, someone's got to do them, right? And considering golfball-man can make somewhere around £60,000-£70,000 a year, I bet there's a few people working in awful jobs who would happily hold their breath in return for being a higher-rate taxpayer. Possibly more if you decide to move to Florida and enjoy an added perk of the job: avoiding alligators. Read more »

What To Really Not Ask An Interviewee For

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 13:26:00 +0000

As much as I try, I really can't imagine a worse job to do than to be the guy who tests cat food. Yes, apparently, testing cat food is a thing. What it needs to be tested for is beyond me, but there are people in this country, working for cat food makers, who find themselves lying at every party they attend when that inevitable question is asked. I can't blame them though, I mean, can you really imagine trying to defend it by saying that at least the lunch is free and you can eat on the job? Also, how does someone get that job? Do they apply via an advert or do they try and get promoted to cat food taster? So many unanswered questions! Also, how do you know what cats like? They might want hint of mouse, or whatever the tassels on your dining room rug taste like. Either way, It must be tested, and someone's got to do it. It's the same problem you encounter when something goes wrong on a 1,700ft antenna station. Not at the base of the antenna, where it's all accessible and safe and completely non-vertigo inducing, oh no. Right at the top! Well, this happens. If you don't like heights, you'd better be sending off your CV to Go-Cat!
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You Don't Have To Be Crazy To Work Here...

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 11:03:00 +0000

Have you ever worked in retail? I have. It pretty much tells you everything you need to know about the human race once you've had to work a minimum-wage job selling stuff to the general public, and in fact I'd go as far as saying that, when I come to power, it will be compulsory that everyone should work at least six months in retail. If you manage to get stuck with the Christmas period, then I'll be generous and cut it down to three months. Let's start with the customers. 80% of them are fine, upstanding examples of what should be considered the absolute basic levels of human decency i.e. they don't have an overwhelming urge to leave everything they look at strewn across the floor, but that remaining 20%? Let's put it this way: if you've never worked retail before and you've ever wondered what happens when someone leaves the door open of the holding pen for the Jeremy Kyle show, letting the inhabitants roam free without their much-needed supervision, then that should give you an idea what they're like. Truly, I've seen a level of not only utter contempt for their fellow man, but a joyful glee in causing stress and fear to innocent people from these individuals that can only be surpassed by going into "head of an organised crime syndicate" territory. If you're one of those people who looks forward to a mistake so you can pressure a manager into sacking a student and depriving them of much-needed income, just to feel better about yourself, then you really need to take stock of your life.
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Nature: Always Putting Us In Our Place

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Thu, 15 Mar 2012 14:15:00 +0000

Do you know what constantly amazes me, even more than the concept that I can load a map of anywhere in the world on my phone or the idea that I can turn a cog on a lump of metal, and hot clean water comes out? It's the idea that it was just over 60 years between the first heavier-than-air flight, and mankind landing on none other than the Moon! That's a colossally short space of time, considering that it was about 1,800 years between men building London and men thinking "I should really get started on one of them new-fangled sewer systems, what with all the death and all". But sewer systems are easy to build. Landing men on the Moon wasn't even something you could class as "difficult", it was immensely hard, with even less room for error than a man's response to the statement "I'm fine". To give you some idea as to how hard it was, it would be like working out the precise speed, trajectory, timing and conditions to successfully throw a frisbee from one end of a football field to the other, while hitting an exact spot on a moving target, and then someone at the other end throwing it back to another exact spot on a moving target. While strapped to explosive fuel. During a hurricane. At night. And if you make the slightest error at any point in the proceedings, people will die a long, drawn out fiery/vacuum death and the entire frisbee-throwing programme will be scrapped forever. All that, just over 60 years after a rickety airplane flew a distance less than the wingspan of a 747.
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The Kony 2012 Campaign Highlights An Even Bigger Problem Among Us

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Thu, 08 Mar 2012 13:16:00 +0000

To me, Facebook is like the local pub. Most people pop in just after work for a while, even if they've already stopped by briefly during their lunch-break, and spend most of their time complaining about how their manager could be replaced by a scaffolding pole, with no noticeable difference. There's the person who seems to enjoy making out that their life is so dramatically bad that the people of Darfur should take a break from being shot to hold a charity concert for them. There's the clown who spends far too much time thinking of witty one-liners to belt out at random (that'll be me, then) and let's not forget that ever lovely person sitting in the corner who waits until it's late before starting a massive rant about something or other and blaming every problem in his life on "political correctness" or "immigration", followed normally by an argument. You still get the charity tin rattlers, but on Facebook, they're soliciting for "likes" instead of money. Plus, it provides ample opportunity for people to awkwardly run into their ex.
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Zero Tolerance: The Cause Of, And Solution To, All Our Problems.

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Thu, 01 Mar 2012 16:05:00 +0000

Good news, everybody! Currently, you have the lowest chance of being a victim of crime since 1980! Despite promises that by 6:45pm we'd all have been happy-slapped four times, it seems that it is genuinely safer to walk down the streets today than when The Empire Strikes Back and PacMan were released. This is interesting, mostly because I'm sure if you asked the public if they thought this was the case, the answer would be a resounding "no". Possibly followed by, I imagine, "who are you", and "what are you doing in my back garden". Now, this is interesting. There's a massive difference between actual real "crime", and the not-necessarily-real "fear of crime". I will avoid pinning the blame this week on the Daily Mail and their headlines of "OHMYGODWEAREALLGOINGTODIE", but this leaves me with nothing to blame it on. So, I will just reiterate the point. You are less likely to be a victim of crime now than you were when AC/DC's Back In Black was released, 32 years ago. And in the same breath, I've made some people feel just that little bit older.
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How To Convince Everyone To Believe A Conspiracy Theory.

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:44:00 +0000

The Internet has done many wonderful things for everyone, including (but not limited to): a seemingly endless stream of cat pictures, letting us buy a £2,500 print of Paul Ross at 2:30am, endless footage of people falling over, and all the adult material one's heart could possibly desire. It's even allowed us to get access to an entire map of the globe, where we can zoom in on literally anywhere for a looky-see, only made better by the fact that the first thing people zoom in on is not the pyramids, or huge sculptures, or any other amazing thing that they might not see in real life. Nope, it's their house. From the top. Not like you've never seen that before, people! Then when you're done pointing at the screen and saying "that's where my bedroom is", you can update everyone you know about the make of baked-beans you're enjoying with your toast. Then, you can go on to watching clips of Newsreaders being humiliated by their colleagues and reading the reviews on that lovely Paul Ross print.
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We Don't Beat Nature, We Just Argue Over pointless Stuff Instead.

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 13:16:00 +0000

Last week, over here in the UK we experienced about seven days of weather that a Canadian would call "whimpy". We experienced a grand total (where I live) of maybe three or four inches of crunchy snow, and this was sufficient to make everyone give up and cower in fear under their duvets. Ever wonder why schools close whenever it snows more than 3.5mm? It's not to do with "safety", it's either because so many people have called a snow-day that they can't open or something mechanical and water-based has had the same idea. Kind of makes me wonder how they get on in places with real snowfalls, like this one. That's two feet of snow, right there! What about this here? Just over two feet of snow in just over a day. This isn't even in the far reaches of Siberia, this is in Maryland, USA! I'm reasonably convinced they don't shut down the state and declare rule of the jungle until they can plow their way through it, and yet we go into a mild panic as soon as the first flake hits the ground, normally only ending up with the same effect you get when you sieve icing sugar over a Victoria Sponge: it looks pretty, but is hardly noticeable. What about countries where they have "real" weather, like Kansas where summer consists of baking heat, sudden downpours and lack of humidity. Oh, and freaking huge tornadoes that blow through occasionally. Or Siberia, say. They get the joy of an average winter temperature of -20c! In fact, northern Siberia is so cold, the soil is permanently frozen, which must be utterly hilarious if you're a grave-digger. Or Alan Titchmarsh.
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Woody Harrelson Learns About Reddit The Hard Way.

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 14:07:00 +0000

Once upon a time, there was a thing called a "laptop". However, this "laptop" was merely shorthand for "laptop tray" and it was used to stop your dinner and your sofa becoming one while you watched the Generation Game. Back then, there was such a thing as the Internet, but it was rarely used as "I browse the internet" translated from Computer-speak to English as "I'm going to die a virgin, aren't I". This is a crazy idea to me, you see. The idea of someone working an office-y job without the Internet blows my mind! I mean, I would never get anything done at all if I had to, say, organise a meeting with people by ringing each and every one of them to confirm? I just want to type "meeting at 11. Biscuits available" and be done with it, thus leaving me with more time to think about important matters, like do Pigeons get dis-orientated by the way they wobble their heads while they walk, or why I always seem to wake up 10 minutes before my alarm, like my brain has a pocket-watch or something. Whatever, the lack of Internet is crazy enough, but I really can't get around the idea of lack of computer! I mean, I can't even imagine doing anything if all I had in front of me was a typewriter, and a biro. What can you do with that, besides maybe put on one of those hats with a cardboard "PRESS" thingy in it and pretend to be a 1920's journalist while saying, in gangster-voice "what a scoop, scheee".
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There's One Slight Problem With Saving Fuel...

noreply@blogger.com (Ultimedia PR) — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 14:19:00 +0000

Being a thrill-seeking, fun loving, edge-of-the-seat kinda guy, I decided to break the habit of a lifetime and read an actual newspaper the other day. Since then, I've learned that apparently, we're all running out of fuel, that everyone is doomed to a lifetime of pain and sniffles, and that the Daily Express are still obsessed with Diana. Further venturing into the archives of the Daily Mail draws me to a list of things that cause cancer, and the answer it seems, is everything in the whole world! No seriously, it's a combination of electricity, long fingers, being tall, peanut butter and (my personal favourite) Prince Charles' Organic Crisps. The only obvious conclusion that anyone can draw from this is to build a shelter and camp out, waiting patiently for the plague to pass by us. So long as you don't bring any cancer-causing bread with you. Or be a man. Or a woman. All of these will literally make you explode in front of everyone's eyes. I'd be happy to dismiss this as sheer panic-talk and buy them all new tinfoil hats to replace their old ones, but then it occurred to me that they have a circulation of over 2 million! That's a lot of people who I assume spend the first few hours rocking in the foetal position every morning before braving the front door.
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