While checking email today, I noticed a particularly funny piece of advertising:
Travel with Chinese Girl – www.ChnLove.com – Want fantastic Chinese trip with pretty Chinese lady? Find her now!
I wonder if they have an engrish type site for advertising golden nuggets?
When Claire and I are out and about at the shops, it is common to have people at payment counters ask what sex our unborn child is going to be – it’s great that they are interested. We’re happy to tell whoever is asking that we don’t know the sex of our child and that it is going to be a surprise. As soon as we’ve spoken those words, for some reason the people we’re talking to feel compelled to tell us the sex of our unborn child.
In the last eight months, I can’t count the number of times people have come up to Claire and said that she is having a boy or girl. Every time someone offers free advice on the matter, we ask them why we’re having a boy or girl and you get back reasonably consistent reasons that have a certain amount of wiggle room in them. As an example, common reasons are that your wife’s stomach is sitting high or low or that it is shape x or y. The wiggle room I’m talking about is that, different people suggest that sitting low is a boy or girl and likewise on the shape.
The other thing that I’ve noticed is that it tends to be older people that feel like guessing/telling us what sex our child is going to be. I got thinking about that the other day and it occurred to me that they might feel compelled to tell you the sex because in their day, being able to definitively know the sex of your child pre-birth wasn’t an option so it was normal to guess. I’m sure that the old wives tales were born by expecting parents asking their local doctors what sex their child was going to be (when he/she had no idea in the world) but felt obligated to come up with an answer and subsequently a reason.
What crazy theories have you heard about determining the sex of an unborn child without any scientific intervention?
My cat, the white fluffy Ragdoll, likes sultanas. Maybe I shouldn’t be that surprised, she does a lot of things that I don’t consider to be all that cat-like, but sultanas are something that I wouldn’t have expected a cat to like at all.
Continental started airing TV advertisements last year for their soup range and the theme of the ads was something they termed three thirtyitus. According to Continental, three thirtyitus kicks in at about 3:30PM when your brain starts to slow down, you start thinking less clearly and silly things happen.
So far I’ve found three of their advertisements on YouTube:
In the latest creation, a customs officer is searching a users baggage and is pulling out all sorts of interesting stuff from the bag like numerous bricks of cocaine. Paying absolutely no attention to the bricks of cocaine, the customs officer finally pulls up the user because he is carrying a multi-purpose utility; he flicks open the knife on it – which of course is tiny, and informs the user that this is unacceptable and he’ll need to confiscate it.
I’ve been unable to find a copy of it on YouTube so far, so if someone happens to find it – let me know and I’ll add it to the list.
On the way to work in the morning, I listen to Hot Tomato with Luke, Rob & Renae. Like any good radio network, they have advertising blips that they play periodically and one that has come up lately makes me laugh every time I hear it.
The advertisement is for a Gold Coast dentist named Smileplus (Smile+) and this particular dentist offers, among other things, cosmetic dentistry. The thing in this advert that catches my attention each and every time, is the fact that they inform the user that going to their dentistry is like no other. I’m probably reproducing the wording with inaccuracies, but you’ll get the point of it:
…
Coming to Smile Plus is more like going to a day spa than a dentist, you’ll receive a lavender eye mask, hand massage and music from an iPod.
…
Without me telling you, I bet you can guess which part of that snippet makes me chuckle. While I’m certainly no veteran of day spas and the like, I’m fairly sure that the last time I visited one I wasn’t listening to music on a personal music device that most 12 year old kids have.
I always think of day spas as being a little fancy pants and exclusive, so hearing this Gold Coast dentist associate themselves with an iPod makes me chuckle.
