Just a quick post before La Mujer and I have to run errands. I received a few emails about B!C! only showing the background when people would log on and it has been something I’ve been trying to fix. Apparently if you make fun of pagan gods with 20 foot wedding tackle, they can screw your site up. Pretty petty if you ask me.

I wasn’t really haxored by pagans, but I did have the importance of good site architecture hammered home. The problem is fixed and shouldn’t happen again.

There will be some more posts coming now as a lot of things have been happening. Today we will be out of the house most of the day, as we’re going to do some mundane tasks as well as going out for dinner and seeing the Simpsons Movie. I’m pretty excited about that. It came down to Simpsons or that Moliere movie, but it is my turn to pick.

I also start a new job on Monday so we need to take care of a few things before then. All in all, it looks like it will be a good weekend and I’m in a good mood-with the exception of having a niggling little cold to deal with.

Advertising something can be a tricky business to get right. It is estimated that the average adult is exposed to over 3,000 advertisements a day. Of these roughly four are noticed and might actually impact the person’s spending habits. So a successful ad needs to cut through the clutter first and foremost in order to be noticed.

I like this new Simpsons Movie advertisement. It’s a non-traditional one; it is a chalk drawing in a field in Dorset next to a 180 foot pagan fertility drawing. The Cerne Abbes giant is a man in a state of arousal carrying a club, Homer Simpson is a man in his underwear carrying a doughnut. While it does look as if Homer might be about to play a disturbing game of ring toss, the picture cuts through the clutter. Homer was made with biodegradable chalk that will last until the first rain, which with this summer’s weather, means the advertisement was available for roughly 20 minutes.

Now a drawing in a field in Dorset isn’t likely to be seen by too many people in time to promote the movie, and that’s where the dour pagans lend a hand. Ann Bryn-Evans, Spokesperson for the Pagan Federation—that’s right, the pagans are organized now—is not amused. According to Bryn-Evans, many pagans find it disrespectful to the giant, amorous and naked man. In fact she has threatened that they will resort to some “rain magic” to wash Homer out.

Add a little dash of a funny controversy, and a chalk drawing in Dorset will be seen around the world in time for the movie premiere. That’s good advertising. As Homer said himself, “God bless those pagans.”

Simpsons Advertising

I know smoking is bad for me, but I do think my cigars fall into the acceptable risk category. The risk that they pose to me is one that I’m willing to accept in a trade off for what I get out of them. I have no plans to quit smoking cigars anytime soon, although with bad weather and the smoking ban, my opportunities to do so are diminished.

I remember a friend of my little sister who was a bit of a hellion. Years later I was talking with my mom and found out she had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, I believe it was, and was actually smoking cigarettes as part of the treatment. Seems the nicotine helped control the schizophrenia and the smoking itself was deemed an acceptable risk.

Now some interesting new studies from America’s NIH reveal some powerful benefits to nicotine. Here are two stories about scientists using nicotine as treatments for everything from Parkinson’s to bowel disease and gangrenous wounds.

A small bit of irony in light of the new smoking ban to protect our health and the NHS doctors who tried to blow people up. Now when I enjoy a Partagás I can say it is a preventative treatment for Parkinson’s.

Mark Hamill will be appearing at the ExCeL, which is a stone’s throw from the shangri-la that La Mujer and I call home. Well, a good stone’s throw past a few DLR stations anyway. Still, he’s not far far away and will be here soon: July 13th-15th. Mark Hamill is, of course, famous for his riveting guest role in Eight is Enough. He also appeared in the Star Wars movies back when they relied more on the force and less on CGI. Yeah, before they started to suck.

I have to admit the nerdy boy in me loves all the Star Wars anniversary stuff that’s going on now. I grew up on the movies, I knew all of the characters and loved playing with the action figures. I’ll see if I can talk La Mujer into going to see Luke. She’s usually game for the odd things that I like so it’s likely. My chances of getting her to wear Princess Leia’s slave girl bikini for me is probably less likely.

If an appearance by Luke Skywalker isn’t nerdy enough for you, how about Stephen Hawking? The nightclub Tiger Tiger, which was targeted by the botched car bomb, is back to business. In fact, Tuesday night the famous physicist, and probably most brilliant human being in the world, stopped by. Yes, Stephen Hawking went clubbing in London. I’ve read his book on the universe, and by read I mean that I saw all of the words and understood them individually, but probably didn’t grasp everything. Apparently there was a large pop at the beginning. After explaining all the mysteries in the universe, I look forward to his next book where he tackles the truly perplexing: Why is techno music so big here?

The separation of church and state that I’m familiar with in America doesn’t exist here. There is a Church of England, although its presence isn’t something I’ve noticed. What I have noticed is that the religious fervor seems to be reserved for football. Nowhere is this more evident than in the Cult of Beckham. David Beckham is damned near a saint here, and it’s not hard to understand why. He’s good looking, charismatic and quite a good footballer. He is the epitome of that cliché of the man that women want and men want to be.

Beckham is so huge that he rivals the relics of saints in associative power. His tattooist will now have a TV show that is ostensibly based on the reality TV show, Miami Ink. However, this one is a drama and features a character that ‘represents’ Beckham. It has Beckham’s seal of approval and I have no doubt that it will be successful here as well as spawn numerous Beckhamesque tattoos. I love tattoos and always enjoy seeing shows relating to them, but I do hope that the melodrama of memorial tattoos is kept to a minimum—in comparison to Miami Ink.

Now Beckham and his wife, because the two are a cottage industry unto themselves, are looking to break into the States. I give them 50-50 odds right now. What is big in America, for better or worse, generally becomes big in the rest of the world. America exports pop culture above all else. However, it’s not a two-way street; what is big in the rest of the world is not necessarily going to be big in America.

The Beckhams are media savvy. They know the power they have and have branded themselves very well. Where I think the problem lies is that they don’t understand America as well as they might think they do. David Beckham is the Michael Jordan of football, but football is a marginal sport at best in America. Americans know who he is, but mainly because of his celebrity, not his deeds. His wife was a member of a band famous ten years ago among 12-year-old girls. Will they remember her and enjoy her comeback as a nostalgia trip, or more likely, leave their affection behind with their Lance Bass crushes?

More disturbingly, for their prospects, is the company they are keeping. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are not America’s darlings right now. Honestly, Americans are a bit scared of Tom Cruise right now and are worried that Katie is a weird Scientology Stepford wife. What the Beckhams really need is a good manager and publicist. Somebody who understands the fickle American taste and will keep them from making unintentional gaffes such as hanging out with the Cruise coven.

Yesterday was Independence Day, or as it was referred to here, Wednesday. Britain doesn’t have a lot of national holidays just a lot of bank holidays. They don’t really mean anything, it’s just an excuse to have a three day weekend. While I do see the advantage of the holidays always falling on Monday, I kind of miss holiday traditions. We didn’t really start any new tradition here this year for the 4th, as La Mujer was away at the Royal Regatta at Henley-on-Thames.

She had to dress up and wear one of her funny hats and I had her take a few pictures while she was there because I thought the hats might be amusing. She reported that the event wasn’t as formal as the Royal Ascot she last wore the hat to. In fact due to the weather conditions this was the first year that they allowed people to wear wellies. So there are some interesting pictures of women in dresses with wellies on. If the weather continues like this they might start a new fashion trend.

While not too many women wore hats, the men more than made up for the amusement with their jackets. In lieu of face painting they wear rather garish jackets and skimmer hats. I’m told that all of the jacket colours and patterns represent the university they are supporting. I guess you have to be in the know to decipher them. Of course, if you aren’t in the know than you most likely aren’t the sort that would be attending the likes of Eton or Cambridge.

While I spent the 4th by myself, I did pick up a few Sierra Nevadas and a tin of American style hot dogs in brine. I’m not sure why the Brits think we eat hot dogs from a tin. I’m sure it’s no worse than the packaged hot dogs, but I’ve never seen a tin of them back home. I chickened out and didn’t eat the hot dogs and had a Cornish pasty instead. Oh well, I’ll have a barbecue on Bonfire Night.

Yesterday La Mujer and I went to a herf—nerdy cigar talk for a smoking get together—at Meza in Soho and met up with friends. We had a great time and today I’m probably suffering a bit from nicotine overload. After smoking four cigars, which is a pretty heroic feat for me lately, I didn’t sleep well and woke up with a tongue feeling like I licked a cat all night. Of course it was a lot of fun, and I’d do it again in a heartbeat. With the smoking ban in place now, the next herf will have to be outdoors when the weather permits: If the weather permits.

After Meza we all went to a pub where I saw the news about the Glasgow airport. I still stand by my last post in that last night and today, life proceeds as normal. These kinds of acts are an aberration of humanity and can not be rationalized. My blog is not a political one and I have no desire to espouse my own political or social beliefs here. However, I truly believe these cowardly terrorist acts are not political or social as much as those who perpetrate them, and those who support them, would like us to believe. They are simply inhuman and inexcusable.

I picked up a copy of The Observer today at ASDA because the store was all out of the Sunday Times, which is what I normally read on Sunday. There is an editorial by a man named Hassan Butt, whom I had never heard of before. He was what could only be described as a fanatical jihadist at one point. He recruited men for jihad in Afghanistan and excused violence in the UK in the name of Islam as something that is completely natural and acceptable.

Butt has clearly had a change of heart. His article is a plea to fellow Muslims to reject acts of terror as well as a call to non-Muslims to understand the causes that motivate those who would wish to harm innocents. He argues that the root cause of the problem is not political as much as it is theological. I am certainly no theologian, nor am I particularly well versed on the Quran, but I believe he raises some important points. Namely that there is no ‘render unto Caesar’ in Islam. The political, the social and the worldly are all the domain of Islam. There is a strict divide between the land of the believers and the land of the non-believers and what is unacceptable in the former is permissible in the latter.