Knife crime is constantly in the news here, often accompanied by the word ‘epidemic’. The Economist referred to Britain as the ‘Island of Savages’ a couple weeks ago, and today’s Metro cites a report that one in five kids carries a knife for protection.

AMV BBDO has created an ad for my council, Tower Hamlets. It’s aim is obviously to reduce knife crimes and convince kids not to carry them. I think it misses the mark, and probably by quite a bit.

The ad is very well done, nicely shot and paced, but the message is if you carry a knife, you’re more likely to be stabbed by your own knife. I think this is like telling people that if they speed they are more likely to die in their own car. Kids carry knives to look tough, to be tough or because they feel they need protection from others carrying them. They are less likely to be concerned about being stabbed by their own knife than by being stabbed by someone else’s.

As much as I like to make fun of clueless despots, this blog isn’t really focused on that. But sometimes said clueless despots make it so hard not to poke fun.

In my last post, I pointed out the Photoshop phakery of Iran’s elite Republican Guard. Now it seems that not only did they exaggerate the number of missiles fired, they seem also to have fibbed a bit about which missiles were actually launched. Mahmoud I’m-a-dinner-jacket, you’re starting to look a little more silly than you normally do.

This has become like the scrawny guy mouthing off in a pub who says he knows kung-fu. Sooner or later a bigger bad-ass will take him outside. I’m-a-dinner-jacket, here’s a  friendly tip: There are bigger bad-asses. The rest of the bar are rolling their eyes, staring into their pint glasses, just not wanting someone to make a scene. Unfortunately every pub-goer knows how this will play out; either the mouthy idiot will wind up passed out in the toilet or  humiliated in the street with a broken nose.

And I do cop to stealing the dinner jacket name from Maureen Dowd during one of the moments of lucidity when she’s actually funny.

I know I’m-a-dinner-jacket wants a world that is a few centuries behind the times, so doctoring photos of 10-year-old missiles is probably par for the course. Next we’ll find out that the pirated software was Photoshop 5.0 made on an Apple IIG.

Yes, Iran’s government is headed by a complete wacko, and yes, they do pose a threat. However, it’s hard not to laugh about their exaggerating their threat with Photoshop. What’s scarier than three missiles? Four missiles of course!

“We don’t have four missiles? Quickly, get a torrent of Photoshop CS3 and a serial crack and make one! Piratebay akbar!”

I fear the day that Israel will be obliterated by Photoshop filters. Once where there was a democracy in the Middle East, there will only be a sloppily applied swirl and gaussian blur while a clone stamp on another layer will superimpose the might of Iran.

I am now convinced that after regime change, the first priority is to get Iran some graphic designers.

The Euro Cup was absolutely thrilling, and we couldn’t be happier that Spain won. I’d been watching the matches and had predicted early on that Spain would win. Of course a lot of that was wishful thinking, but still, I was right. We watched the final at a packed Spanish bar surrounded by cheering, dancing and kissing Spaniards.

The Spanish love football. They really love it. So all the hugging and kissing was reserved for football celebrations while the annual Erotic Film Festival in Barcelona was uncharacteristically chaste. Normally the promoters expect 50,000 men in trench coats using aliases and paying in cash. This year’s attendance was down over 70%, and the decline was blamed on the Euro Cup.

“Football is one of the few things that can compete with sex,” moaned the festival director: compete and win, apparently.

One of Spain’s newest sex symbols:

How can hot, naked women compete?