The comma. It’s not as definitive as its brother the period or as emphatic as cousin exclamation. Many times the comma is neglected and unemployed; used where it is not needed and left out where it is. I admit I play pretty fast and loose with the comma, but that’s just how I roll. All told, I figure I use more commas then most people and therefore I am helping keep the little grammar tadpole alive.

This video by the Brazilian Press Association is brilliant. It ticks all my boxes: It is clever, it promotes free speech and it’s well designed. Let’s hear it for the comma!

Every once in a while it pays to look around and see what opportunities are out there. This is an opportunity. While the remuneration isn’t great, it is local and I can’t pass up the opportunity for future world domination.

Ever feel like you’re forgetting something? Police officer leaves gun in Starbucks.

Figures. My first presidential election out of the country and it turns out to be the most interesting one I’ve ever had a chance to vote in.

I’ll have to brush up on my Palin facts, but at first blush, she looks impressive. Demographically speaking it’s big news; we’ll either have a black president or a female vice-president—unless we get Nader for the freaky conspiracy theory demographic. Even more bizarre is that somebody from either Hawaii or Alaska will be in the White House. Take that Continental US!

As part of my birthday festivities, Cristina arranged a surprise trip to Glasgow. We were able to do this as England, considerately, places a bank holiday following my birthday. This is the third place in Scotland that we have visited, and like the previous two, it did not disappoint.

We stayed right in the city centre, which allowed us to walk everywhere we wanted to go and not have to worry about arranging transportation. Glasgow, at least the centre and a bit of the west end, is a really pretty and dynamic city. Our location couldn’t have been better because we were right next to several nice whisky bars and all the shopping and high street activities.

One thing that I still haven’t figured out is the abundance of hair stylists. I don’t know if it is just that area or if Glaswegians take their hair really seriously. We spent more time than expected shopping because the prices are so much cheaper than London’s. We visited a few metal bars and listened to actual Rock and Roll - a seeming rarity in London - and traditional Scottish folk music at a whisky bar.

We were a bit nerdy and didn’t do any hard partying or the like. We ate out only twice - where we sampled some haggis, naturally, and the rest of the time was spent walking about and touring museums. We did do our whisky shopping and attempted to track down some specific bottles. The iPhone’s GPS came in quite handy after we we were given directions by a liquor store clerk who was three sheets to the wind. I’m not certain if that is common practice or not, but he managed to confuse left and right as well as which landmarks to make these turns at. While he wasn’t particularly helpful, he was quite friendly.

We spent a bit of time watching TV in the hotel room. that was mainly just while we ate dinner picked up from M&S, but we kept getting sucked into programs because of the Scottish announcers. My favourite was a documentary on the importance of the oceans. The host’s accent frequently made ‘currents’ sound like, well, another ‘C’ word. I hurt my stomach laughing when he spent a good five minutes describing ‘these powerful, warm currents of the Mediterranean’.

We’ve come back with some good photos and great memories. We got a few bottles of whisky, and Cris got an Iron Maiden CD so she can reminisce about her metal days. We had a great time, and I’m certain we’ll be back for another long weekend there.

Appropriation in advertising is nothing new, but it’s often done poorly- or at least unimaginatively.

The government of Madrid has created some advertisements to conserve energy targeted at young people. These ads use language and style that kids are familiar with from other ads: the put-on sulkiness of a perfume ad, a model tossing her silky hair, all communicate a different message. The introduction to the site, which translates as ‘buy this attitude‘ is a send up of the user generated YouTube content. Very well done.

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?