Wednesday, June 23, 2004



duff


there's a beer commercial around at the moment - can't remember which (it must be one of those über-subtle sub-limbic crypto-hypnogogic delayed branding things that only the especially gifted can hope to understand ) - that opens with the kitsch idyll - helicopter shot over rolling ripe grain fields, fecund undulation of green - then closes on a breezy ear of barley, then moves indoors to the jolly flat-capped worker tipping a bucket of golden grain into the open trap at the top of a huge wooden vat, and so on, and finally ends with the money-shot - the spuming amber liquid itself - all to a hilarious voiceover droning on about 100% natural ingredients or something - the sort of thing that just grates on the edge of your consciousness like a mosquito's whine.
on the same night, the news footage of the current round of 'celebrations' attendant on a certain event in Portugal (god how I hate all this), and it suddenly strikes me, with the deadly and hopeless certainty of realising that, for many, the earth really is flat, and that the sun really does go round the earth, that 99% of those men who consider a good time to consist of getting totally bladdered during and after the match and then going and destroying as much as possible and giving anyone who gets in the way a thorough kicking will peer at those images in complete incomprehension. fields? wheat? beer? wuh? what's the connection?

No comments: