Alan Coleman

At first I thought the new advertising campaign for Apple Mac, featuring Mitchell and Webb from Peep Show, was just slightly amusing. Then I realised that I was laughing not at the characters, but at the utter stupidity of the content on display. I honestly thought we’d got that Mac and PC thing out of our systems a few years ago, but it looks as though sneering consumerism is alive and kicking.

It’s based partly around the fact that Apple Mac computers tend to be used in the creative industries of music production and graphic design, examples of two occupations that suffer acutely from superiority complexes. The idea that the Apple is a superior experience is also a statement of identity, highlighting ones cool job that somehow transcends the trivial office environment of the sandwich man and the water cooler. The nature of the adverts in question being everything required to back up both of these statements.

Maybe that’s a bit mean. I know plenty of Mac users, Amoungst others Becki, Roger, Dickie and Peter, you know who you are. These people are amongst the most forward thinking people I have ever met, creatives operating at the top of their chosen field. I love you all and the Mac is most suitable for your work. But really, it gets on my nerves.

In the adverts Mitchell plays the geeky PC bloke in straight clothes, his dry humour adding the dour and realistic personality of a fairly average bloke. Webb on the other hand is the smug student type with the stupid GAP jeans, every inch the epitome of cool with the sarcastic suburban wit. Ironically, and this is where the advert falls down, it is Webb who is the dislikeable character, the selfish fashion victim who
looks down upon his PC friend. Spreadsheets? Surely not! I mean why do a
mundane job when you could buy a Mac and create music? Nice idea, but in
reality you’ll end up down the pub or watching Telly.

Personally I identify with Mitchell, a bloke at least trying to get by
in life without entertaining the faddish and gimmicky tedium that
surrounds us. I look at Webb, and think about the arrogance of fashion,
and the middle class obsession with product, design and cool. Grown up
people, adults, defining themselves through brightly coloured and shiny
gadgets, the latest technology from the must have and satisfyingly
overpriced brand. Essentially, the inanity of bling for farmers market
types. Every time I see one of those smug thirty something’s marching
through Shoreditch, with a Mac tucked under arm and a stripy scarf round neck, I feel the need to run up and stamp on this weeks trainers, then comb his fake scruffy hair as he lies on the pavement in pain.

‘There there Rufus, sorry about the retro Greenflash, but you’ll thank
me for this later’.

This campaign may have misfired. 25 Million people in this country now
look at those people with the other sort of computers and think, ‘Who
the hell do they think they are?’. In fact they probably don’t think
that at all, because unlike me and Mac users these are the people that
have the sense to turn their machines off at 5:30 and do something
interesting, like dogging for instance.

Lastly and most sadly of all, just like surfing and snowboarding, the Mac may just have become a parody of itself.

How great is MySpace? I’m properly into it and have my own page and everything.

This surely, is what the Internet is all about, meeting people, listening to music and linking through to other stuff you might be interested in. I’ve tried to set up forums and message boards here on my own site in the past, with the vague idea of forming some sort of online community, but spam made it practically impossible so I just jacked it in.

I’ve only had my page on MySpace for 24 hours, and already I’ve got people who I havn’t seen for ages as my friends. I can admit to feeling a little chuffed when I went back on and saw that other MySpacers have answered my plea for some mates. And Jenna Jameson too, now there’s blast from the past, and no hard feelings either.

So now I have to think of a way of blinging it up a bit, I’m thinking maybe dark grey and green, but I’m not sure.

Anyway, who cares? It’s great to see old friends!

I don’t think we spend enough time appreciating the mundane things in life. So concerned are we with our highly strung and vain accessories, that we forget to value the things that make our everyday life an easier place to be.

The plastic lunch box is a prime example of this.
It lasts for years, cost practically nothing to buy and can be used to store anything from sandwiches to maggots. They’ll quite happily sit for months at the back of a cupboard before being called to perform some thankless task, after which they’ll be slung aside again like they never existed. You can put them in the freezer for years, or leave them out in the garden with worms in, they simply don’t mind. Even better, next time you find a single fresh prawn lying around at a friends house, seal it into a plastic lunch box and throw it to the back of a cupboard. Give it a couple of weeks, and the unlucky individual who cracks that little baby open will be met by a smell so foul, it’ll make FC’s shit smell like Mr Matey.

Someone in the orifice has just mailed round some ‘Hilarious’ pictures of peoples pets wearing a variety of different outfits. They’re not hilarious at all. In fact, the idea of a Gerbil wearing a tuxedo is about as amusing as ‘The lads’ playing with a packet of condoms in a student union bar.

Email is an extremely useful communication channel that should be treated like any other. Would you pick a number from your mobile at random, then simply ring it and start telling stupid jokes like Fat Colin? No, exactly. The person on the other end, quite rightly, is likely to say, “Jesus, f**king do one fatty”.

Besides, if dog owners spent a little less time dressing Walnut up in a clown suit, and a little more time clearing up his shit from the streets of south London, they’ll succeed in freeing up valuable bandwidth as well as making life a little more bearable for the rest of us.

You have been told.

My brother Chris Emailed this to me this morning:
Stories about mobiles that make me laugh.

Following a flight, everyone turns their phones back on whilst on the shuttle bus to the terminal.

Then we have a chorus of text messages arriving “beep-beep!”"be”"beep-beep!”"beep-beep!”.

Then watch the look on someone’s face.

“I’m abroad, in a foreign country, just got of a plane and someone is trying to contact me, I’m the yucking daddy!”

To the realisation and the let down look as the penny drops that it’s from the local telecoms provider welcoming them to their network. – What a yunt.

However I’m sure that in an attempt to cover up their embarrassment some actually pretend to text someone!