The Worship St Irregulars

A great piece over on Nerve about the erotic appeal of the Lands End catalogue. Seriously, it’s at interesting thought; all those beautiful, slightly older ladies parading around in their practical clothes, all seemingly living in beach houses and staring pensively at the horizon. Hmm.

Though as the article points out, the Lands End catalogue is also an exercise in emasculation; very few men, and those that there are tend to be decapitated by the page edge. Also, what self respecting dude wears Lands End chinos?

(I know, that question is still rhetorical without ‘Lands End’).

This weekend’s rated & retarded events around Shoreditch:

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Whilst I have neither the photography skills (clinically obese thumbs - a la the Simpsons episode where Homer is advised “the fingers you have used to dial are too fat, to obtain a special dialing wand please mash the keypad with your palm now”) or the give-a-fuck skills to stalk the beautiful people of London in a Vince Noir manner, this dude does. I tip my soiled, Barley-esque Flat Cap to him.

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So, coming back to the batcave last night, I spot a rather dilapidated suitcase chilling out in our doorway. Ever alert for terrorist plots, I grappled it open (having an inkling of what it might contain) to reveal this (and it’s beautiful glossy black, not the nasty mottled orangeness my phone camera seems to give):

Which seems very fortunate, what with our logo and all. So, dear readers (ha!), anyone got a monkey for me?

Seriously though, it’s all about the keys here… Read more »

For those of you that have considered this procedure, you’ve probably trawled the net and/or been to a clinic which are both littered with unbelievable testimonials. Usually of this kind of ilk:

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There’s hot like a cup of coffee. Then there’s hot like lava. Then there’s the UK property market.

I don’t want to go down that well trodden road of anecdotal evidence of £4m townhouses in Islington or £500k flats in Hackney, I want to talk about the bigger picture here. The caveat here is that London is a more robust market than the rest of the UK, i.e. when the there is a recession the top assets are less affected that the junk at the bottom which has become far removed from their fundamentals i.e. a 2-bed new-build in Aldershot going for £350k.

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Maestro have recently been running a campaign heralding in a new era where ‘cash is dead’. Anyone who has had the deep misfortune of travelling on the tube recently may have seen this ad campaign which tracks the history of ‘cash’ or cash equivalents throughout time, arriving at today where maestro is ‘the new cash’.

Meanwhile Barclays (aided by Visa - pretty much Maestro’s nemesis) launched their ‘One Pulse’ card which combines a Credit Card, Oyster Card (London underground pass) and Contactless Card. The Contactless card allows the holder to make transactions under £10 without the need of entering a pin, simply by tapping it against a secure reader in participating stores. So not only is this replacing the need for loose change, it’s also bringing three cards together in one, madness I hear you say.

Whilst it can not be disputed that there has been a shift towards debit and credit card transactions in the last couple of years, Bank of England statistics show that between 2004-2006 M0 (coins and notes in circulation) has continued to grow.

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The sultry voiced vixen who announces the stops on everyone’s least favourite way to travel, la Tube, has been fired for making a few ad-hoc announcements of her own. Emma Clark got fired for putting some pretty damn entertaining spoof announcements on her own blog. My personal favourite?

“Here we are again, crammed into a sweaty tube carriage. And today’s Wednesday - only two more days until you can binge drink yourself into a state of denial about the mediocrity of you life. Oh, for Goodness sake, if you’re female smile at the bloke next to you and make his day. He probably hasn’t had sex for months”

Hark back to the film American Psycho and the business card scene where the main character, Patrick Bateman is absolutely distraught after being handed a business card that trumps his in terms of colour and typeface. This scene (and the film in general) afforded many their first insight (albeit a psychopathic and absurd one) into the big corporate machine. For many of those that have experienced it first hand, it acted as a thought-provoking catalyst, highlighting some of the ridiculous practices and behaviours that go on at the cutting edge of this industry.

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