Advertisement – Rant and Roll

Double, double, toil and trouble.

Good grief is Canada ever a large country.

Because we have heaps, and HEAPS of space, until we get that teleportation science down, it’s going to keep taking dogs years to travel across.

This morning I was up at the ungodly hour of 4:45 am, getting ready to head back to real life here in BC.

I crawled out of bed, jumped into the shower, and slowly steamed my eyelids open.

I allotted myself as much time as possible to wake up, before heading out to the Halifax airport for my 6:20 departure. My sister Jessi and her boyfriend Adam were kind enough to drive me – he being tempted by the promise of a Tim Horton’s breakfast sandwich, and she driven by her enduring and ever-deepening love for me.

HAH!

But seriously though – Timmy Ho’s.

I tell ya. That stuff will take over your life.

It’s interesting – despite the proliferation of Starbucks the world over, Tim Hortons still reigns supreme here in Canada (minus of course several urban centers, of which Vancouver is one.)

I mean, “Double-Double” (the shorthand term for two creams, two sugars in a Tim Hortons coffee) is an entry in the Oxford Canadian English Dictionary!

WHAT.

It can be weird trying to explain this institution to someone who hasn’t lived here.

It’s just SO Canadian.

(Despite its brief American ownership and merger with Wendys Corporation. This is referred to as the “Dark Time”, of which we never speak.)

Just kidding.

Kind of.

It also has the guts to put out the most heart-wrenching commercials (aka ridiculous Canadiana propaganda.)

Let me implore you to check out this ad:

DAH.

THE EMOTIONS!

(I never said that this ploy didn’t work, now did I?)

ONE THING though – if you’re going to bring your family over in the middle of the winter, feeding them terrible coffee isn’t going to make the transition any easier! JUST SAYING.

The one thing that actually does bother me about Tim Hortons is that I have a hard time believing that people actually like it as much as they purport to LOVE it.

It’s like this business has woven itself into our national framework (mythology?) to such an extent, that we no longer know what we actually want in terms of coffee and baked goods.

Or, perhaps that it’s that we’ve convinced ourselves that easy access, trumps quality.

For instance, Tim Hortons jingle used to be: “Always Fresh, Always, Tim Horntons.” And now it’s just “Always Tim Hortons.”

(Or it might be “Time for Tim’s – I’m not sure. Since throwing away cable for Netflix, my ability to keep up with this inane crap has been severely compromised.)

Anywho, if it is indeed “Always Tim Hortons”, that is apt as all get out, because they are indeed EVERYWHERE.

And it’s not like there is anything all that great about the foodstuffs available for purchase at any of these restaurants.

Its hot chocolate is okay, its coffee – as previously stated – is just awful.

Their baked goods run the gamut of delicious (honey cruellers and sour cream glazed) to absolutely dismal (anything claiming to be “old fashioned” tastes of dish soap and will completely destroy your will to live.)

I’ve never been a fan of the Iced Capp, but those that do would give away their first born when a craving hits.

Their bagels are okay, but are always smothered in so much cream cheese you start to wonder what it’s actually made out of that they give it away in such liberal amounts.

What can I say?

I’ve never, ever in my life woken up and thought: I want nothing more than ***** from Tim Horton’s.

But the other night, whilst out with friends and family, what did we IMMEDIATELY do once we left the bar?

Oh you betcha:

What can I say?

At my inner most core, I am Canadian.

(But only when soaked in white wine!)

OH MY GOODNESS I CANNOT BELIEVE I JUST WROTE AN 800 WORD POST ON TIM HORTONS.

Yeesh.

Please dear readers. I blame it on post-travel nackeredness. Eight hours on a plane will do that to you!

I really must be off for (another) shower and sleep.

I’ll be back to our regular scheduled program in but the (40) winks of an eye.

In the meantime, tell me your Tim Hortons stories.

We’ll see if we can get them made into a commercial.

Always.

(Tim Hortons.)

This ain’t no orinoco flow

Hey Kids,

It’s time for another installment of the Friday Fry-up. Today on the docket is this super weird ad from Evian:

What is it exactly that they are trying to tell me? That drinking their water will make me younger? That it will give me more energy? That it will give me hair that looks as though I’m in front of an ever-present wind machine?

Or is it trying to tell me that drinking Evian will ensure that I lose the ability to talk and walk and leave me without control over my bowels and/or urinary tract?

Seriously, I’m calling shenanigans on this Benjamin Button crap.

How does this even make sense? Especially due to the fact that they chose a model who is what – nineteen, maybe twenty years old? Yeesh. You know you are living life a little too fast and fancy free (aka no sleep and rampant drug use) if the year you graduate out of your “teens,” you are pining for the simpler days of yore, when you wore Babar onesies and cried all the time. I really hope that this was not the message the campaign directors wanted to get across in this ad.

I doubt it – but then again, you never know.

I mean really, why not have a majorly old dude sporting a hot young piece of man flesh on his t-shirt? That way we could move beyond the ever-present and hugely boring notion that aging as a woman IS SERIOUSLY THE SCARIEST THING IN THE ENTIRE WORLD EVEN SCARIER THAN ZOMIBES OMG GUYS GET ME SOME NIGHT TIME ANTI-WRINKLE CREAM STAT. It would turn this conceit on its head, and make for a pretty interesting, funny, and aesthetically pleasing campaign.

Because seriously, if the ad is geared towards women (which I’m assuming it is – I don’t think there any many dudes out there who date women for their “inner baby” – and if there are, well, that’s a whole other can of worms I am not interested in opening) let’s give them something awesome.

Something different.

Is there no one out there that can come up with an idea that is thought-provoking, and most importantly, NEW?

As my mother used to ask, “AM I TALKING TO A BRICK WALL?”

Otherwise, it’s just boring, lazy and stupid. Hey Evian, did you hear that? Your water is Two and a Half Men – BOTTLED!!

P.S. Do babies even drink water!? I don’t think they ingest much of anything besides breast milk or formula.

So sorry Evian – it’s a fail on all fronts.

…

On a completely different, totally awesome note: It snowed yesterday!

Now I no longer feel so silly about how quickly my excitement has been ramping up for the holiday season. There is so much about this time of year that brings out the nostalgia big time.

Catch me at my desk today and you’ll probably hear me humming that age old tune:

“Oh the weather outside is weather…”

These little white lines

Dear Women:

Remember when we hated you because you were fat? Boy did we ever dislike you then! There aren’t too many worse things a woman can be! Am I right, or am I right? Oh, what’s that? You’ve lost weight? You joined a gym and started running and lifting weights and trying out new exercises and are the fittest you’ve ever been in your life? Well good for you! Too bad we still don’t like you. I mean, even though you’re not fat anymore, you’re just less fat. Don’t fool yourself into thinking you’re skinny enough. Plus, you now have stretch marks and seriously, EW. I mean, can’t you at least try to take care of yourself? Good grief women. Just get your head in gear okay? You can start off by buying this bullshit product which will do nothing to actually minimize the look of those disgusting lines, but instead, further reinforce a feeling of perpetual failure. Because goodness knows you have failed. However, if by chance this product does work for you and reverses this natural process, and then maybe, just maybe, we’ll allow you to take pride in your body. However, by “your body”, we don’t mean anything more than what you look like. Lest you begin to think that you can feel good about yourself due to the amazing things you can accomplish with your body, just remember – you’ll never be good enough and you will never be more than the sum of your physical parts.

Sincerely,

The World

…

I work out at a small gym. It’s a pretty simple organization – exposed pipes, leaky air conditioners, and minimal equipment. For relatively low price, I use its facilities between three to four times a week with little complaint. However, two copies of this ad have been hanging in the ladies change room for over the past four months. I didn’t pay much attention to it at first, but as I passed by it day after day, it really began to grate my gears.

It drives me crazy that a place committed to promoting healthy choices would chose to hang this ad in the women’s washroom. While I understand that because the gym is so limited, it probably requires the extra revenue from the ad space, but couldn’t they have chosen something that promoted body acceptance (especially within the medium of healthy living, or healthier living?) over HEY EX-FATTIES! GET RID OF THOSE STRETCH MARKS BECAUSE THEY, LIKE YOU, ARE SO GROSS!

I am so sick of constantly being told how fat, ugly, pimpled, yellow-teethed, glasses-ed, wrinkled and cellulited I am. Because ninety-nine percent of the time all this is nothing but water of my rubber ducky back. I am okay with my “flaws” – but mostly because I am capable of standing back and taking pride in the things my body is capable of doing. However, this used to never be the case, and as I said, the one percent of the time that this does bother me, it really hits me hard.

And the reason that this is sticking so deeply in my craw right now, is because it is at the gym – the place I go to feel fantastic about myself. The place where I push my body to its limits and marvel at how strong, fast, agile, flexible – WHATEVER – I can become through commitment and hard work, and not the purchasing (under social pressure) of some crap cream.

I think I may go in tomorrow with a notepad and scotch tape and stick the following onto the glass:

Hey Ladies! I hope you had a great workout today. Take a moment to reflect on how much faster or longer you can run, how much more you can lift. Take a moment to relish how good that feels and keep trying new things!

And then I’m going to watch this and feel bloody brilliant: