Soda - Keeping Curious

There’s a lot of speculation over the new Guinness viral doing the rounds at the moment. Although professionally produced, the company have denied any connection to it and demanded the removal of it off you tube. Suspicious though considering this has coincided with the release of their new official ad. Anyway, whoever is responsible, the viral, in my opinion, is fantastic (and hilarious). As Rutger Hauer would say, pure genius!

I had to mention this ad on our blog for a number of reasons. It’s clever and fairly brave I’d say, oh, and of course intuitive (every woman in the world would agree with the end line!!). So check it out.

Quick, lock the door and flush your lazy spoken English down the toilet…it’s a bust by the Word Police.

Before the rant begins I feel there is something I should make clear. I am neither a grammatical fascist nor a punctuation fanatic. Far from it. I like writing, I like words. These other people are just nutters who enjoy arranging shapes and would be more offended by a misplaced apostrophe than if you were to sell their children to a gang of pirates.

But one phrase which I am determined to yank out of modern speech is ‘know what I mean?’ – a saying so awful it makes the fluid drain from my eyeballs with rage and despair. Quite simply, it’s the most irritating expression to come out of people’s mouths since ‘Wassup?’ and at least that started out as being pretty funny.

What annoys me most of all about is this expression is the sinus-popping pointlessness of it. If someone had just finished explaining to me the principles of gravitational time dilation then I’m sure I’d appreciate someone asking if I knew what they meant. The answer would be a resounding ‘er, no’, but nevertheless this is the appropriate time to ask such a question.

An inappropriate time for it to be asked would be at the end of any of the following sentences:

1. I think that David Beckham’s new felt-tip pen advert is well wicked.
2. This year’s Big Brother is so the best series ever.
3. It’s not my fault if my kids set fire to the milkman.

I’m sure you’ll agree that as insightful as these statements might be, none of them are complex enough to warrant the suffix of ‘know what I mean?’ We do know what you mean. ‘You were both eloquent and succinct and we thank you for it.’

It seems to me that the only way to combat this in-growing toenail on the delicate foot that is the English language is to play these blighters at their own game.

Next time someone ends a sentence with ‘know what I mean?’ assume an expression of pure bewilderment and earnestly reply that ‘no’, you do in fact not ‘know what they mean’. Could they be more specific about the exact ways in which they feel that ‘Nige’ from Hollyoaks is a better actor than Sir Michael Gambon? Could they provide evidence to support their assertion that Wine Gums constitute one of the recommended five daily portions of fruit?

These vocal villains will soon realise that ending every dreary sentence they utter with ‘know what I mean?’ will result in them having to think about what they’ve said and actually, heaven forbid, make themselves clear.

Hopefully then, we’ll soon find this accursed turn of phrase banished from our ears and confined to the home for once popular speech along with shouting ‘not’ after a sentence to ever-so-subtly imply that you were being ironic (wasn’t it great when everyone used to do that? Not.)

I think we all know how this blog is going to end. Know what I mean?

PS

For anyone who thinks that I’m precious about my copy then I suggest you take a look a Giles Coren’s heroically livid email to a poor Times sub-editor who had the audacity to juggle with his words. Read this rather colourful outburst and you’ll all appreciate how restrained my own policy of gritted-teeth and grumbling really is…

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2008/jul/25/pressandpublishing.thetimes

On 25th June 2008, a scruffy, monkey-faced young copywriter from the Together Agency posted a blog on this site, and then there was silence…

No one knows what happens to the missing Soda bloggers. Some say they were eaten by hungry otters. Others say they built a raft out of stale Rich Tea fingers and set sail for South America.

But after a month of eerie emptiness, the team investigating their disappearance thought they’d better post something to reassure any loyal Soda readers that the search for the missing bloggers goes on…

Anyone with any information, such as a trail of biscuit crumbs leading out to sea or a sighting of a particularly well nourished otter, should post their comments here. With your help we can restore the bubbling of the Soda blogsters back to these very pages.

I’ll be honest. When England bumbled their way to non-qualification for Euro 2008 I would have rather spent the summer living in an underground network of caves than ‘enjoying’ the tournament.

But as my sulkiness is only outweighed by my laziness, I decided to moodily slump in my chair and watch the stupid football with the stupid 16 teams who are marginally less rubbish than stupid England.

To my surprise I’ve absolutely loved it.

Firstly, I’ve discovered that watching football is actually good fun. As a Newcastle and England fan I’ve literally met more monkeys in the last few years than I’ve experienced memorably happy football moments.

But as soon as you become a disinterested spectator, you discover that, without the miserable spectre of inevitable defeat and the crushing reality of your own team’s sheer awfulness, watching football is just a great bit of banter.

And if the team you side with at the start of the game looks like it’s in for a beating there’s no need to worry. You just switch your allegiance mid-match. Russians, Spaniards, Swedes - it makes no difference to the ‘floating fan’. If they’re buying the victory cocktails (and if they’re Russians they invariably are) then I’m happy to nail my colours to that mast. Well, stick them on with blu-tak at least.

It’s the same with Wimbledon. Now that the painful spectacle of the entire English middle-class pinning their sporting hopes on a hapless man-chimp simply because of his good manners and sensible hair cut has ended, I can actually enjoy the tournament. Let’s face it, no one really wants stroppy Scot Andy Murray to win so why not just be a floater and jump on the party bandwagon with anyone who looks in with a chance of winning?

Trust me, it’s the only way to enjoy sport – no tears, no disappointment, no swearing at professional athletes who earn 5,000 times my yearly salary but are still unable to kick a ball into a goal from 12 little yards. Just game after game of fickle, unburdened glory basking.

And if you think there’s more to enjoying sport than just being on the winning side, then you might as well jog on back to Henman Hill. Better hurry though, you might miss Cliff Richard.

Returning to work after a holiday is always an unusual experience. Mainly because it’s one of those rare moments in life when you get to see how much impact you actually make on the people around you.

From what I could tell the only thing that had been affected in any way since my two weeks of drinking cheap Spanish gin and turning increasingly pink and sore on the beach was that the quality of biscuits in the office had dropped sharply.

At the very least I’d hoped to find things in some minor state of crisis, with clients threatening to burn down the building unless my immediate return to action could be arranged.

But no, a dearth of Jammie Dodgers in favour of some stale, misshapen Pound Shop biscuits was the only sign that my absence had even taken place, let alone been the source of misery, desperation and catastrophe I’d been not-so-secretly hoping for.

So now I’m left to absorb the sad revelation that a better class of crumbly tea time snack is my only significant contribution to my colleagues.

Maybe I should just stay away longer next time. I reckon a few more weeks without proper Hob-Nobs and I’d soon be getting the hero’s welcome I’d been dreaming of during my cocktail-fuelled, sunstroke-ridden hallucinations.

Either that or next time I go away I should bring some sweets back.

It’s been a week and the devious minds that do their foul business in this office have been lying like politicians in order to meet the ‘Shite (talking) Club’ challenge.

Quite frankly some of the untruths that have been shared with me this week have left my faith in humanity stale and crumbled like the cheap Custard Creams at the bottom of our biscuit tin.

So with no further ado, lets dive in to that pit of propaganda that is ‘Shite (talking) Club’…

• In the spirit of international relations one unscrupulous chap has been telling unsuspecting Australians that the UK is actually twice as large in the summer as it is in the winter due to the powerful British tides, and that every year the River Thames dries up completely. It would not be surprising if these ‘facts’ were now being taught in every secondary school in Australia.

• The same gentlemen has also been informing people that Horse Fighting is a legitimate recognised sport, and is due to receive Olympic recognition in time for the 2012 games in London. Most worrying of all is that it now appears that Horse Fighting is, in fact, a popular combat sport in the Philippines (making us wonder: which came first, his lie or Philippino Horse Wrestling?)

• One young lady’s boyfriend has been conducting a campaign of lying that deserves commendation for his sheer commitment to the lie. He has maintained for many years that Ainsley Harriot is actually dead and the BBC, terrified at the prospect of falling viewing figures on ‘Ready, Steady Cook’, have been conducting an elaborate Weekend-at-Bernies-style scheme to maintain the illusion that he is still alive (and annoying). Even I’m half convinced by this.

• It seems that celebrity-death-lies are favoured amongst the more ghoulish members of our team, with one of our crafty colleagues claiming that 1980s film ‘legend’ Steve Guttenberg actually died in 1991. Rather than letting his back catalogue of epic cinematic masterpieces grow stagnant, Steve’s brother Rudy did what any sensible sibling would do and merely assumed the name and identity of his actor brother, thus allowing the Guttenberg thespian legacy to live on. Worryingly, the gent who is championing this most dubious of tales is a little bit too convincing and there are uncomfortable murmurs in the office that it might actually be true…

There have been other corkers put forward including the claim that Mr T is Ice T’s uncle; the explanation that it never snows at the seaside due to the salt in the air and the allegation that KFC Chicken is genetically modified so it has 8 wings.

My own effort for the week was when I successfully convinced a gullible friend that Swiss cheese contains holes because, in a bid to destabilise Switzerland’s position of neutrality during the Second World War, German spies had taken to planting grenades inside large cheeses in a bid to discourage the Swiss from offering shelter or support to the French Resistance.

The Swiss nation was gripped by fear as countless people lost their lives in cheese-bomb incidents, and historians have dubbed this period of the war as the ‘Yellow Death’.

In order to stop the increasing amount of exploding cheese fatalities the Swiss employed ‘Pousser Fromage’ officers (Cheese Pokers) whose job was to poke all Swiss cheese several times with long pipes, from behind a sandbag bunker, to check for explosives.

But the Swiss found that the improved aerodynamics of the holey, grenade-free cheese contributed positively to its flavour, texture (and calorie content) and adopted the device in their traditional cheese-making process. And thus it remains until this day.

Thanks to a sincere, authoritative delivery and the sheer elaborateness of the lie my friend was totally convinced and will only now realise, as he reads this blog, that he has been lampooned like a bomb-filled block of wartime cheese.

So, as he frantically backtracks to the many people he has undoubtedly shared his new historical ‘knowledge’ with, I feel that two lessons have been learnt by us all.

Firstly, believe nothing anyone tells you ever. And if your Swiss cheese has no holes in it, put your cracker down and run.
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In collaborative heaven people get involved because they find their particular project stimulating, energising and downright exciting. See, not once (in what is admittedly one short sentence) have I mentioned the word money. People don’t collaborate because it pays well. Actually that’s not true either. People collaborate for all sorts of reasons and with all sorts of underlying aims, however, the point is, they see a point in collaborating. That by collaborating they can achieve a much better outcome, for themself, for their group, for their organisation and quite possibly for mankind in general.

Working on the principle of a ‘better’ outcome could also result in the accumulation of huge amounts of capital, Social Capital. This potent form of global currency is worth accumulating, and people’s future wealth may well depend on how much social capital they’ve managed to make come their way; as will the company they work for and the projects they choose to devote time to.

Collaboration and social capital might not yet be firmly linked in people minds, but there’s growing evidence to suggest that the Net Generation are well aware of the latter, having leveraged it’s importance by intrinsically believing in the former.

So next time you have one of those ‘Every man for himself moments’, pause for a second, and if it doesn’t feel too much of a Monty Python-moment think ‘Wait a minute, I have high net worth when it comes to social capital, I can collaborate myself out of this mess!’

Go on, get your invitation engine revving on Linkedin, launch your blog and get collaborating on boundaryless project that have a worthwhile outcome. Because remember, you’re never need be alone again if you collaborate.

’Twas the beginning of summer
And to old London town
The girls from Together
Had made their way down.

They were joining a contest
But not just any old race
It was the Playtex Moonwalk
That was due to take place.

A full twenty-six miles
In naught but their bras
They did march through the city
By the light of the stars.

And in that famous old river
The moonlight did gleam
While the girls did their best
To not get ‘stabbed up’ by teens.

Meanwhile the boys in the office
Were filled up with pride
They couldn’t walk to the kettle
Without a stitch in their sides.

And the crowds they did flock
And excitement did ripple
With one eye on their time
And one eye on their…performance.

And now that they’ve done it
For this reason we’re glad
They may not look too healthy
But they don’t smell too bad.

I just sped through Seth Godin’s book The Dip, which asks you at the end to write down the reasons why you’d quit a project, job, mastering a new sport or musical instrument, or whatever. All the time I was reading The Dip I kept thinking of mass collaboration, and under what circumstances I would quit wanting to be the authority on that subject. Seth Godin considers it smart to quit doing things that have led you into a cul-de-sac, or bore you, or leaves you being average. Few intentionally seek to end up in those states but life can just (often) turn out like that for us. I try and avoid all three, and loads more mind-numbing outcomes, but still find myself doing things which I should really stop, or quit, doing. To give mass collaboration my best shot I should (will) quit:

Watching so much evening TV, spreading myself too thin, tripping-up my capabilities, seeking others approval, forgeting that I am at heart a creative person, limiting my expecations on what I can achieved, thinking that the time or day dictates what you should be doing, finding excuses not to play PS2 games with my son, thinking this blogpost can be done tomorrow, thinking real success and happiness belongs to other more worthwhile people (actually I’m generally a happy soul, I think) daaah, must quit doing that.