Summer Food Fun and Drink - why Ikea sucks · Tuesday August 11, 2009 by colin newell
Ikea. Junk furniture made with unsustainable materials manufactured and collated by exploited workers so we can have dilapidated and readily disposable crap in our shrinking living space.
Ikea is in the hot seat this month after being caught vandalizing hundreds of pieces of public and private property. Picture at upper-right: Unreal.
Given that IKEA’s environmental stewardship is more global wrecking ball than actual contributor to real solutions, their recent botched ad campaign seems entirely apropos – Corporate guerrilla art it’s called. They spray-paint (vandalize) public space in the name of corporate kitsch and coolness – and it bites.
Ikea. You stink and it ain’t the reek of laminate.
IKEA—third largest global consumer of wood— gets many of its raw materials from regions where illegal logging is rampant and environmental stewardship is as absent as your parents on your first big night out. IKEA’s wares, and the industrial location of its big-box stores (consumers have to travel by car to make their purchases, or even exchange faulty small parts), speak to a unfailing disregard for environmental consideration.
The hoo-haw around Ikea’s use of “chalk spray” graffiti to complement a TV ad campaign aimed at driving viewers to a website where they could enter a contest to win $15,000 worth of furniture – has caused them to back peddle faster than a RCMP officer at a taser inquiry.
The ads featured a yellow dotted line framing the slogan “Any Place Can Be Beautiful,” a website of the same name and “Aug. 10,” the date Ikea plans to deliver 5.5 million flyers to Canadian homes.
Although I have never been a fan of the crap that they sell, I am now even more resolved to never set foot in one of their soul crushing retail outlets. Shame on Ikea for stealing our public space and branding it for commercial gain.
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Summer Food and Drink series - 2011 rant #30 in stickiness · Wednesday July 22, 2009 by colin newell
The year is 2011. Vancouver. The former emerald gem of the Canadian south-west is in ruin. Several years of utter neglect and government sponsored raids on the community chest have left this former city of dreams in a patina of rust and deterioration.
A private police force cautiously roam the few streets not declared off limits by endless civil strife, skirmishes between resistance militias and the almost complete collapse of infrastructure.
Those people brave enough to venture into the chaos, bewildered in the crumbling streets, look for a reason for this nightmare – and a scrap of food not already sold off to the occupiers.
I gaze across this futuristic hellscape, and I spot a gas powered automobile from the early days of the 21st century. It’s burned down to the tire rims and largely stripped of every valuable piece of metal or wire – but I can still make out the bumpersticker… shown above
Available from CafePress.Com
Buy one of these now – while you still can. Place it on your still running automobile, bicycle, rickshaw, skateboard or burro!
And thank your lucky stars you still have a job and 3-square.
For now
Summer Food Fun and Drink 2009 Starbucks in decline - Chapter 5 · Friday July 17, 2009 by colin newell
The Seattle-based gourmet coffee chain said it is changing the name of one of its existing stores in its hometown to a name that reflects the neighborhood location.
The store will be called 15th Avenue Coffee and Tea. It will open next week and will serve coffee and tea as well as wine and beer.
Isn’t that like McDonalds changing its Victoria area outlet names to Madame Elizabeth’s Crumpet and Tea house?
Or GM or Ford changing their name to Henry’s Perfectly Reliable Maker of Motored Carriage?
Someone should have told their marketing people that you can’t buy authenticity.
Many industry pundits feel that the Starbucks brand still “resonates” with those who drink coffee regularly. But with the recession now in its second year, the brand may be struggling more because it is considered “premium,” and therefore an expensive product, by consumers.
No. No. No. It is because (in my opinion), Starbucks coffee is not the Starbucks coffee of, say, 10 years ago. In 1992, I used to delight in an extra large black coffee from Starbucks; rich and hot, filled with body and mysterious flavors.
Now it just tastes like the inferior coffee beans that the real specialty coffee companies are passing on that maybe, just maybe, is not good enough. Dunno. You judge.
The fact is, better coffee has arrived in the form of Victrola or Stumptown or Vivace and Intelligentsia
Nobody is going to be fooled by this. Corporate coffee is corporate coffee however you slice it.
Starbucks needs to move aside and let the real coffee brew.
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Summer Food Fun and Drink Chapter 11 The downside of twitter · Saturday July 11, 2009 by colin newell
Here’s the thing. If I could sprout an extra lobe in my brain and actually incur the ability to distill my more cogent thoughts down to 140 characters…
I probably still would not twitter.
Because I just typed 140 characters and I haven’t said a golly dash thing!
And you know it.
A lovely young lady (and that fact is irrelevant) that I passed on Friday (on campus) mused that she twitters – but is pretty sure that…
a.) She has no followers
and
b.) No one would really care about what she wrote anyway.
And yet I know for a fact that she is usually surrounded by a gaggle of young men…
and she talks a lot to them.
And they listen with rapt interest.
Because she is interesting.
Intelligent.
And pretty. Not that this indelible fact matters.
There are a couple of other nagging problems with twitter (and, oh yea… Facebook).
They are over run by corporations. We know that Facebook is merely a data mining site used by the man to get more marketing info on us consume-droids.
And now large corporations are signing into twitter because they think it’s hip and it’s marketing ore rich for refining.
It is about as hip as my grand-dad rapping with Dr. Dre.
Bottom line – there is nothing useful anyone can say in 140 characters or less. And when millions and millions are doing it – it just makes it less relevant than space dust.
My opinion.
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Summer Fun Food and Drink 2009 - Chapter 7 Pissed with Readers Digest · Friday July 3, 2009 by colin newell
Hey. I hope I am not the only one that is experiencing this — and strap yourselves in folks. This is a full on rant.
Readers digest. Their book club. Or whatever they call it…
I have a dear old aunt who is in her 80’s – and she is getting a little fuzzy… a bit past her mental prime and all – which is normal.
At some point she got a shill from Readers Digest (Canada) for a free book or two. So they sent her a free book… and then another… and then a box of books. And then she send them a note: No more books!
But the books keep coming. And now they are billing the old dear.
And I am shipping them back – return to sender.
Surely I cannot be the only one ranting about Readers Digest Canada.
Go to their website. It is easy to find. I challenge you to find somewhere on their website where you can e-mail some human being… if only to write…
Enough with the books already!
Readers Digest Canada – please note. My patience is running out.
Colin Newell uncovers Canada’s ugly little secrets so you don’t have to.
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