The Consumer Category
We bring you the chic and unique, the best and most bizarre shopping offers both online and offline. We offer you tips on where to buy, and some of the less mainstream and crazy, individual and offbeat items on the internet. Anything that can be bought and sold can be featured here. And we love showcasing the best and worst art and design.
Nottingham Man Buys Photo Of XBox One For £450
WHEN Peter Clatworthy saw a photo of anXBox One console on eBay, he wanted it. He handed over £450 plug £8 packaging. The 19-year-old student, of Bilborough, Nottingham, wanted the device for his four-year-old son, McKenzie. But he got exactly what he clicked on: a picture of an XBox One.
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Posted: 6th, December 2013 | In: Strange But True, Technology, The Consumer | Comments (4)
Letters Of Note: My Waitrose Rum Baba Pudding
LETTES of Note: The woman who still can’t make a decent rum baba:
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Posted: 6th, December 2013 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment (1)
Mandela Marketing: The Most Inappropriate Tributes (My Little Pony)
ASK not what Nelson Mandela did for humanity but what Nelson Mandela can do to promote your brand:
My Little Pony Fan Fiction salutes one of its own:
Thank you Nelson Mandela, who much like our ponies, brought the world together though kindness and acceptance. #RIPNelsonMadela #MLP #Brony
— Canterlot RadiHoHoHo (@CanterlotRadio) December 6, 2013
Posted: 6th, December 2013 | In: Politicians, The Consumer | Comment
The Free Nelson Mandela Comic Books
IN 2005, former South African President Nelson Mandela starred in the Madiba Legacy Series comic books – a nine-part comic book series based on Nelson Mandela’s life freely distributed in schools and newspapers. It was created by the Nelson Mandela Foundation.
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Posted: 5th, December 2013 | In: Books, Politicians | Comment
The Rise And Fall of ‘Hippiedilly’ In 1969
ON the Sunday morning of 21 September 1969, a slightly-built Chief Inspector convinced some hippies inside a squat at a large five storey mansion at 144 Piccadilly to lower an improvised wooden drawbridge so doctors could help a seriously ill person inside. The drawbridge came down and Chief Inspector Michael Rowling flung himself bravely across the barricaded opening to establish a bridgehead. Suddenly a police sergeant blew his whistle and shouted “Come on lads – let’s go in!” and a hundred policemen, seemingly from nowhere, charged over the bridge and through the front door.
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Posted: 5th, December 2013 | In: Fashion, Flashback, Key Posts, Music | Comment
The Global iPhone 5 Price Index
THIS is a nice little piece of research showing the variation in price of the iPhone all over the world. You can set it to tell you the absolute price in any country and see the impact of taxes etc on an iPhone 5s. Or you can mix and match it with how rich the country is and so see what percentage of the average salary it is.
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Posted: 5th, December 2013 | In: Money, Technology, The Consumer | Comment
Font Fail: 10 ‘FLICKERING’ Lights
“POOR font choices … a continuing saga,” tweets Susan Cloud@ProducerSusan.
Posted: 3rd, December 2013 | In: The Consumer | Comment
The FriXion Revolution: Virtual Sex Just Got Intimate
THE FriXion Revolution is here! Never again will BBC DJs and rock stars need to actually touch their fans and run the risk of an underage furore. With FriXion, you can rub and grope through your computer.
On the next generation haptic social network innovative and affordable haptic peripherals empower FriXion users to come together and touch each other in tangible, stimulating ways; from holding hands and kissing up to and including full penetrative sex whether your partner is across the room or across an ocean.
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Posted: 3rd, December 2013 | In: Technology, The Consumer | Comment
And The Award For Most Baffling Letter To Santa Goes To…
SANTA is a busy man. First off, he has to get a load of occasional staff for the grotto, just like the Post Office do. He’s probably working them harder than Amazon too, but he’s got a sleigh that is propelled by flying elk, so he can do as he damn well pleases.
Let’s be honest here – Father Christmas is the Kanye of Yule. He’s bigger than Jesus and he knows it. He gets all the thanks and people leave him sherry and treats. What does Jesus get? Piss all.
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Posted: 3rd, December 2013 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
Norwich Police Check Your Lungs For Legal Substances
NORWICH night owls are being invited to blow hard as they enter 30 of the city’s clubs. Norfolk police have issued the venues with breathalysers to help revellers gain “better knowledge” of their drinking.
So in touch are the police that the practise of testing free people for legal substances carries a hashtag. Venues testing patrons for booze boast the sign “Are you trollied? #DeepBreath”. These venues should be avoided. They are a kite mark for twattishness.
It’s the kind of patronising balls the tea-total police engage in. Adults are reduced to the role of lab rats being tested on a night out. Police say “clubs will be expected to be responsible”. Because it’s responsible for a stranger – a bouncer, for gawd’s sake – to approach a woman and tell her to blow into his device.
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Posted: 2nd, December 2013 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
Top 5 Fashion Offenses of The 1970s
BEFORE launching into the typical “Oh, aren’t those Seventies fashions so terrible” spiel, let’s get one thing out of the way: 70s’ fashions are an easy target because they took chances. Whenever you are bold you run the risk of becoming the butt of jokes. Today’s styles seem to abide by the “best not to make waves” approach – unlikely to cause much ridicule in future decades, but also fatally milquetoast. Not so the 1970s.
Attribute it to millions of emboldened Boomers coming of age or a staggering amount of recreational drug use. Either way the case is the same: 1970s fashions inspire equal parts awe and terror for denizens of the 21st century. Let’s take a look at the top five instances where this inspiring boldness went terribly, terribly wrong.
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Posted: 1st, December 2013 | In: Fashion, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment (1)
Cheese Whiz: A Potted History Of The Food that Gets America Glowing
CHEESE Whiz – aka Cheese Billy Whizz – was once sold as the product that gave your day a kick in the nervous system.
Cheese Whiz is , of course, utterly revolting, more reminiscent of the secretions that ooze form a cow’s nose than the udders. But maybe it can be disguise even more horrible food?
In 1954:
From the Urban Dictionary:
Cheez Whiz
1. Artificial cheese. One chemical away from being seran wrap.
2. Lethal spray cheese it can kill a person if used wrongly.
3. BAAAAAH i looooove ma cheez whizz!!!!! i no i waaaaaaaaaaant it!”cheez whiz, you know you want it!”
4. (a) Essence of pure cheezy goodness; (b) Common anal lubrication; (c) Cause of human suffering (i.e., sexually transmitted diseases).
5.the greatest person the world has ever seen. As in “i like cheese”; “i love cheez wiz, hes the greatest person ever”
It’s 1958, and cheese whiz goes with anything but, oddly, nothing really goes with cheese whizz:
James Lileks links cheese military muscle:
I’ve never understood why nations with great cheese don’t have better armies.
If the USA gets cheese will it become more – gulp! – French?
In 1978:
Did you ever attempt the Seacoast Casserole from the 1960s? Fishermen in peril would smear it on their heads and to attract rescuers.
Looks like Mustard!
This little guy never did need a high-vis jacket:
In 1986, it was hot.
The cheese-gunk was invented by Edwin Traisman, a food scientist from Wisconsin. He also managed to stanadardize McDonald’s French fries. Lisa McComb, a spokeswoman for McDonald’s, said of Mr. Traisman: “He truly made a significant contribution to McDonald’s fries.”
* While he was at Kraft, from 1949 to 1957, Mr. Traisman led the team that combined cheese, emulsifiers and other ingredients into the bright yellow sauce called Cheez Whiz, a topping for corn chips, cheese steaks and hot dogs. It was introduced in 1953.
The Ingredients:
WHEY, CANOLA OIL, MILK, MILK PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, MALTODEXTRIN , SODIUM PHOSPHATE, CONTAINS LESS THAN 2% OF WHEY PROTEIN CONCENTRATE, SALT, LACTIC ACID, SODIUM ALGINATE, MUSTARD FLOUR, WORCESTERSHIRE SAUCE (VINEGAR, MOLASSES, CORN SYRUP, WATER, SALT, CARAMEL COLOR, GARLIC POWDER, SUGAR, SPICES, TAMARIND, NATURAL FLAVOR), SORBIC ACID AS A PRESERVATIVE, MILKFAT, CHEESE CULTURE, OLEORESIN PAPRIKA (COLOR), ANNATTO (COLOR), NATURAL FLAVOR, ENZYMES.
Yum!
Other uses for Cheese Whizz.
Fancy making your own? Sandy Szwarc says Cheese Whizz is all healthy. And this is how you make it:
Bring glyceryl esters of fatty acids to room temperature to increase their plasticity, then beat with sucrose to entrap air particles in the mix. Beat phosphatidylethanolamine into the matrix which is now a foam emulsion with droplets of glyceryl esters of fatty acids and dispersed air. Add amylopectin and amylose, the protein gluten, and sodium bicarbonate. Crosslinking occurs between disulphide bonds in the gluten, creating a rubbery texture, with air trapped in the mix. Heat the mix so that the air and dihydrogen monoxide particles expand making the foam rise, coagulate the ovalbumin and stiffen the lining of the cells. Amylopectin and amylose undergo gelatinisation which further stiffens the mix. The foam expands and becomes a solid gel with a light porous texture.
Just like mama used to make…
Posted: 30th, November 2013 | In: Flashback, The Consumer | Comment
Samsung Rewards ‘Women Of Steal’ Winner With Free Kitchen
SAMSUNG’S Women Of Steel contest rewards female superhoes with a kitchen.
“We’ve found some of the most magnificent women out there. Women whose superhuman strengths make them inspirational role models, and whose quick speed and heightened tastes make entertaining look easy.”
Say feminist researchers Fi Mayle U. Nuch: “Is it stainless steel? If it’s not, we’ll wait for the Women of Formica contest.”
Posted: 29th, November 2013 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Sriracha Factory Photos: Worldwide Panic As Hot Sauce Apocalypse Nears
YOU may think this trivial, but there’s worrying times ahead for humankind as a judge as valued human suffering over Sriracha – the most wonderful hot sauce in the universe. If you’ve never tasted the sauce, you’re living half a life. To those who have, they put it on everything – meat, chips, toothbrushes, cereal. The little bottle, with that comforting rooster on the front… everything is better with a gallon of hot sauce.
Well, some judge has ordered that the company that makes Sriracha hot sauce has to shut down because local residents reckon the plant that makes it has produced fumes that burned their eyes and throats.
Of course, if they’d been gorging on this sauce in the first place, they’d learn to love the feeling of burning throats and eyes. The stupid great idiots.
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Posted: 29th, November 2013 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
Paris Restaurant Operated Seating Policy: Only Beautiful People By The Windows
FANCY a table at Gilbert and Thierry Costes’ Le Georges eatery in the Pompidou Centre, Pairs? Well, if you , try not to be unattractive. Le Canard Enchaine alleges that a seating policy based on looks exists.
A former hostess of the Costes group restaurant, located at the National Museum of Modern Art, says Gilbert Costes operated a seating policy: “beautiful diners at the front of the restaurant and ugly at the back”.
The only ugly people allowed to sit in the windows were celebrities.
You know who you are.
Posted: 28th, November 2013 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Epic Ads: The Doritos Glory Hole
The Finger Cleaner:
Posted: 27th, November 2013 | In: The Consumer | Comment
TSA: Molesting And Groping Americans Was Just For Fun
IT’S obvious that the God of Situational Irony hates America’s Transportation Security Administration almost as much as I do: in late October, only a few days before a TSAgent was gunned down at Los Angeles airport (then died a couple minutes later, after typically heroic cops from the LAPD refused to let medical personnel treat him), an engineer and anti-TSA blogger named Jonathan Corbett received some improperly redacted TSA documents proving that the TSA knows the truth of what its critics have said all along: the agency’s molesty groping policies and porny body-scan photos are completely useless where airline security is concerned, and TSA knows that airplane cockpit doors (strengthened in response to 9/11, since the hijackers were able to force their way in) mean any future hijacking attempts would likely fail anyway.
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Posted: 26th, November 2013 | In: Key Posts, Reviews, The Consumer | Comment (1)
WWII British Rations Clothing Card (1942)
WWII Europe British Isles Rations Clothing:
This is a list of men’s and women’s wearing apparel subject to rationing under Great BritainÂ’ clothes rationing program shown in London on Jan. 29, 1942. The numbers at the right indicate the number of coupons required when the corresponding article is purchased. For example, 16 coupons are needed to buy a man’s raincoat or overcoat.
Sugar rationing in World War 2 – photos
Flashback to 1944: The Allied soldier’s 24-hour rations pack
Posted: 26th, November 2013 | In: Flashback, The Consumer | Comment
Woman Finds Snake’s Head In Bag Of Green Beans
MISTY Misty Moser from Gladstone, Oregon, says she fond a snake’s head in her bag of green beans. Free protein! Moser says she thought it was ball of beans: “But it started to unfold. It was in a little ball. I noticed it had a mouth, nostrils, and little tiny eyes. Not what I thought I was buying.”
Indeed. Consider it a free bonus gift.
Posted: 26th, November 2013 | In: Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment
Judith Kerr: The Artist Who Came From Nazi Germany To Write A Wonderful Book About A Tiger Who Liked Tea
ALAN Yentob’s Imagine focuses on Judith Kerr, the author of such children’s books as Mog, My Henry, When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit and most famously of all The Tiger Who Came to Tea. Kerr’s 90 and living in London. But she wasn’t born in England. Judith Kerr was born in Berlin. She fled Nazi Germany aged nine. Her father, Alfred Kerr, the dramatist and writer, had spoken out against the Nazis. The family should leave. A policeman told her father his passport was about to be seized. After they left, the Nazis burnt his books.
Children’s author Judith Kerr signs books for fans during the Tingle Creek Christmas Festival at Sandown Park.Date: 03/12/2011.
There a plaque at the station where she and her brother set off for swimming: “From this station the Berlin Jews were transported to Auschwitz.”
They settled in Paris. And then in 1936, her parents decided to move to England.
In Britain, she worked for the Red Cross, helping wounded soldiers. A talented Artist, Kerr was encouraged by her lover and soon-to-be-husband scriptwriter Nigel Kneale (creator of Quatermass) to find work at BBC television scriptwriter.
Judith Kerr proudly holds her Order of the British Empire (OBE) medal, after it was presented to her by the Prince of Wales during the Investiture ceremony at Buckingham Palace in central London. Picture date: Friday January 25, 2013.
* By the start of the second world war, she was living in a grim residential hotel in Bloomsbury with parents who carried suicide pills in case of a German invasion. Her father made propaganda broadcasts for the BBC, while her mother became the main wage-earner as secretary to a wealthy socialite.
That period ended when the hotel was bombed with the Kerr family inside it: only a wardrobe prevented the ceiling in her father’s room from falling on his head. Her brother Michael, by then a law scholar at Cambridge, was interned on the Isle of Wight. “This is a good country, you know,” she says, not for the first time. “Germans were classed as enemy aliens, but people like us were officially called friendly enemy aliens. We had to report to the police if we went more than five miles away so we knew them well. My mother went straight to them when we heard Michael was interned and they tried to get a call through to him.”
As soon as Michael was released, he joined the RAF. Judith, meanwhile, began to attend life-drawing classes. She sold her first drawing for 3s 6d to a man she met at a Lyons Teashop, and then talked her way into painting murals for a restaurant in Victoria.
She left behind her pink rabbit in Germany. She was allowed to travel with just one toy. She never forgot.
In When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit, she writes:
“ I always knew we should have brought the games compendium” said Max, “Hitler’s probably playing Snakes & Ladders with it this very minute.” “And playing with Pink Rabbit!” Said Anna and laughed. But some tears had come into her eyes and were running down her cheeks all the same.” “Oh well, we’re lucky to be here at all,” said Max. “What do you mean?” Asked Anna. Max looked carefully passed her out of the window. “Papa heard from Heimpi,” he said with elaborate casualness. “The Nazis came for all out passports the morning after the elections.”
She writes in Judith Kerr’s Creatures’, by Judith Kerr:
* I can’t remember a time when I didn’t want to draw. It seemed a normal way to pass one’s time, just as it was normal for my brother Michael to kick a ball about. I liked to draw figures in motion, and I always drew them from the feet up, which I would now find difficult. My visual memory has always been very eccentric. My memory holds onto people walking on the street, how their trousers hang, how they move their arms. That stays.
No one else in my Jewish family drew, but my mother was very proud of my drawing and carefully preserved my better efforts…
I wanted to be a painter, but I didn’t do enough to get really good. After I left art school I was offered a job as a script reader for the BBC. I said yes, and loved it, though I sometimes felt a bit guilty, as though I’d betrayed something. It seems extraordinary to me now that for about 12 years of my life, I did not do any serious drawing. On the other hand, I feel I’m catching up now…
When I had my first child, Tacy, my husband Tom and I both made up stories for her. Quite often we went to the zoo. In those days, before David Attenborough, it was the only way you could see animals. After these visits I used to make up stories about the animals, and one she liked was about a tiger. She would say imperiously, “Talk the tiger.” That story became my first picture book, The Tiger Who Came to Tea, published in October 1968.
“Mog was a composite of many cats. Every cat is extraordinary – they all do different, very strange things. Our cat Wienitz was the strangest one: a very solid cat who was terribly fearful. She was frightened of heights and she was terrified of Christmas trees. I never meant to do a whole lot of books about Mog but I thought I could do a book about that…
“After The Tiger I thought I would be very methodical, and so before I wrote Mog I bought all these inks, and decided that I would try them out on a bit of paper. It was probably a delaying tactic so as not to have to start work! I drew the family as well, to refer back to.”
House Your Child’s Moments In A Placenta Photo Frame
NOW it can be like your child never left your body. Mums can surround their kids’ faces and special days in a photo frame made from their placenta. Amanda Cotton has found a way of adding dried and crushed pieces of placenta to moulds filled with clear casting resin to create marble-effect frames, and is already receiving orders from parents, according to the University of Brighton. Miss Cotton uses the entire placenta to make a frame, first boiling and cooking it and then grinding it into small pieces before placing it into a mould with resin and other materials.
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Posted: 25th, November 2013 | In: The Consumer | Comment
