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.
The Ever Growing Foodbank Crisis
IT’S certainly true that we’re seeing more people turning up at foodbanks hoping to get some free food. And yes, we do indeed agree that most people would be somewhat embarrassed at doing so: this isn’t just people clocking on to the idea that they can get something for free.
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Posted: 16th, October 2013 | In: Money, The Consumer | Comment
Top (and bottom) tips on how to use the toilet (video)
ROBERT Jackson will now teach us how to use the toilet.
Key point to look out for:
* Everybody flushes twice. But you still need a solvent (once a year) and a stick.
* For the “sake of neatness and cleanliness” males over 4-feet tall should sit down to use the toilet.
* “It is necessary after using the toilet to clear the urine channel”
* Use a stepping stool to imitate the squatting position
Posted: 16th, October 2013 | In: The Consumer | Comment
London Zoo’s new tiger cub has drowned but it wasn’t the first to die there (photos)
THE baby tiger born at London Zoo has died. The Sumatran tiger drowned in a pool in the zoo’s new enclosure, which opened in March this year. Tiger Territory is a specialist breeding centre for tigers.
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Posted: 16th, October 2013 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
The Daily Mail defines Apple’s massive iPhone 5c failure for us
OR rather, the Mail might want to try and find a different measure of failure. For Apple has, as we all know, released two new iPhones, the iPhone 5c and the iPhone 5s. Which seem to be selling pretty well: they shifted 9 million pieces over their first weekend which is many, many, more than they’ve done in the first few days of any other iPhone model. But here’s the Mail:
Is the iPhone5C a failure? Apple ‘halves’ production and slashes the price of its handset in China due to ‘dismal sales’
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Posted: 15th, October 2013 | In: Money, Technology, The Consumer | Comment
In praise of ‘like’: Why banning the word goes against-Shakespeare and good English
A LONDON academy wants to ban use of the world “like”. The fools. Jay Henrichs explain their idiocy:
Let’s use a figure of speech to make up new words. This is dangerous in high school or a government agency, where verbal originality often gets duly punished. You might also face condemnation from people who consider novel usage a linguistic impurity. But the words will come, whether we want them to or not. Better you and I should invent them than some adolescent on the street or, worse, some adolescent behind a computer.
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Posted: 15th, October 2013 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comments (2)
Markets versus bureaucrats in mobile phones roaming row: Simple Choice defeats the EU telecoms Tsar
WE’VE got a great little example here of how markets and bureaucrats work. Steely Neelie, the EU telecoms Tsar, is insisting that the mobile telephone companies will have to stop charging people for data roaming. That’s the idea that when you cross a border you start getting charged a fortune for your online access.
Europe’s digital tsar Neelie Kroes has been defending her call for greater integration of telcos across Europe, and appears to be arguing that what she described as “artificial” lowered roaming revenues should not hinder the telcos’ greater investment in European infrastructure.
Neelie’s plan is to get rid roaming charges across Europe by forcing operators to scrape them altogether, or offer customers the almost-impractical option of an Alternative Roaming Partner, but operators won’t give up on their revenue stream so easily and are lobbying to water down the legislation before it goes to the vote.
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Posted: 15th, October 2013 | In: Money, Technology, The Consumer | Comment (1)
Who wrote ‘I AM GAY” on a Jetstar passenger’s luggage with baggage stickers
WHO write “I AM GAY” on a man’s luggage in baggage stickers?
The man noticed the artwork when he picked up his bag off the carousel after a Jetstar flight from Perth, Australia.
The man, a married father-of-two, is “disgusted“.
But who did it? Says he:
“I know nobody there. It was after midnight and the flight delayed over an hour… idle hands, perhaps.”
Well, that’s baggage handlers for you.
A Jetstar spokesman responds:
“We are taking this matter very seriously and we have contacted the passenger to apologise for any distress caused.”
Still. It could have been worse…
Posted: 15th, October 2013 | In: The Consumer | Comment
I want a PSYCHEDELIC CAT SWEATER
OBJECTS of desire: The PSYCHEDELIC CAT SWEATER.
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Stanley Kubrick explains the meaning of 2001: A Space Odyssey
STANLEY Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey was a film about… Well, what is about? In 1969, Kubrick told Joseph Gelmis:
You begin with an artifact left on earth four million years ago by extraterrestrial explorers who observed the behavior of the man-apes of the time and decided to influence their evolutionary progression. Then you have a second artifact buried deep on the lunar surface and programmed to signal word of man’s first baby steps into the universe—a kind of cosmic burglar alarm. And finally there’s a third artifact placed in orbit around Jupiter and waiting for the time when man has reached the outer rim of his own solar system.
When the surviving astronaut, Bowman, ultimately reaches Jupiter, this artifact sweeps him into a force field or star gate that hurls him on a journey through inner and outer space and finally transports him to another part of the galaxy, where he’s placed in a human zoo approximating a hospital terrestrial environment drawn out of his own dreams and imagination. In a timeless state, his life passes from middle age to senescence to death. He is reborn, an enhanced being, a star child, an angel, a superman, if you like, and returns to earth prepared for the next leap forward of man’s evolutionary destiny.
That is what happens on the film’s simplest level. Since an encounter with an advanced interstellar intelligence would be incomprehensible within our present earthbound frames of reference, reactions to it will have elements of philosophy and metaphysics that have nothing to do with the bare plot outline itself.
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Posted: 14th, October 2013 | In: Books, Film, Flashback | Comment
Man destroys entire booze section (video)
WHEN you cock-up at work, with some sly behaviour, you can get away with murder. However, if you work in a supermarket, surrounded by CCTV, it isn’t so easy.
Especially when you’re the poor sod who destroys a whole section of lovely, lovely booze.
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Posted: 14th, October 2013 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
Banksy sells his art from a New York street stall for a bargain price (video)
WHAT is Banksy, the artists, were an elderly man selling his work from a street stall? Would you want it? Would you buy it? What’s it worth?
This video either shows us that:
a) Bansky’s gallery art is overpriced.
b) Bansky’s gallery art is overpriced.
Posted: 14th, October 2013 | In: The Consumer | Comment
The world’s longest chip is not a cheating French Fry
IS this the world’s longest chip? The 28-inch mega-fry was found by Tuscaloosa resident Gary Young with his Arby’s beef and cheddar meal. He said:
“I was shocked. That’s like the biggest fry I’ve ever seen. I thought it was a snake.”
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Posted: 14th, October 2013 | In: Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment
As seen on eBay: ‘Half-Chewed Cole Haan Wingtip by Emerging Canine Artist, Left Shoe, Size 11.5D’
AS seen on eBay: “Half-Chewed Cole Haan Wingtip by Emerging Canine Artist, Left Shoe, Size 11.5D”
The emerging artist is a Dalmatian mix called Jack from Lee County, Virginia.
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Posted: 14th, October 2013 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Princess Michael Of Kent: ‘Don’t be up too late, darling’ and notes on a plain Ryvita
PLUGGING her book of fiction The Queen of Four Kingdoms (‘The epic true story of a rich and riveting period of French and English history, all witnessed by the captivating and complex heroine Yolande”), Princess Michael of Kent shows off some remarkable gems. She remains very uncommon in the Sunday Times interview:
I have a tray brought to my bedroom at 9am. Breakfast is served on my Herend china and I sit in an old armchair so I can read the papers. I have zero-fat yoghurt with cinnamon, which is meant to be a fat-burner, and a pot of ginger tea made with grated ginger. This I have with lavender honey and one plain Ryvita. Life is a battle against the expanding waistline, so some mornings I just have a fresh juice made from five vegetables that my manicurist told me about. It’s frightfully good.
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Posted: 13th, October 2013 | In: Books, Royal Family | Comment
Malala Yousafzai: father regrets not protecting her from Bono and extracts from her auobiography
TO write I Am Malala: The Girl who Stood up for Education and Was Shot by the Taliban, Christina Lamb spent a year in Birmingham with Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani girl shot by the Taliban. A few extracts from it. One notable fact is that her mother, Tor Pekai, is illiterate.
I had travelled up from London by train with her agent. As I am quickly to discover, there is a circus of people around Malala, including a leading PR company, an investment-banker friend of the family, do-good celebrities such as Angelina Jolie, and even former prime minister Gordon Brown, who hired Malala’s dad as an adviser to his own role as global education envoy for the UN. Everyone wants a part of her.
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Posted: 13th, October 2013 | In: Books, Celebrities, Reviews | Comment (1)
Someone buys Breaking Bad underpants for nearly $10k (NOT FOR CHARITY)
BREAKING BAD is a show that divides everyone straight down the middle. You’ve got people who haven’t seen it and you’ve got people who love it, constantly tweet about it and make everyone else hate it even more. There is no middle ground.
On the Mental And I Love It side of things, one fan spent $9,900 on the underpants worn by Walter White from Breaking Bad. One can assume that Walter White had more than one pair of undercrackers, but there you go.
The show collaborated with Sony Pictures and Screenbid to hold a 10-day auction, where fans could bid for all manner of things.
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Posted: 11th, October 2013 | In: Celebrities, The Consumer, TV & Radio | Comment
Sharon Osbourne v Malala: battle of the book covers
JUXTAPOSITION of the day: The title of Sharon Osbourne’s book (Unbreakable) looks somewhat hyperbolic when put next to Malala (I Am Malala):
New ways to die: the deep-fried Oreo ice-cream gasper
HOW do you want to die? Dudefood has created a new way: the oreo-breaded deep-fried ice-cream. A tribe of tame Iowans lick the filling out; then the biscuits are mashed, the Iowans regurgitate the cream; the crunchy goo is mixed into ice cream; coated in egg; stuck to biscuit bits; and then it is deep-fat fried in oil:
I wasn’t sure how well the Oreo cookie filling would work as part of a breading so I went through a package of cookies removing the filling from each cookie. Don’t worry though, because I didn’t let it go to waste. Instead, I mixed the cookie filling right into the ice cream! Yep, Cookies and Cream ice cream, mixed with Oreo cookie filling breaded in Oreo cookies!
One pint ended up being enough for five pretty decently sized balls of ice cream and after those sat in my freezer for about 30 minutes — mixed with the Oreo filling of course — I dipped each one in an egg wash and then rolled them around in crushed up Oreo cookies before placing them back in the freezer for another ten minutes or so. Then, just to make sure the breading was thick enough, I dipped each ice cream ball in the egg wash once again and rolled them in the crushed up Oreos a second time before putting them back in the freezer.
After 30 minutes my ice cream was finally ready for the deep fryer so I dropped each ball of ice cream in the 375° oil for about ten seconds, snapped a few photos and then started to eat! This is one of those times when I wish I owned a restaurant or a food truck or something just so you guys could actually taste the stuff I make because just saying over and over how great it is doesn’t do it any justice. This Oreo Cookie Breaded Deep Fried Ice Cream was good!
Spotter: Neatorama
Posted: 10th, October 2013 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Jack Kerouac’s original sketch for On The Road (and all the book’s covers)
JACK Kerouac was so unimpressed by the cover his publishers stuck on The Town and the City, he sketched the one he wanted for OneThe Road.
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Pop up TV advert hits the hot spot
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Posted: 10th, October 2013 | In: The Consumer | Comment
In 1981 STASH cologne for men attracted women as well as police and their dogs
DRIVING home I was stopped by the police. One copper leaned in the window and said he could smell marijuana. I told him was mistaken, which he must have been: there was never any weed in the Peugeot, officer. He ordered me from my car and the usual nonsense followed before I was sent on my way. Which all leads to this question: can the smell of marijuana attract member of the opposite sex as well as the police? In 1981, the makers of Stash perfume thought so:
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Posted: 10th, October 2013 | In: Flashback, Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment
