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.
Awkward dating profiles without Julian Assange – photos
TUMBLR site of the day is OK Cupid Enemies, pages that document the best of the OK Cupid dating site. Sadly, lovelorn Julian Assange is otherwise engaged right now, but others are available. Browse the talent:
Posted: 7th, June 2012 | In: Key Posts, The Consumer | Comment
Brock Davis has fun with broccoli (photos)
BROCK Davis has been playing with his food. The Cauliflower Nagasaki is poignant:
Spotter: Make Something Cool Every Day, via Bored Panda
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Posted: 6th, June 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment (1)
Double-trousers man fights shopping trolley in Poland
MEANWHILE in Poland….
Later:
Posted: 3rd, June 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Vintage weight-gain adverts – when fat was fulfilling
FAT. The Government, the press and the fat hate it. Once upon a time, the fuller figure was a thing of desire. We’ve got a gallery of vintage weight gain adverts for you to enjoy. Scoff it up. Eat for happiness:
Posted: 2nd, June 2012 | In: Flashback, The Consumer | Comment
Colon navigations: University of the Arts London gets a new logo
GET a load of that natty new logo for the University of the Arts London (UAL). It’s £48,000 well invested. The cutting-edge design was created by Domenic Lippa, a UAL alumnus. Lippa explains how he came up with the wonder:
“The colon is the connection between UAL and the completion of the identity. A variety of colleges and variety of creativities exist. So it’s quite a challenge for us. This is a sort of new generation of our expression for the university.”
Colons can do that. Minami Takahashi, a student of Foundation Art and Design at Central Saint Martins, approves:
“Though £48,000 seems expensive for creating a logo, the new logo will bring a fresh feeling to the place and give me more motivation to study.”
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Posted: 1st, June 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Disney World fans turn on monorail squirrel (video)
IN Disney’s The Sword in the Stone, Merlin turns Arthur and himself into squirrels. Bucky the Squirrel appeared in The Emperor’s New Groove. Snow White knew squirrels. The squirrel and the Disney go way back. But things can come to a head. Friends can move on.
Monorail passengers at Disney World were forced to endure a 45-minute wait between stops because a squirrel got on the track and the driver did not want to hurt it, doubtless fearing a lawsuit issued by other Disney animals.
Others were less wowed by the squirrel and have turned on its kind (video two – language NSFW)):
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Posted: 31st, May 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
This KFC advert is the most complained ad in history
THE most complained about advert in history is….this 2005 Kentucky Fried Chicken advert.
Wear your gong with pride, KFC.
The KFC Zinger ad is, according to the Advertising Standards Authority’s list of most-upsetting adverts, the most disgusting, scooping a record 1,671 complaints. (Is that all? – ed).
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Posted: 30th, May 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Inappropriate toy of the day – the Skipping Rape
TODAY’S Inappropriate toy of the day – the Skipping Rape:
Posted: 29th, May 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Cornish pastry fans chow down on reverse ferret – Tory U-turn
CORNISH pastries go free! The Government has reversed ferret on its pastry tax. From now on minced lamb, beef and that ferret will not cost an extra 20% if served above room temperature. Only pastries served from the hot plate will be subject to VAT – not ones that just happen to be hot from the oven and are being left to cool to the ambient temperature.
A Liberal Democrat MP named Stephen Gilbert, who represents Newquay, where McDonald’s outsells the pasty by eight to one, tells the BBC:
“The Cornish people have won and there will be dancing in streets from Land’s End to the Tamar as people hear that the government has dropped its plans to clobber local people and local businesses with this tax.”
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Posted: 28th, May 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Cool ad of the week – the flying horse cat butter
COOL ad of the week – butter cat:
Posted: 28th, May 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Vintage ad of the day: Change your Y-fronts every day of the week
FLASHBACK to April 1971 – the cool kids are wearing Y-fronts every day of the week!
Posted: 27th, May 2012 | In: Flashback, The Consumer | Comment
In photos: Wave-Gotik-Treffen (Wave Gothic Festival) in Leipzig, Germany
IN Photos: the Wave-Gotik-Treffen (Wave Gothic Festival) in Leipzig, eastern Germany. The skulls and the crossbones represent “dark culture”. In Germany, they might well symbolise recent history…
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Participants of the industrial and gothic music festival Wave-Gotik-Treffen play with their costumes in Leipzig, eastern Germany, on Saturday, May 26, 2012. For several days, Leipzig has become a real gothic paradise  white makeup, bold-up eyes, black hair and incredible outfits. (AP Photo/Jens Meyer)
Josie Demuth is Poutrageous
OK, it’s my birthday on May 23 and I’m struggling to get this (yes, this) up in thundery Salerno and it’s all about someone you’ve never heard of before and she’s called Josie Demuth. Ain’t she a doll? (This is old skool tabloidese, I know; but I can do old skool tabloidese if I like) Josie is not just the editor of underground mag La Bouche Zine. She also has an e-novella out called The Guest (see links at bottom). Frankly, I couldn’t give a toss what the youth of today think about anything, but I like players and Josie is a player. I can tell. Playing is an ageless, timeless occupation and ensures one gets from A to B. Also she’s friends with singer-songwriter Bryn Phillips (see labels). So I lured Josie into celebrity culture-land and asked some pertinent questions.
Q: Josie Demuth! Editor of alternative online mag La Bouche Zine and author of the The Gueste-novella! Tell me in under 100 words what gets you up in the morning – what is your life purpose, what keeps your soul moist, your spirit aerated. What adds urgency to the teeth flossing?
Posted: 23rd, May 2012 | In: Books, Reviews | Comments (3)
Photos of inside Mukesh Ambani’s home – the world’s most expensive
MUKESH Ambani is India’s richest man. His compact and bijou home, named Antilia, sits on lots of Altamount Road, Mumbai. It has 27-stories (570 feet) and 400, 000 square of floor space. It cost $1bn. It features a snow room. Mr Ambani’s wife, Nita, tells Vanity Fair: “It’s a modern home with an Indian heart.” And its own seat on the UN. Want to look around?
Photos: News beats
Posted: 18th, May 2012 | In: Key Posts, The Consumer | Comment (1)
South Shields restaurant fines diners for not clearing their plates
FOLLOWING news of the American who picketed his all-you-can-eat restaurant for not making him full, a story from Kylin Buffet in Ocean Road, South Shields, where Beverley Clark have been asked to pay an extra £20 or not eating enough.
When her party of three left on their plates two onion rings, a piece of prawn toast, and a spring roll, the staff surcharged them £20 for “wastage of food”, on top of the £18 food bill.
Miss Clark worked out that if she removed the food, the charge would be gone. So, like a hungry granny at a wake, she placed the leftovers in her handbag. That would show them. She tells the Shields Gazette that “the staff kept checking if we had eaten the food. In the end I wrapped it up in a serviette, and put it into my bag when they weren’t looking, so it looked like we had eaten it.”
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Posted: 18th, May 2012 | In: Key Posts, The Consumer | Comments (2)
Andre Breivik needs an idiot to get Call of Duty banned: here’s Keith Vaz creating a moral panic
ANDRE Breivik, a mass murderer says he “trained” to murder by playing Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, a video game. Only a loon would think mass murder was triggered by a video game.
I love video games. I also enjoyed what the press in the 1980s called Video Nasties. Driller Killer, for example, was mindless fun, and I don’t even like DIY. The best bit about the Video Nasty panic was that fans of the films got to see a checklist of what they needed to watch. In all 72 films made the government’s ultimate video nasty list. The only British film on it was Expose, starring Fiona Richmond. The mind-altering film’s theme tune was called Approaching Menace, otherwise known as the theme from BBC quiz show Mastermind. It was scary stuff!
What you need for the words of a murderous lunatic to be taken at face value and turned into a moral panic to create censorship and curtail freedoms is a willing fool in an official post. Step forward Keith Vaz, vain chair of the Home Affairs Select Committee.
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Posted: 17th, May 2012 | In: Key Posts, The Consumer | Comments (2)
Obese man pickets restaurant over failed all-you-can-eat deal
CAN you be too fat to eat? Bill Wisth weighs 350 pounds. He is six-feet-six-inches tall. He likes to eat. So, when a Wisconsin’s Chuck’s fish fry restaurant promoted its all-you-can-eat dinner, he went in sat down, and made ready to eat enough for the 5,000 and leave room for a post-prandial wafer. After pushing 12 pieces into his pie hole, the Chuck’s asked Bill to leave. They sent him home with eight more chunks of fried fish. But Bill wanted more. And then he wanted vengeance. Wisth says he is victim of false advertising. He says he never got to eat all he could. To make his point, he’s taken to picketing the place.
Chuck’s say he has form, and a tab. Bill says Chuck’s does a really great deep-pan pizza (like this one?). The Japanese fisherman says that should Bill tumble into the pizza, they will use extreme prejudice to harpoon him out…
Posted: 17th, May 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
The Pizza Hut F*ck You Pizza From Pizza Hut is d’lish – video
PIZZA Hut has finally stopped dicking around. It will give the customer what they want: fat. In a box. Covered in cheese. The F*ck You Pizza From Pizza Hut is d’lish. Meanwhile, in Glasgow…
Spotter: Viral Viral Videos
Posted: 16th, May 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Amy Childs brings back the 1970s hairy mons with her Vajazzle glitter – photos
AMY Childs, wipe-clean star of The Only Way is Essex (fact: Amy is coated in the same stuff they use to make classroom white boards) is promoting her Hair Vajazzles. The shaven mons is out. The hairy woman is in. The euphemistic Sugar Hut has gone for a Trader Vic’s makeover. It’s the 1970s and all that, starring The Brady Bunch’s Teeth, Rocky Horror Show hair and Dolly Parton’s skin suit and guest starring Amy Childs as Danny LaRue…
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Manchester police seek duo selling Apples as potatoes
PSSSST! Wanna buy a potato? No. What about a laptop? Ok. Done. One man in Manchester was. The Greater Manchester Police are seeking the men who sold a rucksack full of potatoes as a laptop.
A 24-year-old man was in Bury when two men approached. The duo have East European accents. They are offering to sell a laptop for £150. They show the device. The man looks it over and agrees to buy it. He gets the cash from the bank and is handed the bag. The vendors drive off. The man opens the bag and – get this – it’s full of spuds. More pomme de terre than Apple Mac.
Recently, a 19-year-old was also conned. He paid £660 for an iPhone and laptop. He was given a bottle of coke in a bag.
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Posted: 16th, May 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Huston’s Drugs Store is a high street museum – photos
HUSTON’S Drugs Store in Houston, Texas closed down year ago. If you peep inside you can see the shop as it was, a museum of products from yesteryear. If you know more about the place, please tell us:
Spotters: Molly Block, CrystalV
Posted: 14th, May 2012 | In: Flashback, The Consumer | Comments (2)
The San Jose Copper mine is for sale – disaster junkies apply within
FANCY owning a bit of news history? The San Jose mine in Capiapso, Chile, is up for sale. The place closed when the 33 miners who’d been trapped underground of 69 days escaped in Mother Nature’s reverse suppository. San Esteban, the mine’s owners, chipped in £5m to help the Chilean government pay for the rescue but were unable to find any more cash. So. Here’s your chance to buy the copper and gold mine that triggered the soon-to-be-made film of the drama. Any buyer with vision for an underground disaster movie theme park can apply within..?
Posted: 13th, May 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Sun on Sunday pink hairdryer horror
ON May 1, the Sun on Sunday carried a front-page reader offer for a “FREE” pink travel hairdryer work £15. Private Eye explained how the dryers has been knocking about for a while, having been offered to News of The World readers back in July 2011. That paper closed. The dryers gathered dust. But they could be reused again because someone had the foresight to brand them with the logo for Fabulous, the NoW mag now inserted into the Sun on Sunday.
Happy days, then. No. On May 12, the Sun had news:
NEWS Group Newspapers (NGN) has identified a potential safety issue with the Fabulous Travel Hairdryer (Model number FB-0307A) offered for free in The Sun between April 29th and May 12th, 2012. Despite rigorous quality control procedures, it has been brought to NGN’s attention that in some instances this product may pose a risk of personal injury or even electrocution due to faulty wiring
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Posted: 13th, May 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
The Argos catalogue 1976 – featuring the After Eight mints silver-style Gun Carriage
FLASHBACK to 1976. Argos is the high street darling. Richard Tompkins, creator of those Green Shield Stamps has rebranded his ‘Green Shield Gift House’ as Argos. Now cash would replace stamps as currency. The first store opened in July 1973, in Canterbury, Kent. And by 1976, all the family know where to get their general goods from. Just take a gander at the Olivetti typewriters, the After Eight mints silver-style Gun Carriage,the Pifco Hoverdryer Hood hairdryer, the Richochet Racers and much else besides…
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Posted: 12th, May 2012 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, The Consumer | Comment
Ikea sells self-assembly Stonehenge model kits
IF IKEA had made Stonehenge:
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Posted: 12th, May 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
