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.
Old books smell of grass and acid
Chemists at University College, London have investigated the old book odor and concluded that old books release hundreds of volatile organic compounds into the air from the paper. The lead scientist described the smell as “a combination of grassy notes with a tang of acids and a hint of vanilla over an underlying mustiness.”
The Bible smells of hellfire and Vimto; Middlemarch has top notes of regret; and Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales have base notes synonymous with the top of a sucked pencil…
Cuba’s Harley Davidson Motorcycle club work the vintage – photos
THIS week Cuba hosted its first national gathering in honour of America’s Harley Davidson motorcycle. In Varadero, the country’s “Harlistas” massed, showing off their old bikes. You can’t buy a new one in Cuba because of the economic blockade imposed in 1962, but you can show off the 1936 Flathead VLD 80 inherited from grandpa, albeit one bastardised by parts from Russia and the farm. One day the blockade will end. Castro will once more get to read John Updike’s new works and Cubans will learn that all the cool kids are riding Honda’s 100-mpg Symba and into green issues…
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Bikers participate in the competition to place a single straw into bottles that lined their path, in Cuba's first national gathering in honor of the Harley Davidson motorcycle in Varadero, Cuba, Saturday April 14, 2012. Cuba's "Harlistas" are just as passionate as their American counterparts, but like the owners of rumbling 1950s Detroit classic cars that still prowl the streets of Havana, vintage Harley fans have had to get creative to keep their bikes road-worthy. (AP Photo/Franklin Reyes)
Posted: 15th, April 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Clean and Dry Intimate Wash makes your vagina a fairer, brighter place
THANKS to Clean & Dry Intimate Wash, you can “brighten” the skin around your vagina. For just Rs 90 (about £1) you can put spring in your step and your otter’s pocket. As the product informs the owners of darker, flatter less vivacious vaginas, there is hope:
“Life for women will now be fresher, cleaner and more importantly fairer and more intimate.
“Women can use this unique wash during their bath to cleanse their parts. The special PH balance formula maintains the skin’s sensitive PH balance keeping it fresh and protected from infection all day. For the first time women can now also brighten the darkened skin in thar [sic] area making it many shades fairer.”
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Posted: 13th, April 2012 | In: Key Posts, The Consumer | Comments (5)
Fernand Meysonnier: torture tools belonging to ‘the executioner of Algiers’
FERNAND Meysonnier (died: 2008) was one of France’s last state executioners. He killed over 200 people – he took his first life at 14. Meysonnier was also into torture.
Earlier this year, Paris-based auction house Cornette de Saint-Cyr brought his collection of torture apparatus to market, at the behest of his daughter. The auction was cancelled amid a human rights outcry. You see, between 1957 and 1962, Meysonnier was “the executioner of Algiers”. When Algerians were fighting for independence from France, Meysonnier went to work on the enemy. The auction house tried to placate the outraged by saying “none of the objects in the sale is concerned with Meysonnier’s sinister activities in Algeria”, according to Le Journal des Arts.
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Posted: 12th, April 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment (1)
Seeing adults reading Harry Potter, Twilight and The Hunger Games makes my blood boil
DO grown up people who read Harry Potter, The Hunger Games or Twilight upset you? Does seeing them reading the books on the train or bus wind you up? Do you clack your tongue and think them idiots?
C.S. Lewis took a view:
“Critics who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development.
“When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”
Do you agree?
Image via
Posted: 12th, April 2012 | In: Books | Comments (18)
Lap dancers piled high and sold cheap – pole skills on decline
BRITAIN’S lap dancers are in decline. Not in number, but in skills. Because dancers pay to dance – like mini-cab driver paying to be on a roster – the rising number of clubs means an increasing number of women are willing to pay to earn.
Dr Teela Sanders and Dr Kate Hardy, from the University of Leeds, have conducted a study of 200 performers in the lap-dancing club scene.
Dr Sanders says many dancers have “never even used a pole”. Adding:
“There’s been a real change. The aesthetics of the dancers has overtaken, as well as the skills of flirting and chatting.”
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Posted: 10th, April 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comments (90)
First-class Coleen Rooney wears Royal Mail’s first £1million Stamp tattoo
JOHN Baron, Chairman of the Association of British Philatelic Societies says the Royal Mail is spoiling stamp collecting.
“They’ve ruined it,” he says. “They’ve killed the market.”
Too many stamps is the problem. You can’t buy all the special commemorative stamps issued. The so-called “completists” cannot afford to collect them all.
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Posted: 10th, April 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
The 10 best Apple Macbook stickers
SO. You got a new Apple Macbook but want to stand out from the mob. Options are either to stick a Dell logo on it, scratch “Made in China” into the lid – that hallmark of quality – or buy a sticker. Here are the 10 Best Macbook stickers on the market:
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Posted: 9th, April 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
School photographer turns boy into bald cartoon figure
WHEN parents and educators saw the school photo for Florida’s Sawgrass Elementary School, the spotted the bald round-headed child sat in the front row. Headmistress Sherry Rose was upset by the remarkably thin 2D child. Says a school spokesman:
“It was totally inappropriate. She was very, very upset and immediately took action to reschedule a picture-taking session.”
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Posted: 7th, April 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Teaching ‘Engilsh’ in Ethiopia – sign of the day
AT the “Somew American Engilsh Free Zone” in Ethiopia, lessons are on offer. Old Mr Anorak’s language schools are the talk of The Empire…
Posted: 4th, April 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment (1)
ASA bans American Apparel ads but Beckhams with an iPad down his knickers
DAVID Beckham’s H&M knickers – the one with an iPad stuffed down the front – have not been banned. But the Advertising Standards Authority say this American Apparel advert featuring a woman in trousers craddling her boobs is an affront to decency. The ASA says the ads are “exploitative”. American Apparel clicks its heels for joy at the press garnded by outrage and says the ads were ” designed to show a range of different images of people that were natural, not posed and real”.
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Posted: 4th, April 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Damien Hirst retrospective show at the Tate Modern – Photos
DAMIEN Hirst has a new retrospective exhibition at the Tate Modern. In the gift shop, you can buy a replica plastic skull for £36,800 each. You can make your own Hirst, of course. Young Master Anorak dissected a fish finger and then having painted it a silvery black with crayon and felt tip, spat on it and pushed it inside a matchbox. Yours for £3.65m, or £4.67m if gilded. It’s easy to mock Hirst, which is part of the seduction of his stuff. You like it, don’t you. It’s well-made and crappy, and trite and silly, and just there, inviting you to look and find sense in some things a man made to be looked at. So. Who wants to buy a painted plastic skull. Brain not included – yours neither…
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Posted: 3rd, April 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Amphetamines are good for you – selling drugs to the fat and depressed (photos)
AMPHETAMINES were once legal. They were advertised as being good for you and yours. Appetrol was a drug that acted as an appetite suppressant. In world War 2, the troops were fed Benzedrine to keep them sharp.
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Posted: 3rd, April 2012 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, The Consumer | Comments (3)
Tramp stamp tattoo of the day – the meat and no veg
THE tramp stamp tattoo is still popular, doing its bit to promote adult literacy and an alternative to other more chemical-based ways of prolonging sex. Todays tramp stamp tattoo features the “MEAT” and no veg… See here, here and here.
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Posted: 3rd, April 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
10 books with terrible titles to read before you die laughing
TEN Books to read before you die laughing features such titles as Invisible Dick, Fancy Coffins to Make Yourself, Hitler: Neither Vegetarian nor Animal Lover and Castration – Advantages and Disadvantages…
The singing telegram advert to brighten your day and get you laid
TAJ Tunes will deliver a singing telegram down the phone to your target.
Says “Susan, Boston, MA”:
“TajTunes is terrific! All my friends and family who have recieved called have been hysterically delighted”
Other genuine customers agree:
“You have the best customer support I have ever experienced, no exaggeration. A great experience!” – Andrew, Waltham, MA
“I finally got the nerve to ask my hot physical therapist out via TajTunes… Thank you for making me a man! Oh… and she said Yes!!” – Joshua, Raleigh, NC
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Posted: 2nd, April 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
United States seizes control of airspace over Caribbean, Canada and Mexico
ONCE more the United States creates new that should come with the end note “April Fool!” The Independent‘s Simon Calder says the US Department of Homeland Security wants all names of people being flown by British carriers to the Caribbean, Mexico and Canada. But those countries are not part of the US (we’ve checked). It gets even more bizarre when we read that this demand includes flights that do not pass through US airspace.
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Posted: 1st, April 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comments (10)
It’s National Peanut Butter & Jelly Day!
MONDAY 2 April is the official National Peanut Butter & Jelly Day in America. The holiday is not to be confused with National Peanut Butter day, which falls on 24 January, National Peanut Butter Lovers’ Day on 1 March, or National Peanut Day on 13 September.
Peanut butter was invented in 1890 by the physician Dr John Kellogg, the father of corn flakes. He created it as a protein substitute for toothless patients. It wasn’t until 1922 that a commercial version of peanut butter emerged, thanks to the Californian J. L. Rosefield who came up with a way of keeping the oil from separating in the peanut butter. He marketed his product under the name of Skippy, which is still a well-known peanut butter brand.
During the Second World War, peanut butter was on the US military ration menus, as was jelly. Legend has it that the soldiers started mixing the two and that the combo became an instant hit in America.
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Posted: 1st, April 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Lego Taxidermy – the non-speaking in pursuit of the inedible
LEGO Taxidermy exists. Wonder if David Cole has much call for the black fox?
Lrgo taxidermy is the non-speaking in pursuit of the inedible…
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Posted: 30th, March 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment (1)
York woman sets herself alight filling petrol decanter – Dorset erupts
SHOCKING news of the fuel panic as we hear that a woman from York, England, has set herself alight while decanting petrol to another vessel in her kitchen. So precious is fuel that we inhabitants of knife-crime island ar keeping it decanters.
It’s mayhem out there, readers.
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Posted: 30th, March 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comments (6)
Mystic Coalition forsaw fuel shortage coming – Maude sparks panic in Waitrose
THESE are heady days for the UK’s jerry can industry. But already there are rumours that workers are demanding better working conditions. The jerry can strike has yet to begin, but should it drivers and other petrol enthusiasts are being advised to stock up.
You only need look at the Government warnings over fuel shortages to see what a Government warning can do to demand. Today jerry cans, tomorrow kettles, china cups and Tube Trains.
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Posted: 30th, March 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comment
The AKAI ‘portable’ VTR 1/4″ video tape recorder – the birth of home-made porn
WHEN was user-generated pornography born? Before the camera phone it was 1972 and amateur filmmakers were getting to grips with the AKAI “portable” VTR 1/4″ video tape recorder. The tapes required no processing, so negating any need for trips to that special shop at the back of the precinct. It had a “hands-off operation”.
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Posted: 30th, March 2012 | In: Flashback, Technology, The Consumer | Comment (1)
Shitter – turning your twitter feed into toilet paper
SHITTER, by Australians David Gillespie, Matthew Delprado and Johny Mair, and sold by the good folks at Collector’s Edition, will turn a twitter feed of your choosing into four toilet paper rolls.
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Posted: 29th, March 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comments (2)
Philadelphia Tattoo Arts Convention – photos of painted human skin
TO the Philadelphia Tattoo Arts Convention for displays of painted human skin.
Posted: 28th, March 2012 | In: Key Posts, The Consumer | Comment
Muslim wife beating guide sells well in unenlightened Canada
TO Toronto, where Hazrat Maulana Ashraf Ali Thanvi’s book advises Muslim men on the corect way to beat their wives.
Thankvi – a “prolific writer on almost every topic of Islamic learning” (its says so in the forward) – tells Muslim men that “it might be necessary to restrain her with strength or even to threaten her”.
The average Muslim wife may consider her husband’s dimensions and snort with derision.
The book also tells the Muslim reader that “the husband should treat the wife with kindness and love, even if she tends to be stupid and slow sometimes”.
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Posted: 28th, March 2012 | In: The Consumer | Comments (7)
