Total Crap

Those are the words I thought I saw in red type spanning the front of a magazine in a post office in Dorset. That's what your brain does - tries to make sense of words and images all the time, even when rushing to see if you have acquired a parking ticket after installing your car in a twenty minute space and then daydreaming in a WHSmiths for an hour.
Total Crap?
I stepped back and saw the image of a grinning man holding a fish the size of a small, bloated pig. Forgetting, again, the car, I perused the shelves and was amazed to find, not just Total Carp, but Advanced carp, Carp world, Carp Fishing, etc.
Before I got obsessed with what the female version of all these wasted trees might be, I left the shop, drove home and Googled more about Carp.
In France, I don't think the magazine world is quite so in depth about subjects - hunting perhaps, wine, certain sun-blessed regions of the country, but not fourteen or so, different weekly or monthly editions about one subject, in this case a species of fish . . .
Other titles included: Carpoholics Anonymous, Crafty Carper, Carp Talk and Carp Sex - obviously not, but the way that some of the successful trappers were holding their trophies did look dangerously like lust to me.



         Indeed . . . 

Most of the covers show pretty much the same image: man in woolly hat, large grin, huge slimy fish surrounded by copy such as: He Who Dares, Maggot-Caught Cracker, Mastering Maggots, Bait Secrets Revealed, Big Wacker (!?)
I will have to buy a copy of Total Carp to see what actually happens to the mega-fish when it has been ensnared - I presume, eaten? Stuffed?



       I tried . . . tried to save you . . . we could have been so happy together.

                                         

                                . . . it's just you and me, darling - so long have I waited for this moment
                                                                

                                           

                                                                   
So, what of the pink magazines: something for the ladies? Yes, I know, the sexes should merge in reading material, but sadly the shelves are still, and probably will be, while paper pulp continues to be fashioned into A4 leisure-time fodder, severely divided on the whole.
What might be the equivalent of Total Carp?
There are about a thousand titles covering fashion, beauty, house-decoration, food, and so on, but what about something as specific as hunting one type of fish?
Cross stitch, entered my mind - do people (women, I assume) still do this? I had a look.
Yes, they do: Cross Stitch Collection, Cross stitch Gold, Cross Stitch Formula, Cross Stitch Favourites, Cross Stitcher, Cross Stitch Mania - or crazy, I forget, Just Cross Stitch, Cross Stitch Sex.
Actually, none of the covers appeared to feature a woman clutching a cross stitched portrait of George Clooney to her breast, or a needle-worked phallus, or even just a woman displaying a finished piece of work with the same manic pride as any of the fishermen.
I will return, this time to a really big paper shop and look in more depth through the pages of other magazines. I haven't bought one since I had a brief flirtation with Interiors Magazine years ago and realised that after a quick peruse they became floppy, shiny wads of paper to be stored somewhere along with everything else. Perhaps it's different if you are gripped by a single obsession, fourteen titles or so, a joy to surreptitiously glance through in Smiths, or buy if you can afford them all . . .

                                        

Further proof that the world is a mad and dangerous place (2)

Well you have to have one from time to time, (rant).
The world is a mess. Yes.
What do we need?
Solutions to . . . well, just about everything really.


                                                   

What do we not need?

Plug in attachments that emit fragrance for mobile phones.

Yes, it's true, someone in Japan has come up with this planet-saving idea: an ugly white plastic blob that you plug into your phone which then transports you to a fragrant meadow, smoky fireside or wherever else this PERSON thought would be good - probably not a layby on the M6, an abattoir or a dentist's waiting room.
But REALLY, for crying out loud, WTF and many other sayings of frustration and incredulity; we don't need fragrant phones.
Second part of rant is about Nespresso ads.
These must be amongst the most sick-making ads ever created. Why did those two fabulous actors get involved? Duh. Money. Matt earned three million for the 20 second or was it 15 second ad. I hope he did something useful with it rather than gold-plating his swimming pool out-house.
But it's not even that: it's the stupid ads themselves.
That one with the cool blonde drinking her Verrluuuto . . . If George Clooney decided to offer me a second bacon sandwich in Fred's café, for example, I think I'd say yes, and yes yes, probably, because not only would I get a second bacon sandwich, but Mr Clooney would be attached to it and would then regale me with chat and possibly other stuff . . . So, why does she trick him into going to get her a top up and then drinks his, when he would come out with the coffee and himself attached to it and give her sex, money and rock and roll, so to speak.
Or maybe she's so cool that she's not interested. Or she's lost the use of her legs, or too lazy to get another coffee. And why drink his anyway? He may be a megastar, but he might also have some horrible gum disease.
Honestly!