Hill+Knowlton Strategies

I believe it was contemporary urban philosopher Ferris Bueller who once said ‘Life moves pretty fast; if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it’ (NB – on reflection, I don’t know why I wrote that; I hate people who ascribe deep significance to the throwaway utterances of fictional characters. IT WAS WRITTEN BY A SCREENWRITER, YOU CHUMP). This edition of Web Curios is brought to you by the whooosh-ing sound that time makes as it flies past your ears; it seems like only yesterday that I was writing the last one of these, talking about holidays and the end of summer and stuff. All of a sudden it’s December, I’ve not written a Curios for a month (not that any of you CARE, you unappreciative whelps), and you can’t turn on the television without a famous trying to sell you stinkwater. On an unrelated note, I am yet to eat a mince pie in 2011. If anyone would like to courier some over to H&K towers, I will be very grateful and possibly do a small happy dance in gratitude; thanks (in the unlikely event that HRH Prince Charles is reading this, I am a massive fan of Duchy Originals).

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Guess who’s back? NO, IT IS NOT EMINEM! IT IS ME! (Though in fairness our level of musical / performing talent is comparable) Stop gawping at the back – I AM NOT DEAD! I wish that there was some sort of exciting reason for Web Curios’ long absence – an enthralling, Willy Fog-esque journey, an unexpected temporary career change, an unforeseen visit to chokey…but no, nothing so thrilling. Like Schrodinger’s Cat, Web Curios’ existence was momentarily uncertain – but now I am most definitely here. I think.

Anyway, there’s a lot to catch up on. Some people’s phones got hacked and everyone got VERY ANGRY; the most powerful man in the world turned 50; my new favourite rapper released a mixtape; I went to Boston and saw none of it (but did get to fly business class and thus received a pair of complimentary pyjamas – THANKS VIRGIN –  which was well worth the £3,000 that the flights apparently cost); oh, God, loads of things.

None of that matters, though. What does matter is that you immediately click on this link and donate money to stop people dying of starvation in Somalia. Thanks.

Frankly nothing that you’re going to read from hereon in matters one iota compared to the above, but it’s probably going to be marginally more cheering. Read on, and make your Friday afternoon of wageslavery marginally less soul-crushingly worthless than it might otherwise be.

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I had an opening riff all worked out for this week, webmongs, but that was before I saw this amazing news story. Poor the confused,  sweaty-palmed masturbators! That aside, though, it’s been a relatively uneventful 4-day week, apart from the British press redeeming itself slightly for Gareth Barry John Terry Ryan Giggs-gate by actually doing some proper investigative journalism – which, inevitably, led to literally nothing changing whatsoever in the no-way-at-all-corrupt HQ of world football; and perhaps from the best story likely to appear in print anywhere in the world in 2011. Oh, and if you were traumatised by goats as a child (and let’s be honest, which of us hasn’t been) then THIS IS YOUR MONTH.

The rest of you, though, for whom it is NOT your month, will simply have to content yourselves with the following collection of webthings. Apart from The Man – for it is always his month.

Alice Was A Lot Less Innocent Than Is Often Presumed

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I really shouldn’t be writing this, you know. I should, instead, be continuing to whore my brain out for The Man – but instead I defy him in order to…er…waste a couple of hours knocking this rubbish out JUST FOR YOU! I expect you all to contribute to the ‘feed and clothe Matt’ fund once the near-inevitable P45 finds its way to my desk.

Perhaps, though, The Man is still basking in the warm, fuzzy, near-post-coital aftermath of THAT WEDDING (or maybe he’s still cleaning up, or possibly reflecting on the appropriateness or otherwise of letting the peons daub a car with their messages of support to the happy couple), or perhaps he’s still singing along triumphantly with most of America (but not, it must be noted, all of America). Perhaps he’s wracked with uncertainty as to the outcome of the AV vote (he’s not. Noone is. Not even this poor git). Maybe he’s at home, polishing his small pewter figurine of John Paul II. MAYBE I WILL GET AWAY WITH IT! Webmongs, I am infused with the slightly shaky feeling that you get after a sudden rush of adrenaline or a couple of grammes of plantfood (speaking of which, this is my favourite response to this week’s BIG NEWS STORY- who says drugs are bad for you?); as a result, this week’s Web Curios will most likely have the slightly sketchy, pasty feel of an NA meeting (but without the relentless, self-absorbed confessionals). I hope you enjoy it as much as I don’t enjoy the inevitable, grinding, post-Curios comedown.

Batman had met his match

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HELLO! This Friday marks what, as far as I’m concerned, is the end of the last working week in April. Next weekend we have death, resurrection and ceremonial chocolate sweats; the weekend afterwards we have a nation descending into drunken, vomitous chaos in the name of a patriotic spirit long-forgotten (oh, and there’s a wedding happening too). As a result of people indulging in this sort of behaviour, it’s unlikely any of us will have got over the jaundice before May at the earliest (NB – Web Curios does not condone excessive drinking unless it’s as an expression of royalist fervour, in which case go for your lives webmongs).

But that is all before us. Here, we look back – back at the week that was on the internet, a week in which people got very upset about a 17 year-old London woman’s *ahem* full and frank discussion of her personal life on a rap freestyle (NB – it really is full and frank and very NSFW); in which, through listening to this man’s voice, I learnt that I occasionally get this; in which I totally failed to get on a plane to Amsterdam to deliver a presentation at a conference (thus incurring a debt to The Man unto the bargain); in which it was proven that £50million does not always guarantee quality;  that it’s entirely possible to make clothes from blow-up dolls; and in which a former boss of mine was bathed, naked, by a strange, bearded man in the name of art. It’s been interesting.

As a result of the imminent HOLIDAY, this week’s Curios is going to be relatively light on work-related stuff. Obviously, though, it’s all still GOLD. ENJOY, DAMN YOU.

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I’m not as angry as I was last week. This is all relative, of course; I am still full of (entirely justified) rage at the industry in which I work; the sort of impotent rage that will achieve nothing other than slightly raised blood pressure and the heightened probability of an aneurysm before the age of 50. This week the rage has been mostly caused by people’s seemingly unthinking insistence on using the words ‘influencer’ (NB – note to readers: If you are ever being presented to and someone uses that image in a presentation, you have EVERY RIGHT to spit in their face and call them a clueless shyster. No really, you do) and ‘engagement’ in completely arbitrary fashion. CAN YOU DEFINE THE TERMS YOU ARE USING? OH NO, THAT’S RIGHT, YOU CAN’T, BECAUSE YOU ARE JUST THROWING THEM INTO YOUR SENTENCES LIKE THE BUZZWORDS DU JOUR THAT THEY FUNDAMENTALLY ARE.

*Ahem*

Look, I know that there’s nothing wrong with the words ‘influencer’ and ‘engagement’ per se; I just get really, really upset when they are used so casually. If you can’t define what an ‘influencer’ is with any degree of credibility (and here’s the rub – in terms of the online world people really struggle, which is why Klout and Tweetlevel are ultimately pointless, masturbatory exercises (at the moment, at least)), then don’t use the term; if by ‘engagement’ you mean ‘talking to people’ then just say ‘talking to people’ and bask in the knowledge that people won’t think you’re anywhere near as much of a social media tool.

Christ alive, I was calm before I started writing this and now I am all het up and unnecessary. I am going to take a moment to attain the state of zenlike calm that I normally bask in when writing Web Curios – join me in contemplation of this beautiful image, and we’ll continue after the jump.

Fill in the blanks yourself. It doesn't get any less disturbing.

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I’m not in a good mood today. This blog might reflect this. Apologies in advance and all that. Oh, and to the three people who read this who aren’t somehow involved in advertising / marketing / PR / etc, feel free to skip down to where the first picture is, as the next few paragraphs will probably mean very little to you. I mean, feel free to read them if you want – my prose, after all, is captivating – but don’t expect to get too much out of it other than a feeling of slightly grubby disappointment.

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Happy New Year! (I was going to accompany that with an image, but you’d be suprised how NSFW the first Google Image result for that apparently innocent phrase is. Dear God, it’s all just filth on the internet, isn’t it?).

It’s been over a month, webmongs, and, if I’m honest, I’ve not missed you in the slightest. Doubtless, though, you have all been desperately pining for me, and staring blank-eyed into the middle-distance every Friday afternoon, wondering exactly how you are going to be able to fritter away the remaining hours separating you from your regular appointment with a bottle of meths and a cold, lonely evening alone in your bedsit in front of the glowing flicker of a cathode-ray tube.

I, though, have been leading the glamorous life of a jetsetter. Apart from on Christmas Day, where I found myself eating a mediocre lunch, alone, at the soulless Gordon Ramsey franchise at Heathrow Terminal 5. I have been to Rome and Berlin and (unexpectedly, due to being ‘confused’ on new year’s day) Dusseldorf and Amsterdam and San Francisco. I didn’t look at the internet AT ALL for over a fortnight. It was AMAZING.

Now, though, my nose is once again being deprived of multiple epidermal layers as a result of prolonged exposure to the grindstone. I am back ON IT. As such, take a deep breath, make yourselves comfortable, and let me guide you with the assured touch of a skilled lover through this week’s selection of things off the internet. After a picture, to break the monotony:

My vision was a bit like this on New Year's day, hence the Dusseldorf incident

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HASTY EDIT – I published this and then realised that this was the 18th Web Curios. Web Curios is now of legal drinking age; should any of you fancy buying Web Curios a bottle of whisky (or meths of suitable vintage), please feel free. Thanks.

Another week down, another 7 days spent at work feeling like Sisyphus (if you’d prefer a visual representation of this, you can’t go wrong by clicking here). Yet again, it might be argued that I shouldn’t be writing this and should instead be knuckling down to some HARD GRAFT (for which phrase Google Images suggests this – proof positive that people who spend time on the internet have NO CONCEPT of what work actually means); those who hold that opinion, though, are ignoring the JOY that Web Curios brings to literally tens of webmongs across Soho. I am performing a public service, big bossman Richard Miller. Frankly I should be subsidised by the state – after all, there’s some extra cash knocking about these days.

Having said that, this is going to be the last Web Curios for a while as next Thursday I am going on HOLIDAY. Yes, I know that I have tried that before this year and failed spectacularly, but this time nothing can go wrong. I’m only going to Italy, for God’s sake *prays, fervently*. Before I embark upon my Roman holiday, though, have some things – oh, and for those of a sensitive disposition, please be assured that nothing in this week’s selection comes anywhere near to the creepiness of last week’s stuff. Which is a shame, frankly (there was a video of a Satanic mass, but I’m not quite sure how far I can test my employers’ patience at the moment). Enjoy, or don’t, but whatever you do DON’T HAVE NIGHTMARES.

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It’s hard to know where to start this week. THERE HAS SIMPLY BEEN SO MUCH HAPPENING. Frankly, though, it probably doesn’t matter what I write here (yes, I know that it never matters, but indulge me) given the fact that The Rapture is almost certainly nearly upon us. Look at the evidence – volcanoes, strange lights in the sky, Nick ‘Casanova’ Clegg now a shoo-in at No.10 after proving himself the least robotic and inhuman of our three potential leaders on TV last night…the end times are coming. Frankly it’s only a matter of moments before the skies are filled with smug Christians all laughing and pointing as they are raised up to heaven to watch the rest of us boil in fiery eternal torment (obviously there is NOTHING remotely un-Christian about this image). With that in mind we might as well enjoy our last moments, and what better way to do that than to waste the final precious minutes of life remaining to us by staring catatonically at a computer screen and ‘enjoying’ this week’s roundup of ephemeral rubbish that couldn’t be any less consequential? But before we get started, an amazing photo of a volcano (no, not this one) from the most amazing man on Twitter, @Astro_Soichi:

Two lakes inside a volcano, taken from space. Yes, SPACE.

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