I’m at home, sick with a fever. Could be Glandular fever, but for the moment we’re not sure so I’m just resting lots. And looking at online shopping sites.

Cue the new winter Witchery. Apart from the droll, energy-sucking new stylings of Witchery man (click on the link, only if you dare) I am still dissapointed. Witchery, you’ve gone downhill. And uphill in prices. Which doesn’t really make sense, because we’re in an economic crisis and if you read Vogue you’d know that now it the time to dress FUN FUN FUN!!!!!, which your boring drab crap isn’t letting us do.

But anyway. I’ve picked out some items I’m deliberating over if they happen to eventually go on sale in my size.

Deco neck detail camisole

Sequin jacket

Lace insert dress

Frill sleeve lace insert dress

Mesh weave chain belt

Felicity high heel

Alot of black happening there. Boring. I also have to point out that the Witchery site hasn’t updated its meta title tags for a while. Spring fashion, anyone?

At the moment I’m kind of obsessed about Salt n’ Pepa’s “Shoop”. Reminds me of being six when it was perfectly fine for women to be this domineering and sex-demanding, before everything got confusing and PC. That said, I never actually realised how all their lyrics was just screaming SEX SEX SEX, or in this case, SHOOP SHOOP BA-DOOP.

There are many songs about Sydney but not so many filmclips. However, I’ve recently come across a few and the old ones are the best. Check out Newtown before it was trendy and only had empty/wierd shops, in John Kennedy’s Love Gone Wrong clip. It looks a bit like the current Marrickville, which is a bit scary. AND HOW OLD IS THAT FUCKING COLES.

Then there’s this awesome one of The Fauves on Bondi Beach, before it was filled with whiny brown scabby backpackers.

It seems to be a thing in ambient ideas at the moment where people project images on a wall and go awesome. Because clearly ads are cooler when they’re bigger, right?

Maybe not.

Half the time the projections are usually something basic that has no relevance to the consumer, or worse, a brand logo. Agencies get caught up in the fact that it’s a new technology and get so hyped up and confused that they end up producing something that five years down the track appears amateur and obvious that there’s no actual idea or strategy behind it.

Thank god for Shimon Attie. A projectionist artist, he’s been photographing his projections for a few decades now and has had his work displayed in galleries throughout the US and Europe. Attie will typically source historical photographs depicting “marginalised and forgotten communities” and project them onto modern landscapes features or located near where the photograph was originally taken.

Wooster Collective has blurbed about two of his amazing projects: The Writing on the Wall (1991-1993) based in Berlin’s former Jewish Quarter, and The History of Another (2001-2002) of Roman Jews on the city’s ruins and excavation sites.

Not only does the lighting parody that which the government uses to illuminate and glorify the ruins, it also re-places these marginalised figures back into their environment (imagine a sense of displacement times two), and introduces the thought that history does not necessarily have to be a thing of the past – that the ghosts can return and forever live looped in their environment.

I emailed the following to my work end of last year but no one replied so I’m sticking it here instead. Thanks to Maggie for the heads up!

Coraline is the new stop-motion film made by Henry Selick (Nightmare Before Christmas, James and the Giant Peach). It’s a twisted story told with teeny tiny handmade props, so the site is as fantastical, exciting and detailed as the movie itself.

Users can navigate their way through a three-dimensional flash world, interacting with hidden elements in each scene. Behind-the-scenes movies and short clips are hidden around the site, plus content that “pushes the idea further”. Eg: a stopmotion film of the art director’s moustache dancing; an interactive tea reading which also gives you a handy navigation tool to explore the site easier; a button eye generator (key part of the film), where you can upload your own photo and give yourself your own button eyes.

Selick fans could also get a sneak peek of the site earlier this year, provided that they could track down the passwords (moustachio, puppetlove, armpithair etc).

Overall, a slick and enjoyable site with a beautiful story embedded throughout. Users can literally waste hours on it, not only giving great response stats but helping the audience develop a relationship with the film and its elements long before its released.

This article appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald about a week ago, lsting the 10 most complained about ads in Australia for 2008.

1. Kotex U female sanitary products - 185 complaints
   
2. Domino’s Pizza – 145 complaints
   A man dressed as a character called Many Toppings sings to the tune of Supercalafragilisticexpealadocious.
3. Advanced Medical Institute  – 110 complaints
   Want longer lasting sex billboard.
   
4. Inghams – 100 complaints
   
5. Quit Victoria – 65 complaints
   
6. Coca-Cola Mother – 50 complaints
   
7. Tell The Truth Coalition – 45 complaints
   Pamphlet depicting pictures of aborted foetuses.
8. Virgin Mobile Go Topless – 45 complaints
   A young woman covers her bare breasts as she talks on the phone.
9. Advanced Medical Institute - 45 complaints
   Bonk longer billboard.
10. Motorola Razr mobile phone – 40 complaints
    

The justification for the complaints from the Advertising Standards Bureau’s Fiona Jolly was that “the community has a high level of concern about ads which could inadvertently cause distress to their children and to themselves.”

She also stated, “We have a . . . complaints system that gives consumers a voice and allows us to keep advertising in Australia at a high standard.”

WHAT THE HELL. SERIOUSLY.

Kids don’t know what beavers are (and half of them have them anyway, not to mention that all of them CAME OUT OF ONE), know you can’t kill people with phones and don’t find creepy fat men dressed as Mary Poppins scary as long as they’re still in the TV and not outside their school as a bad thing. And btw, your 5 year old hears worse words at school than “freaking”.

Canning ads that use a beaver puppet instead of blue liquid or women riding horses, or having the client step up and accept that their original product is shit and they’re replacing it ISN’T keeping advertising in Australia at a high standard. It’s making it dull, boring and so cotton-wooled that you can expect more of the same droning message for every 20 minutes you sit down to watch Law and Order. We might as well just screen Proactiv ads and be done with it.

In my old age, I’m moving further and further away from heels and more towards flats as an everyday shoe. In fact, I probably own about 10 pairs of flats, and wear all of them regularly (should also point out I have a very small shoe collection).

However, some are cheap and some are overworn and falling apart at the seams, so it’s time I invest in a few more pairs. I’m thinking these from Melissa to start with:

They’re made of jelly (not real jelly, the rubber kind) with a quilted heart inner sole, and a floc finish. Not sure how the floc finish will stand up in the rain though. We’ll see.

I am undecided about these, however:

I have a feeling the low ankle strap and design could potentially look very fug in real life. Probably a no go.

And if the economy wasn’t all balls up at the moment, I’d also get these from Topshop:

Satin with a t-bar AND A FRILL? It’s like everything good about a shoe put into one.

Meanwhile, I just got my pair of brand new Nine West heels back from the cobblers to get Topy soled, and they fucking ripped off chunks of the snakeskin finish leather while they were doing it. So now I’m colouring in the spots with a black sharpie. WHY DOES NO ONE LOVE MY SHOES AS MUCH AS I DO. WHY.

Only just saw the Lykke Li ‘Little Bit’ clip for the first time tonight. With the jolting and the layered images and the shoulder popping, it’s pretty damn mesmerising, I have to admit. Although I still stick by the belief that the music only appeals to quiet girls who always ALWAYS wash their hands before they masturbate.

New blog. Can’t really pin down what it’s going to be about, mostly the topics that fill my life (advertising, politics, social media, fashion etc). I’ll just spill the words onto the digital page and let them take their own form.