When merchandising goes bad

I have been forced back into the blogosphere by an item I found and purchased yesterday. I buy a lot of dumb shit all the time, but never before have I been quite so compelled to share the ridiculousness.

So, yesterday I was at Priceline, and I would go so far to say that I blame Suzanne for the fact I was there in the first place. Her blog has opened up my eyes to the shiny appeal of the world of cosmetics, and Priceline is the primo place to go for said things.  So yes. All Suzanne's fault.

Anyway, I was in Priceline, walking past the perfume cabinets, and I saw this staring at me from the bottom shelf:

What. On. Earth.

Anyone who knows me well will know I have a 'slight affection' for boybands of the 90s, and Westlife are no exception. I liked them back when they were called Westside. Yeah! Look at me being all pop elitist! Yeah! Anyway, I saw this thing (whatever it was, I didn't even really look at it properly to be honest) was $12, so promptly tucked it under my arm and headed for the counter.

At home I opened it up. First the removal of the LUXURIOUS PLASTIC SLIPCASE:

Roses and a bit of a crap font. Nice! Time to pop the box open and see what treasures are inside:

Faux velvet, more roses, more crap font! I found an 'Eau De Parfum', a body lotion and a shower gel. Interesting. Upon spritzing some of the odour on my wrist (I'm having a hard time conceding and calling it a 'fragrance' at this point)  it was clear it was aimed at three groups of potential buyers.

• The Elderly, who would be happy with just about anything as long as it covered up the stench of Death.
• Little Girls, who just don't know any better.
• Twenty-Somethings, buying it for The Lulz.

I'll admit, when I first smelt it I thought 'Oh, it's not THAT bad!' It was quite dense, and tended to hang over you like a foggy cloud of odour as opposed to a subtle perfume, but I guess that's value for money? EVERYONE EVERWHERE WILL SMELL YOU! *shrug* The best way to describe it would be 'mature' (like the stinky perfumed talc that old people got from Avon about 20 years ago) but with a sickly sweet after-smell. Quite strange. Smelt the body lotion and the shower gel, they seemed similar, but much milder and a little sweeter.

Despite being something that I'd never wear myself, I did assume the perfume to be 'okay'. That is, until 4 hours later when I was headachey and nauseous and no amount of washing of my arm could remove the choking fog from my body. I'm wearing the jacket I was wearing last night and I CAN STILL SMELL IT. This is some potent crap. I'm far too terrified to use any of the other products now.

Sadly (or perhaps not), the Westlife fragrance set is destined to never again be worn by a human person, and will live out its days on a shelf in my bathroom. Cause it might smell like shit, but it sure does look nice!

"Why the fuck did I agree to this shiiiiiit?"

I give the Westlife fragrance set 1 Schnicky out of a possible 10.

I'm F**king Maaaaaatt Daaaaamooonnn

I don't like doing two posts full of YouTube clips in a  row, cause it's SHIT LAZY, but I found these clips while tidying up my hard drive today, and just had to get them back out into the world. Back in ye olden days of 2008, the world was blessed with not one, but two, meme-tastic videos. It was a running gag on Jimmy Kimmel's show that at the end of the night he'd 'bump' Matt Damon's appearance and say something along the lines of 'My apologies to Matt Damon, we're out of time tonight'. Sarah Silverman saw an opportunity where others just saw simple lols. Behold, Part 1:

Oh yes.

But Jimmy wasn't just going to sit idly by and take it lying down. Them apples were HIS apples, goddammit! A wounded yet defiant man, he countered with this heartfelt ode:

OH YES. 'Matt Damon' makes me laugh, but 'Ben Affleck' makes me CRY. And it's not cause I'm swayed by Lance from Nsync being in it. Ok...maybe a bit. A little bit. To this entire exchange I say:

Bullshit music Monday

I have been delivered a few aural treats in the last 24 hours, so it would just be rude of me not to share. The first one has gone insanely viral so you may (or, if you're really lucky, may not) have heard of this one. As I type, she is currently the top trending topic in Australia. Good lord. 'Friday' by Rebecca Black.

I really think Rebecca Black has done the world a favour. Everyone is suffering from a little bit of Charlie Sheen meme fatigue, so it's nice to have something fresh to mock relentlessly. Her lyric about the order of the days of the week will be on a tshirt before the end of the year, mark my words. I was questioning the sanity of whoever would bankroll the recording of the 'song', and the production of the (in parts, quite slick-looking) video. Turns out there's a production company that targets tween girls, writes them a song, records it with shitloads of auto-tune, does up a video and makes them 'stars'. I don't think it's particularly exploitive, if the parents are silly enough to cough up the cash, then that's their problem, but I do feel really sorry for the kids. You're 13, and everyone on the internet is laughing at you. That's gotta be a great self-esteem boost at a particularly fragile time in your life! I did watch a few of the other girls' videos, and while the lyrics were (slightly) better, they were still just as depressing, so we'll just leave it there.

Next up, we have BANGS (yep, capitals), the Sudanese casanova who wants to 'Take U To Da Movies'.

If I'm being honest, the more I watch this, the more insanely charming I find it. Safe to say that English probably isn't the first language of Señor BANGS, but his dedication to THUG LYFE is clear in any language. Just like Rebecca Black explaining that Sunday comes 'afterwards' Saturday, BANGS explains that 3.30pm is half an hour away from 4.00pm. They educate the kids, man. They provide a SERVICE, and ask for nothing in return. Except for some popcorn maybe.

I just couldn't leave BANGS there. I needed more. I clicked on the promising sounding 'My Special Girl'.

BANGS wants to let you know that you're his 'Special Girl', but he also wants to you know that he's operating at a maximum level of pimp. Exposing his little pigeon chest maximises his pimp status. Looking up his own website maximises his pimp status. Forcing his bling upon you maximises his pimp status. This guy is one badass PIMP, yo! I had to leave the world of BANGS, lest he slap me with his pimp cane. I just can't handle that kind of power.

As for this next one, I'm going to pre-apologise for posting it, but it needs to be seen. It's a 'local production' called 'Summer' by someone called Vee, but I like to call it 'Scarborough Slappers in bikinis with Garageband and a video camera'. I AM SORRY.

I can't even...I can't...oh god. I think the commenter who said 'This is worse than the holocaust' really sums it up, and I can't articulate it any better than that.

I applaud all the above artists on getting their work out there, as I know I certainly wouldn't be brave enough to release a shining example of my burning shititude onto the internet.

BRAVO, sirs!

EDIT: BREAKING NEWS! Damn these exciting, fluid memes! Please now feast your ears upon 'Friday' by Rebecca Black, as performed by (a) Bob Dylan (impersonator).

That was a little bit excellent. Kudos.

Why April will be AWESOME

April is shaping up to be a pretty great month, for several very big and awesome reasons.

Number 1: Doctor Who is back, holy shit!

The exact date seems to be a little up in the air at the moment, but it's looking like the first few days of April. While I am still grieving over the loss of the One True Doctor, I'm looking forward to having new Who every week, and snickering over how Loafy isn't as awesome as Tennant, and The Ginger isn't as great as Rose. I must do an early apology to Matt Smith for the fact I will be referring to him as 'Loafy' for his entire Dr Who career, though it's not my fault his head is so rectangular and loaf-like. Also, insulting him helps me to deal with the loss of One True Doctor much better. But they're insults laced with love. He's still the Doctor, after all.

Number 2: The Stereophonics are coming back, holy shit!

They're generic Brit-rock and they get a bit more 'meh' with every record, but I don't care cause they're my favourite band in the whole damn world. April 10, Fremantle Arts Centre. OMG. I hope to be taking photos at the show, but even if I'm not I'll still be there fangirling my face off.

Number 3: Nexus is on again, holy shit!

I've tried to fill the time in between Nexuses (Nexii?) by going to other, far less superior collectible fairs, but all they do is highlight how awesome Nexus is. I went a bit crazy last time and bought a whole bunch of crap, so this time I expect to be a little more discerning. I believe it's on April 10. April 10 will be a very exciting day! Kotobukiya Scout Trooper, you shall be MINE!

Number 4: Glee is back, holy shit!

Surely it can't still be a guilty pleasure if everyone likes it? Surely? It's like a little bit of giddy sunshine every week, and if the limp-as-hell storyline starts to bore you, you can just fast forward to the singing! The new season brings us episodes by Joss Whedon, and starring Neil Patrick Harris. BARNEY ON GLEE. How fantastic.

Number 5: AFL Dream Team, holy shit!

Dream Team actually officially starts in just over a week, which is funnily enough when the AFL season starts, but I haven't participated in the competition before, so come April I'll have a few rounds under my belt and will be really hitting my stride. I'm confident with my team, the NAB Cup test run had them scoring pretty well, but at the moment the biggest decision in my life is trying to work out if I should keep Ben Cousins in my team and give him a shot for old time's sake, or trade him for a younger player who is a greater chance of playing all 22 games and less likely to end up in hospital with alcohol poisoning (SPECULATION). Expect to hear a lot more about Dream Team over the year. This is better than footy tipping. SO MUCH BETTER.

Supanova loot

A couple of pics of some of the things I got yesterday. These Batman chibis were so cute they were begging to be photo'd.

They're only little, about 3" tall, and at $20 each they'll definitely be relegated to the 'every now and again' collecting pile. I could get a decent statue for the cost of collecting this whole series. The full range includes Classic Batman, Robin (these two), Modern Batman, The Joker, Catwoman, Batgirl, Two Face, and a 'mystery figure' who I can report to be Nightwing. I definitely want Modern Batman, The Joker and maybe Nightwing, but the others aren't really must-haves, I don't think. Check out how they all look at this website here.

Little bit of gratuitous handsomeness to round out the post. I will probably sound like a broken record, but he really was delightful. Even if he did continually refer to Australia as 'the West Island'.