Sunday, January 20, 2013

marmite macht frei

I don't know if you've noticed what Sainsbury's have started doing: in common with all supermarkets they are no doubt legally obliged to put stuff like nutritional information and recycling instructions on their food packaging, just so the well-informed and discerning customer can keep tabs on exactly how much toxic filth they're shovelling down themselves. All of which is fine - knowledge is power and all that. But evidently Sainsbury's felt that a bald heading saying "Nutritional Information" didn't convey the right sense of, I dunno, drama or something. So here's what they came up with:


Those are a tube of tomato puree and a bag of baby spinach, respectively. I imagine you've got to sing the "Great for all of us" line to the tune of the "And so say all of us" line that concludes the British version of "For He's A Jolly Good Fellow". In fact you could probably shoehorn the whole thing in:
For it is great to kno-ow
For it is great to kno-ow
For it is great to kno-o-oooooow
It's great for all of us
You can have that one for your next dinner party. Scouting around the fridge I see my breakfast orange juice has been infected too:


Not everything gets this treatment, it seems. This is a loaf of wholemeal bread:


And here's a carton of economy chopped tomatoes (prosaic matter-of-factness) and a pack of turkey breast steaks (soaraway fabulousness). There seems to be little rhyme or reason to it.


Like all the most teeth-grindingly irritating things it's hard to put a finger on exactly why the "Great to know" heading gives me the screaming abdabs. I think it's a general aversion to forced jollity and unreflective conformity. Or, to put it another way: I'll be the fucking judge of whether I think it's "Great to know" or not. I don't know whether they restrict these headings to the halfway healthy stuff or not, but if I saw the fat content on a box of chocolate-covered beer-battered potato twizzlers I might feel that "Mildly alarming to know" would be more appropriate. Or "I'd prefer not to know", perhaps.

No, the whole thing has more than a whiff of Strength Through Joy about it, so I think that in this particular case I'm wholly justified in saying: this is exactly how Nazi Germany started, you know. 

7 comments:

The Black Rabbit said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
The Black Rabbit said...

Blimey. Thanks for the warning - its errr.... great to know to look out for this nonsense.

Screaming abdabs eh?

I'm sure I MUST have told you what gives me the screaming abdabs (pretty well everything as you know).

But current "faves" are:
People who sign their emails "regards", worse still... "Kind regards" or the worst of all.... "BEST regards".

(It's de rigueur these days - everyone seems to do it - when did Dear X, Thanks Y become unavailable?)
Apart from which I should bleedin well hope that your regards are kind.
Best regards you say? Is what you're trying to say these are YOUR (personal) best, or are they the best in the whole world? You're not specific enough.
It’s a letter or email thing - no-one actually speaks like that.
Write how you speak please....

The other screaming abdabs things for me right now are hand written (or typed) "POLITE NOTICE" signs. (You know - POLITE NOTICE. NO PARKING HERE etc...)

Now looky here you retarded lump of hagfish scum.
It's NOT your prerogative to tell people that your notice is polite.
That's their prerogative.
Some will find your notice rude, despite you insisting in writing its "polite". Some may indeed find it polite - but it’s their/our job to assign a politeness rating to it - not yours.
If you really want to make your shitty little notice unquestionably (I think) polite then all you need write is:
"Please no parking here. Thanks."

Then there's "personal belongings" tannoys on trains of course but I think I've ranted about that before...


(Edited - reashon? shpelling mishtakesh)

electrichalibut said...

Well, if we're venting frustration with wordy nonsense, I'll put in a vote for the phrase "get involved". It's ruddy everywhere all of a sudden, from Gerard Butler advertising eye moisturiser to any number of charity campaigns, to chat show phone ins, you name it.

Again, the annoyance is in the slightly snidey tone of: well, you can get involved, like NORMAL people, or you can basically be a BIG LAZY SHIT with no friends. It's up to you.

Moist regards
Dave

The Black Rabbit said...

Must admit I haven't come across the "get involved" thing yet.

I have started to count how many times Jthamie ThOliverth says "byoodiful" in each of his shitty little cookery programmes though.

I think his record is 18.
TWAT.

electrichalibut said...

Here's the Gerard Butler ad: it's for L'Oreal Hydra-Energetic Anti-Fatigue Moisturiser, because apparently that's a thing now.

The Black Rabbit said...

Shame about Gerard Butler.
I thought "Law abiding citizen" was a really good watch (no culture vulture me mind) and having seen him interviewed by someone or other (in which he came across as not your average dull actor) and finding out a little about his battle with alcoholism etc... he is (was?) one "celeb" I'd probably enjoy reading an autobiography from.

Maybe now, any autobiog would probably be sponspored by Timotei or jojoba (said with a Billy Connolly accent (right up yopur street eh bate))or sammink these days.

Big girls blouse.


The Black Rabbit said...

Excuse the sausage finger typos by the way.