Russell Davies

trend nirvana

A bit of my job is doing all that 'trend-hunting' rubbish, though I think of it as more like sharing interesting stuff. This is coolhunting gold-dust; three trends in one - 1) holistic wellness (whatever that means) 2) the global dominance of hiphop 3) non-obvious things in collision. Marvelous. That's all my presentations written for the next six months.

the things you see

Monday morning. Walking to work down Great Titchfield Street. Saw about 60 horses being walked down the road. Army horses presumably. Funny old place London.

not that russell davies

For obscure and silly reasons this blog was once called paincave. And now it seems to be called 'russell davies'. Which is reasonable because it's my name. Though it seems unusual for a blog. And it causes difficulties because 9 times out of 10 I'm not the Russell Davies people are looking for. I'm the wrong Russell Davies.

I'm not the Russell Davies who wrote Queer as Folk and is writing Doctor Who. (He's actually Russell T. Davies.)

I'm not the Russell Davies who presents a show on Radio 2 and used to write for the Sunday Times. Maybe he still does. (Though once, when I was writing jokes for a living, the BBC confused his tax and mine and spooked the inland revenue badly.)

I'm not Dennis Russell Davies (obviously, he has a different name, but Google doesn't work that way) American Conductor and Composer.

I'm not Russell Davies, anaesthetist, who pioneered the recovery room concept at the Queen Victoria Hospital in East Grinstead.

In fact I'm no kind of Russell Davies at all. All these superior achieving Russell Davies's make me feel a bit rubbish. And there's a ton more out there too. However, I'm the one that's blagged the russelldavies.com namespace. Which seems to make me part of a phenomenon.

hang on a minute

I was walking along Regent Street the other evening. And I looked up. And I thought, hang on, I'm sure that building used to have a back.

help is at hand

just incase you can't find a shade of ecru that works with beige. the gap stylists are here to help.

signs of the times

playmobil now make an airport security playset.

and they've staged some kind of riot/police operation in the window of hamleys.

rule britannia

Here's a sign that Britain still is top nation. This is my favourite road sign, one you see around occasionally. We must be top nation if we still have road signs which assume the population is literate enough to understand the phrase 'adverse camber'. Two words hardly anyone ever uses.

I didn't take this picture. I did an image search on Google and it's from a personal site of an American visitor who clearly found the sign puzzling. Apologies to him if he discovers my appropriation.

Hurrah for the DoT and their high expectations of motorist vocabulary.

corporate apology

a tremendous sign over at funkypancake has reminded me of the perfect corporate endline we once wrote.

I was working in the states at the time. It was the sad end of the dotcom boom and every pitch we did seemed to be for some terrible service company. It was all telecoms or technology or something. People with rubbish helpdesks. People who'd built an enormous global corporation before they'd become actually good at anything. And it occured to us that they should simply pre-apologise for everything. Since their relationships with customers were inevitably going to be based on let-down and failure, the simplest thing would be to get it out of the way upfront, and try and get on the same side as the customer. Thus we thought of 'we're just as disappointed as you are'. It's perfect. You can just see it:

'BT: We're just as disappointed as you are'

or

'NTL: We're just as disappointed as you are'

It'd work wouldn't it? You just wouldn't bother complaining, becuase you'd know what response you'd get. And you'd somehow feel like they were on your side. It's you and the global corporation against some other. It wasn't their fault, it was fate or something. Because that's the only satisfaction you get with a helpdesk. The only way they can make you happy is if they take your side against 'the system'. This way the whole company does a corporate shrug and roll of the eyes upfront.

I wish we'd presented it to someone. Just as a laugh. But we never had the guts.

the horror

Here it is, in a single ad, everything that's wrong with the world. Or is that putting it too strong? No. Look at it. 'Generations of Excellence' What are they talking about? And look at those clothes. Jeez. And that kid.

off brand

This is the back of an abercrombie and fitch t-shirt. It's a great quote. But it's interesting because it's not on brand for Churchill or A&F.