Enough long-winded theoretical nonsense about time travel. I have some more adverts to complain about! This time it’s the stupid Toyota Yaris rappers. If you’ve not seen them, then yes – for some reason, there are three separate adverts for the Toyota Yaris that all feature a 30-40 second rap tune. It gets weirder.
I’ll tell you now I don’t know anything about music, let alone cool music. I know the general history of rap music, from the ‘golden age’ of the 90s to how they added ‘rhythm’ to the blues in a kind of secret underground laboratory sometime during the 20th century. I also know that a ‘gravel pit’ somehow refers to a lady’s… sex bits…? Probably? But apart from that I’m pretty clueless.
I try to avoid getting too krunk these days, but I still love me some bitches
What I do know is adverts. The beats might be phat, they might be spitting lyrics like lightning for all I know, but that doesn’t sell cars. Also, in all three the singer-rapper-people-folk are cartoons. For some reason. Cartoons. It still gets even weirder, after the click!
Project Trident is a film-making collective in the South East of England. They’re a (very) independent collection of zero-budget film-makers, but my favourite part of their site is the procedural generator of B-movie film titles. Here:
Every time you click refresh, it’ll bring you a new, exciting-sounding movie title. It’s one of my favourite internet toys, and I love imagining the movies that the title-generator brings me. Sometimes I’ve loved my own ideas so much, I wrote them down. As a serving suggestion, read them out loud in your best Don LaFontaine voice:
The Skeletal Rippers from the Far Side of Time
Professor Johnson had been developing a wormhole generator. The evening before he was supposed to switch it on, something… went wrong. When his lab assistant and his wife accidentally switch on the generator, something… evilcomes through. From a time of monsters, stick-thin creatures made of calcium arrive through the portal. They’re here… to rip out our skeletons.
The Amazon That Came from the Future
Professor… Gregson, had been developing a wormhole generator. The evening before he was supposed to switch it on, something went wrong. When his lab assistant and his wife accidentally switch on the generator, something… sexycomes through! Now, the Amazonian warrior from a future wasteland has to survive… San Francisco! Expect hijinks aplenty as a geeky lab assistant tries to teach this warrior woman how to be a lady, and learns something about himself along the way. A heart-warming tale of hilarity, lust and time-travel.
(Eventually she goes on a rampage until she’s subdued, King Kong style, forcing us to ask who the real monsters are. Spoilers: it’s probably us.)
Motorbike Skeleton From the Dark Side of Transylvania
In 1954, a Transylvanian biker was speeding along a dark, stormy country road. But he should have known not to refuse a hitchhiking witch! Her curse combined his body with his bike, turning him into a hideous motorbike-man… centaur-looking… monster-thing. Fifty years since he died from the shock, when a US real estate developer tries to build a luxury horror-themed single’s hotel on the site of his death, he awakens the remains of… the MOTORBIKE SKELETON!
Bride of the Robots: A Warning from the Future
In a world where cruel robotic overlords are powered by sex, one woman escapes to the past. Now it’s a race against time, literally. She must kill the man who invented the dildo-powered cybernetic intelligence that conquered the world. With a warning from the future, she is… the BRIDE OF THE ROBOTS!
Lords of the Rippers: The Final Chapter
It’s been twenty years since Professor Johnson’s wormhole generator let the Skeletal Rippers into our time. At first we thought we could fight them. Then we thought we could live with them. Next, governments of the world tried to use them to build empires. Now, in a world ruled by the Skeletal Ripper Overlord, rebellious heroes arise… to fight!
(In the final film of the Lord of the Rippers trilogy, based on the popular Skeletal Rippers franchise, we follow the last moments of the rebels that have fought against the growing tyranny. Finally, in the Overlord’s throne room, we discover that the ruler of the Skeletal Rippers is none other than… PROFESSOR JOHNSON! From the first film, right? Mind = blown! It really ties the whole franchise together)
Long ago, the internet spread an infinite buffet of video before my starving attention span. I gorged myself. My neurons grew fat and rich and, in their own way, also delicious. Like tasty brain-spaghetti.You’re probably pretty similar. At the very least, you’ve spent hours mindlessly clicking from one kitten-sneezing video to another, right?
Then you’ll also have seen the adverts. It’s to be expected – after all, we must at some point pay for the buffet. A tap on our hunched shoulders and we look up startled, gravy and salad dressing dripping from our eyebrows. The waiter daintily places a slip of paper on what used to be a plate of sliced mutton gizzards stuffed with boiled jellyfish. Everyone groans miserably, clutching at their stretched, expanded bellies in sadness.
With some video sites you can skip the advert, scrunching up the bill and throwing it back into the waiter’s face. With some adverts on Youtube, for example, you can currently skip the advert after five seconds. On Blip.tv, host of hundreds of popular webshows, you must sit through them for the first thirty seconds to a minute – or mute them, for the sake of your sanity.
I don’t know why but for a very long time, the only advert I saw on Blip.tv was this:
If you’ve never seen it, it’s an Olympic-themed variation of the notorious UPS Logistics advert. A montage of UPS workers, Olympic athletes and London landmarks is set to a simple, relaxed tune. The ‘UPS tune’ is potentially quite pleasant at first even if it doesn’t capture your attention. But I love Blip.tv, which means I’ve now seen that advert over three hundred and nineteen million times (roughly). You thought you hated the Go Compare singer? You don’t know what hate is. I used to know, but it was overwritten by the advert’s lyrics. My identity is now bound to the advert. When I look at the clear blue sky, a flower or the face of a smiling baby, I see the nothing but the UPS logo. I don’t remember the words to ‘Happy Birthday To You’, or the date of Christmas. Only the UPS tune remains. I sing the song while I mow the lawn, while I shower, even while I have sex – at thirty seconds, it’s the perfect length.
Then I guess my cookies suddenly changed or I got rid of some malware or something, I'm not sure. Whatever quirk making this the only advert in my internet might have just fixed itself. The dam broke, and other adverts came pouring through. I'd forgotten that when they’re not for UPS, adverts can be fun. I enjoyed them! I’ve welcomed the cars, cookbooks, Christmas sales, anti-smoking ads and even the adverts for insurance. The nature of the tasty internet buffet changed when I realised the bill itself is also edible, and delicious.
Below is my current favourite: Generation Awake. I hope you enjoy it. It’s a positive message of consumer awareness, it’s quirky and sweet, and it has an enjoyable tune. It must be destroyed immediately and never listened to again, so it can stay that way.
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