Fuck Earth Hour.

Earth Hour.  One hour out of 24, one day out of 365.  Lights out!  Fans on, stoves on, air conditioners on, trains running, buses running, factories running, planes flying, ships chugging on crude oil, power plants still burning dirty coal, but lights out.  The man who started this movement called it just "symbolic".  Problem is, it's the wrong symbol.

Not only does it send the message out that putting out lights somehow helps the earth, it also eases some guilt out of our collective ecological consciousness.  It somehow sends out the message that by just putting ourselves in darkness, we are somehow, symbolically, at the very least, reflecting upon how life would be if we didn't have to burn any energy at all.  All this, while a lot of people lit candles to show their ubiquitous support of anything these days, ostensibly however, leaving a bigger carbon deposit into the atmosphere from burning wax!

The message going out has more to do with becoming unproductive than becoming efficient.  Cutting off power to devices doesn't stop thermal power plants, which are the majority in the world today, from burning fuel.  Lights are a very small percentage of our power consumption anyway, and indeed a very, very small percentage of our energy consumption.  What we actually achieved is a whole bunch of people in the world were less productive for an hour than they would normally be. 

Why do we love the symbols more than making actual lifestyle changes?  For example - one acre of land can support twenty vegetarians but only one and a half meat eating humans.  Bottomline, being vegetarian is enormously beneficial to the planet - by a factor of 5 at the very least, over being non-vegetarian.  Why aren't we giving up meat eating for the right reasons?  Because there is no convenience factor there!  There is no lazy gesture that we can sign on to, like the new fancy hogwash of buying carbon credits.  How it makes a difference to the atmosphere if money exchanges hands is mind boggling!

If we want a symbolic ritual, we could give up meat for a week.  Call it Earth Week.  No meat.  God, that ought to send some businesses scrambling for cover!  Imagine the animals that won't have to be killed, the meat that won't have to be refrigerated, or transported.  Oh, wait a minute!  What about the animals having to be fed until the feast the week after?  See?  If it isn't long term, it isn't going to work at all.

Let's look at this from a very Indian perspective.  Where I live, we've had a regular two hour power outage for over two years, so we're already way, way ahead of all the clowns out there celebrating this stupid Earth Day.  If I took the symbol seriously, I'd say I wouldn't have to participate in this Earth Day for another two generations and I'd still have less guilt!  So, let's leave the symbolism aside and consider what the real messages going out are.

This Earth Day was first thought about and started in Australia - today the single largest exporter of coal to the single largest consumer, China.  In other words, the one country that is going to feed the energy hungry beast called China, with the most polluting of all fuels, is the one that came up with this retarded idea of an Earth Day!  And why the heck are we celebrating this, when we are already much more environmentally friendly with hours of power outage all over the country?  Shouldn't we emulate perhaps Nepal, which has 16 hours of power outage a day?  What kind of environmentally conservative mindset wants to emulate countries that have reliable (read overproduced) power supplies?

The USA and China have the two biggest carbon footprints in the world.  India is languishing way behind in that department, and for once, we can be thankful.  But there are fashionable idiots all over the world who are busy sending out wrong messages.  And our idiots are grabbing them and really thinking it makes a bloody difference!  We apparently saved 916 megawatts of power during the Earth Hour according to some estimate.  With just lights, if we managed so much of a saving, how come this will never reflect in any power production budget?  It won't because we didn't produce any less, we just consumed less!  If we actually produced less, the environmental ministry simply has to cut a deal with the energy ministry!  India would shut everything down and be the most environmentally friendly.... yuk, India would be the "most green" country in the world!

If this doesn't make sense, think about this - our power plants, mostly coal fired thermal units cannot run below capacity just because we anticipate all our fashionable clowns switching off their lights for an hour.  Hydroelectric plants never run below capacity, for there is nothing to save except stored water, in some cases.  Lights are less than 15% of our power consumption, remember?  So, we continue to pump out as much electricity through the generators at the thermal power plants, and we'll be damned if some idiot downstream switches off his lights or not!  Now, let's look at the numbers this symbol actually stands for - 1 hour out of 24 is 4.16% of a day's consumption.  Assuming we had ALL lights off during this period across the country, that is, that would be 15% of 4.16% of a day's consumption - or 0.625% in a day.  Divided over the number of hours in a year, that was a royal saving of 0.0000171% of our annual production.  When was the last time you were happy saving 0.0000171% of anything?  No wonder no power plant around the world takes this Earth Day with even a symbolic reduction in production.

Saving the environment must be the same as saving money - not until we figure out how to do this, do we actually have any chance of building a lasting interest in saving anything.  Coal and oil are doing very well, because they are still very cheap, considering how much it costs for us to mine as a percentage of how much money we can make from the mining.  Until solar power and wind power and all the other sources of energy come down in cost, we don't have any chance of realistically bringing about a change in usage habits.

For some reason, it was fashionable for the White Man to destroy entire continents in his search for a comfortable life.  It was okay for him to dig out all the world's resources and burn as he wished.  Now, all of a sudden, he wants to sell us new technologies since he realizes he ultimately doesn't control too much of the world's oil.  Up came this great suggestion from none other than the foxes in the USA - let's bring all the world's forests under a global management system.  Well sorry White Massa!  In fact, fuck you.  That didn't work out very well, so now we have this widespread media onslaught that the environment is really important and that we cannot poke holes in the ozone layer, but only since the White Man is the one who is first going to get skin cancer by the dozen!

Sadly for Whitey, the rest of the world is pretty savvy when it comes to alternative technologies - there is no breakthrough infinite energy source for whitey or anybody to control.  And a very brown Arab community still has plenty of oil, and the Venezuelans aren't likely to hand over their big oil resources to the Yanks or the Brits either.  Nor are the Kazakhs or the Iranians. And many OPEC countries are considering switching from the US Dollar to the Euro to peg their oil and gas on!  Not the British Pound!  With so many countries in the EU, we don't have to worry about any controlling interest in the currency itself.  In other words, Whitey's control of oil has eroded bloody fast.  So he's looking for something new to control, but we must first be made to fear that shit that looms in the unknown future.  Disaster is easy to subscribe to.  Well guess what?  If we had no power and no oil, we in India will simply ride our bullock carts and ride out the disaster.  Whitey cannot.

But Whitey can scare the shit out of us.  Because we have idiots who believe everything Whitey tells us.  Their freaking press looks so classy, they can't possibly lie, can they?  Yes, they can.  And we're falling like ninepins for the bullshit they spin out.  Their lies are all geared towards feeding some industry or the other.  They've even invented diseases and told the whole world to get vaccinations for diseases that don't even exist!  Look at our poultry industry!  Crushed by thousands of vested interests.  Luckily we have realized that broiler chicken is no good and are back to raising free range chicken.  Same with genetically modified foods and brand new diseases like ADD!  How come the new generation suddenly has a disease, a disorder, that none of our ancestors had, well up into this century, this generation of parents!?  Whitey lies.

So fuck Whitey when he tells us to use resources carefully.  All of a sudden, those are global resources, huh?  Every culture uses whatever it can afford to use.  We don't have to sacrifice anything for anybody.  We are already very judicious with our decisions and look at how well our regulated banking system did not flinch with this global crisis Whitey had to endure with crashing, burning and pain!  We may be terrible in many ways, but we know how to take care of our shit when we really have to.  We don't need to add to the pain we already have without enough electric power.  We have done enough.  To hell with Whitey.  Fuck Earth Hour.

BSK.

Stupid ads and outright lies!

"Thousands of pixels being chased by festive looking dancers. When they are about to catch up, the marauding pixels fly into a giant screen and arrange themselves to make the colourful face of a Kathakali dancer who makes facial gestures on the giant screen" - the brief for the Sony Bravia commercial couldn't have been very different from this yawn inducing, uninspiring idea meltdown. I hardly have a question about the uncreative nonsense that Indian ad. agencies almost always come up with. But if the brilliant colour of the Bravia TV is clearly visible on my existing TV, why would I want to buy the Bravia?

The latest ad for Timesjobs.com on television tells you you will find a better paying job on their site, and then goes on to explain in great detail, on the same site, how they are not responsible for anything in an "as is" presentation of information! http://www.timesjobs.com/popuphtml/Terms.htm#link14 In other words, there is absolutely no effort put forward by Timesjobs.com to ensure the jobs there are indeed the better paying jobs. Stretch that a little, and you will easily infer you could get the lowest paying job and Timesjobs.com will still not be responsible for their own advertisement in any way. How can a service that shouts - "Because you are worth more" completely absolve itself of that claim, after "better paying job" is the the only reason for you to consider their service? Absolutely nefarious.

This advertisement sells you an alternative to an employment agency, without any of the responsibilities you would come to expect. It is just a cheap reference, where the attempt is to cut out the percentage commissions of the employment agency and nothing more. Therefore it is an outright lie that you will find "better paying jobs" there. With subjective claims like "The tastiest Sambar in the world", you can let it go, but when there is something measurable like a person's salary, how can the media planners of Timesjobs.com be so stupid and assuming of people who end up visiting their site? Clearly they can, and I hope the recession causes some of these fools to be kicked out.

By now, even if you are a fairly occasional TV watcher, you must have seen the enormous disclaimers at the end of some ads. that flash for about a second, which nobody in the world can read, for two reasons - the print is too small, and there is just too much to read in one second. So, what is the point of showing the disclaimer at all, especially when everyone in their right mind should know the disclaimer is for dissing all claims made so far by the advertisement that a normal person can understand and trust.

Communication, the very point of advertising, is sometimes lost on me. Especially with car advertisements where the car flies through the air, skids all over the road, spins, and just about manages to find a grip of safety before vanishing into the horizon. I would think a car that throws itself about so easily would be the most unsafe thing to buy and the most unsound investment. Especially if the car is tiny like a Swift, I'd go all out singing its praise on how roomy it is and how solid on the road it can be. If it is all over the place, I kind of begin to feel it is flimsy and untrustworthy. Am I the only one who has this problem?

The ridiculous advertisement also has its place somewhere, except when you begin to wonder why a motorcyclist would hire a helicopter to throw him from several hundred feet high onto the top of a building. Motorcycles are not aircraft, and if you landed on the top of a building in one, and survived the fall, you'd pretty much have nowhere to go. Now if the building itself was your destination, what do you need the motorcycle for? Stupidity at its bleeding worst.

Then comes the sexuality crutch. Why would you think of sex when you are drinking a bottle of Slice, for heavens' sake? Aamsutra, my flaming arse! When I am thirsty I might reach for some Slice, and if I love mangoes, great! But sex is not something I associate with a fruit drink, no matter how much Katrina Kaif seems to be turned on by the thought of humping a mango or a Slice drinker. Jittu Krishnamurthy was right when he said, "In lieu of creativity there is sexuality". Most of the time, sexuality is what seems to be easily on tap for most of our ad. makers, and they don't even bat an eyelid about what the product is! If the fools working in advertising agencies are so bereft of ideas, why don't they just quit? Maybe we should make a Kaam Sutra ad. for them to get the hint? "Make way, not ads."

The attempt at the abstract - this is the genre that gets me really laughing. Like the ad. for the Tata Safari Dicor, that starts of about "lines", and how you can make your own "lines" with the ugly beast called the Tata Safari! What an idea, Sirji! How many customers actually think about buying a car as the same as buying a paintbrush to make lines with?! If I wanted to make lines, I'd find a thousand different ways without having to buy an SUV. Give me a f$#@%ing break. The abstract should be left to geniuses who can present some weird connection in a sane way, not to half drunk dopey eyed wanna be rebels turned washout creatives.

There aren't that many professions in which anything goes! Most of our India centric ads. are all about filling up the airwaves with noise. Speaking of noise, why does the volume jump up as soon as it is time for an advertisement? Right in the middle of a cricket match, which itself is fairly well controlled in terms of noise during a broadcast, the ad. will just blare its way into your life. My hand is invariably on the Mute button as soon as it is time for a commercial. So, I get to watch most ads. without sound anyway. No TRP machine will report this fact, and some advertiser somewhere is losing money and not getting value!

"See what happens when a CD begins to dream"??? Since when did inanimate objects start dreaming and we found out what they dreamt about? This offering is from Moser Baer, with ugly black wires morphing out of nowhere and hitting the roof, the floor, the model's hands, and what not, before becoming all kinds of electronic goods - simply unimaginative, uncommunicative rubbish presented with the finesse of a snake devouring a rat. I wonder how this gets past the brainstorming stage - assuming there are actually coherent stages to the process of unleashing a commercial on unsuspecting masses. Scarily, this commercial is a computer graphics lift from a science fiction movie. Maybe that is why we are asked to imagine what happens when a CD begin to dream? I'd like to see what miracles happen when our ad executives begin to think.

The Axe deodorant commercials seemed to be rather well put together until they came up with the latest one with the chocolate flavoured temptations. Apparently, only women fall for the smell of chocolate and will stick themselves to glass in pure longing, even when they cannot smell the spray! How retarded can things get? If a deodorant smelt anything like chocolate or reminded me of something to eat, I'd be completely turned off. Watch this product vanish off the shelves for being absolutely idiotic in conception, ad or no ad.

The stupid, stressed out woman who thinks her husband is dead when she finds him snoozing and is shocked when he wakes up, leads me to think she was hoping he was dead! After all, presumably, she would be the beneficiary of her husband's life insurance policy! Knowing fully well that "Life Insurance" is actually "Death Insurance", they don't really have to tell us how happy we can be just because we bought insurance, do they? I mean seriously, what the heck do we care once we are dead? Sure it must be the hardest thing to sell, but in all seriousness, if you needed Kal Par Control (whatever the crap this means, especially to those of us who cannot read English and end up understanding in Hindi), you'd work to make more money today, not spend a little more on an insurance plan! Moreover, if there is another company selling the same thing, telling you to let tomorrow lie and just enjoy today, what are you supposed to do? Very confusing, and might be better if someone would just tell us, "Look, someone is going to need this money if you croak". After all, how many of us are fooled by insurance ads anyway?

Now we have the very stylish PSAs, like "Save the girl child" that comes to us in the middle of a cricket match on Ten Sports. Hello? It isn't as if we are all about killing the girl child, and it certainly isn't those of us who understands English and can see the point of a poignant message that needs the message. So, what is the point of this PSA as opposed to the crude ones made by the same ministries? The direct ones in Hindi, that treat the viewer like a stupid villager are actually much more effective in communicating the point. Check out the one where the girl child in the womb talks to her father through a stethescope! Then there is the really thought provoking one that asks us to imagine a world without women. I thought about it, honestly and deeply, and really came to this - I'd definitely hate seeing fewer women around, but... Wow, wouldn't that be a good way to control human population?

Remember the Intex commercial, extolling the virtues of their speakers, especially the drop of the pin you can hear clearly while the older gentleman is clearing his ears? Well, if I can hear it on my existing set of speakers, I sure don't have any reason to buy Intex, do I? Am I the only one thinking out loud on this really base level of stupidity exhibited by fools who are paid to precisely not do this kind of work?