Tetherd Cow Ahead

ALDI: fire your advertising agency. They’re creeping me out.

Do you ever look at things and think… hmmm… I wonder how that came to be? Take this roll of toilet paper (or ‘bathroom tissue’ as the Americans call it, because they can’t bring themselves to say that word. You know. TOILET. This is in keeping with the more comprehensive American belief that if you don’t acknowledge an ‘icky’ thing exists – like, oh, Palestine, say, or sex, or atheists – everything is SO much nicer). ((I exclude from this assessment, of course, Americans who are reading Tetherd Cow Ahead. Or who can read, generally.)) ((Whenever I hear an American say ‘I’m going to the bathroom’ I have to strongly fight the urge to say ‘Really? Again? You must be so clean – you just had a bath a couple of hours ago!’))

Anyway, back to this roll of toilet stuff with which you wipe your ass after you’ve had a shit.

Why is it named in the way it is? Are angels particularly known for their softness? It’s not an attribute that immediately springs into my mind when I imagine an angel. Take this angel, for example. It is the Archangel Michael:

Does this picture say ‘softness’ to you? That spear looks sharp to me. Not the kind of thing I want near my tender parts (I will observe that he has funky shoes though).

Here is another picture of a some angels:

These ones have swords. Would you let angels like this go swinging their sabres around in the vicinity of your nether regions? I wouldn’t. And here’s another picture of the Angel Michael. Can you see what he’s doing with that pointy spear?

Yes! That’s right! He’s aiming to stick it right up Lucifer’s bottom! Is that a caring, comfortable, soft image, my friends? I think not!

So how is it, do you think, that advertising people arrived at the brilliant idea of calling toilet paper ‘Angel Soft’, when it’s apparent to anyone with a modicum of religious art experience that angels are anything but soft? How can they get away with such a blatant untruth? Well, as usual, the ad people have included an escape clause in their work. Did you spot it?

There it is! Those rascally advertising types! They’ve registered the term ‘PS’ and tacked it onto their brand name! Genius!

So, their product can now be called ‘Angel Soft (PS®)’, where the PS obviously signifies:

PS: If it feels like someone’s sticking a sword up your ass, then it’s not our fault. You should have paid more attention in Sunday School.

Dense? Though much brain cells now, might help you with loss intelligence at normal time.

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This gem photographed by Cissy Strutt.

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This vintage Christmas poster from Shockblast comes with its own thought balloon. Acowlytes! It was made for us!

Actually, only one of those three mentioned things has any smell at all and I don’t think I’m alone in not having the faintest inkling of what a palm tree smells like. ((It can’t smell like coconut, otherwise they’d have said ‘smells like coconut’. Surely.))

One of the delights of being a Stranger in a Strange Land is discovering new and wonderful foodstuffs. In one’s own country, one is fairly familiar with the products on the supermarket shelves, but being abroad opens up whole new vistas of comestible possibilities. As I stood dazzled in the breakfast cereal aisle of the local Ralph’s, I wondered how I could ever pick just one from among the thousands of brightly coloured packages.

I thought I was reasonably circumspect in choosing Yogi Cherry and Almond Crunch.

Sounds alright, doesn’t it? All natural, no artificial thingummybobs, none of the dreaded high fructose corn syrup (that American food manufacturers seem to throw into everything with wanton abandon) and 5 grams of protein and 3 grams of fiber in every serving (although 3g of fiber – or ‘fibre’ as it is properly spelled – does seem a little on the shy side for something ostensibly made of grains).

So, anyways, I headed off home with my groceries and thought nothing further of it until breakfast the next morning, whereupon I poured myself a bowl of Yogi Cherry and Almond Crunch, splashed on some milk and bluuuuuuuurrrrghhhhhh! Gag. Gasp! How much fucking SUGAR is in this stuff!!! This is the sweetest breakfast cereal I’ve eaten since I was a kid. Sweeter even than Sugar Frosties! Let’s have a look at the ingredients:

Lotsa grains, evaporated cane juice, brown rice, almonds, but no suga….. waidjustafuckinggoddamnminute! Evaporated cane juice? EVAPORATED CANE JUICE!!!???

Yes folks, Yogi knows full well that the ‘s’ word is big minus mark when it comes to selling a ‘healthy’ product and so it doesn’t actually appear anywhere on the packaging. Instead we have evaporated cane juice. I almost find myself admiring their guile. Indeed, when I actually pay attention to the um… ‘creative’ language on the packet, it appears that various sugars make up almost a fifth of the volume of what’s inside the box of Yogi Cherry and Almond Crunch!

A little cereal with your sugar, anyone?

I’m also slightly uneasy about the cherry quotient, which is listed as cherry ‘powder’. Something about being able to turn cherries into a powder reminds me of anthrax. No, I don’t know either.

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Disclaimer: Readers of this post should not infer that just because I chose to buy a cereal with the word ‘yogi’ in the name in any way implies that I am some kind of dippy trippy hippy. I was merely attempting to pick a cereal that had some modicum of healthiness. Plus, I always had a fondness for pic-a-nic baskets.

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