:: Overspill and Feedback ::

As I'm a bit short of time and want to leave the sleepy, stuffy office on time to drink booze in the sun go home and water the garden, this is just going to be a mélange of crap I couldn't fit in yesterday and a few amusing items of feedback from previous posts. I offer my sincerest apologies - coupled with the hollow pledge of doing something more creative and worthwhile. Talking of which, Taxloss has been regularly updated by Red Rum, whose photoshop-jobs par excellence are exhibited here.

In the course of my work I trawl through numerous lacklustre corporate websites. The scant recompense I get for this is the occasional discovery of an unintentionally hilarious gem. Two of these have recently crossed my cyber path:
• Perhaps I'm suffering from premature Dirty-Old-Man syndrome, but am I the only one that finds this kind of innovation amusing? Oh willy! poo! bum! fart-pants! Lube-for-life! ...I think I've got sun-stroke already.
• This one is actually much more amusing. For those of us on the eye out for Corporate Bollox©, company name rebranding has long been a source of snide pleasure. What with Philip Morris changing their name to Altria (which is nothing to do with distancing their tobacco operations from Kraft Foods, their other subsidiary, you understand) and numerous faux-Latin corporations springing up everywhere, even the smallest firm feels obliged to hop on the neologism band-waggon:

"On May 9, 2000, the shareholders of Windmere-Durable Holdings, Inc. voted to change the Company's name to Applica Incorporated. The word "Applica" is derived from the English word "appliance" and the Latin word "plicare." An "appliance" is a device or instrument, especially one operated by electricity and designed for household use. The word "plicare" means to fold into one unified whole.
The design, development and marketing of home appliances is the primary business of the Company, which has been continually strengthened by the folding together of business units and operating philosophies."

I should note at this point that my local Council Tax retrieval firm revels in the name Liberata. In fact, I'm thinking of making a Corporate Renaming Mix 'n' Match set, with bits of company names on separate cards to be put together to make new corporate entities. We could have these for starters:
ALT(R)- | SPAC- | -ULUM | FREE- | FREN- | CNUT- | -IA | -VIEW | LAB- |

As far as games and language are concerned, I was recently sent this vaguely droll guide to bar sign language. Think I'm becoming quite adept at it now... *waves hand, resting thumb on chin*
However, the supreme exemplar of bodily semiotics is trouser semaphore from that bastion of sartorial eloquence, The Chap. Watch out for the animated section, demonstrating the technique at speed. If only they also had an illustrated version of the "Language of the Pipe"...

Feedback has been streaming towards me from all corners of the interweb on a number of recently discussed issues. Some Russians seriously believed "medical advice" that vodka protects against SARS. the result, not surprisingly was severe alcohol poisoning, the symptoms of which, ironically enough, resembled those of the virus itself.
As I hinted yesterday, the BBC have now decided to pull their new BBC1 trailer in the face of complaints from concerned viewers.

Before I go, a piece of timely news (today is Ascension Day, in case your Ecclesiastical Calendar has slipped). Apparently Jesus was a raving homosexualist - and this proves it:

"Dr McCleary said Uranus figured prominently in Jesus's astrological chart, as it did with many gays."