Just incase you don’t know who Adhack is yet, you should. They’re an online community dedicated to helping you sell those great ad ideas that you probably have.

They tell the story much better than I in this video they just put together.

Everywhere I look people, magazines and television shows are making lists of… stuff. Best this, worst that, most something something these. Being that this is my first time ringing in the new year with a list-capable blog, I thought I’d make some. But, since all the good topics are already taken by persons with more developed opinions on the matters than myself, I’m going to celebrate unimportantness with my lists.

10 things I may, or may not have, called a bowel movement in 2008

1. A bowel Movement
2. Moving Brown
3. Hanging a Root
4. Dropping the Kids off at the Pool (or other comedically-timed location)
5. Defecating
6. Greasing the Loaf Pan
7. Making a Poo
8. Laying a Coil
9. Merde-ing
10. Slaying a Poo Dragon

10 over-hyped food items by year

2008 Pho
2007 Yam Fries
2006 Tapas
2005 Edimame
2003 Asian/Oriental/Thai Chicken Salad
1996 Bubble Tea
1995 The Cappuccino
1994 Chicken Caesar Salad
1988 Quiche
1972 Fondu

(photo by Arnór Hreiðarsson’s on flickr)

10 songs I never want to hear again

1. Coldplay - Don’t Panic
2. The Shins - Caring Is Creepy
3. Zero 7 - In The Waiting Line
4. The Shins - New Slang
5. Colin Hay - I Just Don’t Think I’ll Ever Get Over You
6. Cary Brothers - Blue Eyes
7. Remy Zero - Fair
8. Nick Drake - One Of These Things First
9. Thievery Corporation - Lebanese Blonde
10. Simon & Garfunkel - The Only Living Boy In New York

You might be thinking, “Aren’t those the first ten songs of the Garden State soundtrack?” Yes they are. Stop playing it at parties.

Happy [almost] New Year everybody!

I’m not sure if you follow MoCo Loco. If you don’t, it’s a blog I’ve been watching it for a few years as a super source of modern + contemporary (hence the name) design moments.

In any case, I peed a little bit [it would have been in my pants if I were wearing any - instead I just peed all over my desk chair] when I saw the Giant Ant Media holiday card occupying a lovely piece of real-estate on the home page. Thanks Mocoloco :)

I went to a “tacky Christmas” party last week. I think that the norm is “tacky sweater” party but, given the opportunity to be non-sweater specific, I was as tacky as possible. I showed up very drunk with a bunch of uninvited friends, made off-colour remarks about people’s weight, peed with the seat down and then left it up, and made a can of Chunky soup from the cupboard without asking.

Well… I actually just wore a terrible sweater and bell bottoms. But I did make an effort to be as inappropriate as possible.

Here are some vintage-o-matic snaps from the night. How did we do? Tacky?

I went to see two back-to-back documentaries tonight about water… the politics of privatization were the dominant themes in each of them, focusing on citizen upheavals in Bolivia, Michigan and others against Suez and Nestle.

I don’t claim to be on the brink of original thought, but the absurdity with which we view resource vs commodity is just so outrageous. Our concept of ownership is ludicrous. I’m not sure why I needed to watch a movie to bother thinking about it.

Everything seems to come down to the concept of delivery. Taking a thing from one place to another. The idea of offering something, or presenting something, or receiving something has become so oddly ceremonious that we find all sorts of endless economies within which to make it happen. In the films, the example of bottled water was driven home. Corps like Nestle appear, pump ground water that belongs to all of us, bottle it (adding “value” which makes it a “product”) and then sell it to us… the same water that we drink from the tap. The amount of effort, resource, sub-economy (labels, bottles, transport, storage, retail) involved in that ceremony of us traveling a few kilometers from our taps to a store to purchase that thing that was free in the first place is just so mind boggling. The thing that kills me is that the “value proposition” added, especially if you’re lucky enough live in a place that has water like Vancouver, is essentially nil. Unless, of course, you’re talking about the non-renewable bottle it came in that ceases to have use after the bottle is swiftly drained.

It’s like a disposable stir stick. So many people involved, processes performed, resources affected… just so that I could move the sugar around in my cup of coffee for 3 seconds.

We’re so interested in the idea of owning things such that they can be ceremoniously distributed in nice ways that make people feel good… but then the ceremonial bits seems so much less interesting after the ceremony is complete… mere seconds after it began. That bottle isn’t desirable anymore. It’s trash. But isn’t that what made the water so interesting in the first place? The elite shape of the bottle and thickness of the plastic, or that refreshing-looking name on the label that means water in a different language?

You presented it to me so nicely, don’t you want it back? No. You bought it. It was your ceremony.

Ceremonies suck. Tomorrow I’m drinking tap water. And stirring my coffee with my finger ;)

But then on Sunday I’ll probably get sucked in by a pretty package somewhere. It is Christmas after all. And then I’ll wrap the package that I thought was so desirable in the first place in another package so that I can deliver a proper ceremony.