Tuesday 5 June 2007

coffee and sushi
and the late sun shimmering
like a metaphor

There’s a small furore going on concerning the new logo for the 2012 olympics. A top advertising concern was commissioned at the cost of the annual income of a small European kingdom and the result is, well, crap. There are five pastel shapes, four of which represent an abstraction of the numbers 2012, and the fifth is… just a shape.
The populace has risen in fury at such amateurism, added to which the animated version on the website has had to be withdrawn as it’s caused people to have epileptic fits.
The BBC morning news, which is always ready to jump on the bandwagon of popular uprisings, has been running a continuous feature every day in which viewers have sent in their own ideas for logos, the majority of which are far superior to, and more practical than, the agreed design.
Most popular of these is a simple idea in which the word ‘London’ is used, with the initial L O N doubling as 2012.
A ‘design guru’ was interviewed this morning and expressed his own dismay at the accepted design and showed some alternatives submitted by students which again, were interesting, exciting, and far more acceptable than what has been chosen.
Personally, as far as the Olympics are concerned, I couldn’t be less bothered. My only involvement with this regular circus is to complain about it commandeering the TV schedules for months without the terrestrial TV companies providing any alternative viewing for those of us who find sporting events only slightly more entertaining than a conversation with Katy Price.
It doesn’t bode well, though, that with five years to go till the event, we can’t even get the logo right.
Meanwhile, in the Big Brother house, the housemates are unaware of the nation’s unhappiness with a bit of design tat.
Food and toilet rolls are running out, and despite Nicky’s best efforts to get the girls to discuss rationing what food they’ve got left, it appears impossible to get them to stop talking about themselves in order to debate the issue.
Satnav (or whatever her name is) had earlier asked Ziggy (I’m wondering now if this is short for Sigmund) if he’d nominate her, as she wants to leave. She’s already been to the Diary room to ask Big Brother if she can ‘still get deals’ if she leaves by the back door.
Those of us who actually watch Big Brother know that discussing or soliciting nominations is a rule one breaks at one’s peril, and Satnav has been punished by Big Brother in the form of banning all the housemates from the bathroom.
Who could have predicted what a terrible punishment that would be? Hair-straighteners have assumed the status of Sauron’s ring, with various females turning to the dark side and attempting to take possession of ‘the precious’.
Lesley watches from another room with the eyes of a reptilian professor, studying the subjects of a vital experiment.