Capitalism sticks it to Ben again, damn it to hell

I notice of late by observation of the return to the somehow humdrum-looking old plain red labels that Coke seems to have ceased their latest competition thingmabob, whereby 600ml bottles were supposedly meant to yield all kinds of exciting prizes upon their opening. Among these prizes, the most important and (one would expect) most easily attainable offering was: free 600ml bottle of Coke.

Now, let no man say that I do not drink a great deal of Coca-Cola. I'm fairly sure I'm physically addicted to it. Put a bottle in front of me and I just keep drinking it. The amount I drink is just a lot, far more than is normal or indeed healthy. Rare is the day that goes past where I do not drink some of it, and some days I probably drink 2 litres plus of the stuff. Coming to university with it's vending machines and cafes most days as I do now, that daily amount almost invariably contains one, often two, sometimes on odd occasions even three 600ml bottles a day. And this competition went on for sometime, long enough that I would estimate that I have purchsed maybe 60 bottles of competition Cola. And how many free Cokes did I win?

Three. I actually only got to use two, as at one particular point I took pity on Cokeless Tim. And I found one sitting on a random desk in the Upper Common Room, discarded by some (almost inevitably) less dedicated Coke drinker, but was honest enough to point it out to her. She hadn't even known the competition was on.

Now this annoys me a bit. Surely the point of the competition is to encourage people to buy a lot of Coke by rewarding those who do so. I buy a lot of Coke anyway, competition or not. So you think that when a promotion such as this rolls around, I would be rewarded for my long years of faithful service to the Coca-Cola company - the purchase of much product, the praising of its name, the loud and frequent verbal evisceration of Pepsi in public places. You think maybe I could expect 1 in 5 cokes to be free. Or maybe 1 in 10. But 1 in around 20? For God's sake, is Coke short of Coke to be giving out? I don't think so. Are they in some kind of financial strife? Oh wait, no, they're Coke. Do they seriously expect me to send in all those tokens marked 'D' for draw when they know full well that I'm of a generation that is too cynical to hope it can win a draw of this kind, and too lazy to enter it anyway? Somewhere in a boardroom, a group of evil old men is sitting on a huge pile of money and laughing. At me. Specifically. And the worst thing, the worst thing of all is, I will keep buying their product. In fact I could use some right now.

God DAMN it.

And now, weekend exploit tales. I'm sorry but on this occasion it has to be done, as I must proclaim my game-playing skills from the rooftops, and I need a tenuous link on to the next bit, which is my slightly bitter and angsty rant section.

On Sunday many games were played. I ruled as Lord of All Catan and owner of the entire Monopoly board. Warwick however was first person to make a billion dollars in 'Billionaire' (a game of much shouting and intense card swapping), although I was closing fast. Tim as the Brits later proved first to outwit the dullwitted Nazi menace (James), although he benefitted from the fact that the French (Sara), the Americans (Waz) and the Poles (just call me Ben Allanwicisz) were all making co-operative simultaneous escapes, aided by the fact that the dirty Nazi had been foolish enough to put me in charge of handing out cards. This would have been OK for him except that he was also foolish enough to point out that the game rules encourage cheating by the prisoners in the 'plucky Allies collaborate to put one over on the dirty Gestapo' spirit. Consequently Warwick had about 10 cards when he was supposed to have three, and extra escape equipment was illegally handed out all over the show to all parties, all under the very nose of the unfortunate Nazi commander. So although Tim was the winner, I feel I did well there as well, because we all win when Nazis lose, folks. The biggest congratulations of the game though must be saved for James 'No ruthless efficiency me' Caygill and his thoroughly convincing if inadvertent impersonation of Colonel Klink.

On Saturday, (the weekend was held in reverse due to daylight savings) after cricket (we had our first draw in about 2 and a half seasons, it was odd) and the watching of 56 various men in pursuit of 2 ovoid balls in Wellington and Christchurch (one good result, the other not) Sara and Warwick and Tim and I went off to see Dirty Deeds which was a pretty amusing hardcase Australian crime film starring John Goodman, Sam Neill, Toni Collette and Bryan Brown. You may remember Mr Brown as the hardcase Australian from such films as 'F/X', 'Cocktail' and 'Two Hands' (haven't seen that although it's supposed to be good). Anyway, after the movie (and the confrontation with drunken backrow tossers that occurred during it) Tim I think it was remarked that his performance had been much like that of an Australian Michael Caine (now stick with me, I'm going somewhere here), which was a pretty apt description, especially if you have seen Michael Caine in things like 'Get Carter', or 'The Italian Job', or indeed, 'Alfie'.

Which I haven't. 'Get Carter' and 'The Italian Job' were both very cool in British 60's fashion (the ending of the Italian Job is especially cool...apparently they're about to remake it with Edward Norton and Mark Wahlberg, oh for the love of GOD) I got them out after I read Michael Caine's autobiography What's It All About? which was the only interesting book at the holiday home I was staying at in Kaiterireri at the start of the year, and it was a damn good read which had lots of interesting information in it, all about how he was homeless in Paris for a while, shot the entirety of Zulu under the belief he was going to be fired at any time, went on benders in seedy bars in the middle of nowhere with Sean Connery, had to take a number of crappy films so he could finish the roof on his house, and met his second wife by seeing her in an ad and calling up the ad agency and going 'I'm Michael Caine and I want to meet that girl. Send her round to my house.' He also reveals all kinds of stuff about Hollywood, like you should never agree to do a stunt on the last day of filming, because the director has the film in the can and doesn't give a damn if you get hurt. It's a good book. Anyway, in it were a whole lot of films it made me want to see (I still have to see 'The Ipcress Files' and various other stuff) and quite a big thing about 'Alfie' which was the film that made him a star. But I still haven't seen it, despite the fact that Hamish had the tape out just before he left (and we're getting there, slowly).

Tim's comment reminded me of this and when I got home I looked up the Empire review of the DVD of it which has just been reissued. 5 stars, classic film kind of thing, and 'packed full of those pithy one liners' such as (and here we get to the point) "Get a woman laughing and that's all you'll get".

Now I was surprised to see this idea emerging again in such random (and if you've actually read through all that up there I think you'll have to agree it's pretty damn random) fashion as I had been thinking about it for a couple of weeks. I think it was two or three weeks ago that Tom Hanks was in the 'Quote/Unquote' section of The Press responding to some question about how being funny in his youth must have got him a lot of girls and he said something along the lines of "I got women laughing but I never got any kind of sexual feedback from that. I never laughed a woman into bed."

The point is (I emphasise before I go further that this is a rant. There are no recent or specific examples. I am not talking about or alluding to anyone in particular. So no-one get offended, it's all inspired by Tom Hanks and Bryan Brown, indirectly) it's good to see famous people and popular culture support (validation, hurrah!) the idea that when woman are listing the most desirable attributes in a potential partner, the fact that 'sense of humour' often heads the list is not particularly accurate. I have no doubt that a sense of humour is important to most if not all women, but part of the world seems to have developed the idea that as long as you can make people laugh you should have people lining up around the block for you. Sadly this seems to be a total load of bollocks. Everyone enjoys a laugh, but in deciding who you want to marry, or just go out with, the 'how good are his jokes' factor well and truly takes a back seat. Like I say, it's in there, but it's not a priority. If it was, Robin Williams would be a sex symbol, and not a strange looking little hairy guy.

This is all OK, it's how the world (and biology) works, except various people over the years have tended in the past to say things like: 'Why haven't you got a girlfriend, Ben? You're pretty funny' and that gets annoying. More annoying is girls who say (and this is only random people I have met at various times) that men are really shallow in what they look for in women and then go on to say in the next sentence: 'I'm looking for a guy with a sense of humour'. It's the exact equivalent of a male saying 'I'm looking for a girl with a nice personality'. And guys who say that get (rightfully) hassled. But women get away with it somehow.

Anyway, I was just kind of interested that out of all of the seemingly many memorable lines from the film, that was the one they chose to quote in the review. Coincidence perhaps, although perhaps the sort of witty film geek guy type that writes for Empire takes that sort of comment to heart as a piece of (crude) wisdom as much as I do. Who can tell?

In unrelated matters, aha, aha, ahahahahaaaa. I had forgotten completely about this. People in the Loft were looking at me funny as I struggled to suppress explosive sniggers. Go, laugh. Fighting with Dogs, aaaaahh, so funny.

Oooo, this blog has taken about 70 minutes (plus about 20 minutes to actually get it to post. Also, I hate Macs and their horrible one button mouse and irregular desktop, it's all unfamiliar, I fear change, arrgghh) If only blog time would somehow magically transfer itself to some completed thesis.
Time for that long overdue Coke.