I’m no rich bastard but I’m wealthy in other ways. In fact, those that know me on the other side of the monitor will tell you that I am one of those chaps who take an unusual delight and joy in the world around me in many ways. For free mind you.
A great pleasure of mine is to take a walk around my neighbourhood and take in the rush of life around me or its intriguing slowness. The soft fluffy gardens of the houses, the piquant smells of newly dropped eucalypt bark as it warms in the sun and the sounds of people going about their way doing as they do on their streets. There is another pretty suburb quite close to where I live, and it has all those things I mentioned just now and I am very glad I do not live there.
You see, if I took a walk along the streets of Clifton Hill my walk would be wrecked. Even if I avoided seeing that thing that wrecked my walk, it would still be wrecked in the same way you cannot relax in a hammock if you know that there’s a big spider somewhere in the tree above you.
Unlike a spider, a great can of bug-spray won’t “fix” the poster that Bourne’s Kitchen’s paid an advertising company to produce. It’s a poster for mums to playfully tap their blokes on the arm and giggle, “It’s you silly.” It’s a poster for a sassy on-the-go chick with pink patinerd chrome balls to whip her fist in the air as she drives past with a “You HONK go HONK girl! HONK-HONK.” (It goes great with “Who let the Dogs out.”)
My real problem is not with those folks with brains that have been air-brushed in, but with the little kid who tugs on the leg of the “dog” and says “Hey Dad. “Look up at the window. Is that you dad?”
One can only imagine how lonely dad must feel when asked such a question. Who does he talk to when he is another sheep dipped in a shame that only misandry gives? What makes it worse is that dad, more likely than not, will be shamed in a way without focus. Without any words he could ever hear, there is a curious dialogue in his mind. “There it is again, that unremitting throb of pain. It’s louder this time.”
There is nothing more divisive than a pain with no finish. It takes us from our families and our friends and it always isolates us in the end. Make no mistake about this, a pain that never breaks will always bring loneliness, and in a world where undiagnosed misandry slams as hail, men can be robbed forever and well beyond any poverty.
Back to the kid asking his dad about the misandric poster in Clifton Hill. Now under the circumstances it’s a fair question and it needs to be answered, and if not by dad who has been thrown into this disgrace, then by BK who did not stall when their printer chugged and spat out this massage, message. So I’ll ask them because they can give the answer.
To Bourne’s Kitchen – Is the image of a simpering, ineffectual and lazy unshaved male the image you see as dad?
Pretty simple question you bet. I suspect the outcome will be just as it would be for someone at SETI. There will be no answer at all, or a very complex one. While we sit back and hear the static from the ether we can ask ourselves some questions that BK’s marketing team missed on purr-pous.
After the viewing our poster of a woman roughing up her man-person-thing (MPT):
1 – “Would any MPT want go into your display kitchen?”
2 – “Why would a MPT want to leave your competitor?”
3 – “How does this appeal to the average MPT?”
4 – “Who does this appeal more to? the young MPT or the older MPT?”
5 – “Will this cause dissatisfaction with some valued customers?”
Those five questions (that absolutely must have been asked by the marketing team) I can answer with four, “I dunnos” and one Yes”. Take a guess Bourne Kitchen where the outstanding answer is. If you still can’t figure it out I suggest you think about it to the tune of, “One of these things is not like the other.” while playing “I Spy” as a contingency plan.
Please know, that while the team in your dispatch office are fist-ramming cinnamon swirls in their gobs between Tetris and the out-tray, that many MPTs out there looking at your vertical slices of misandry are blushing not in shame but in anger. Catch up. You’re supposed to be the ones telling us what we want, not us telling you what we don’t want after you have produced it.
A question BKs marketing team did not ask is this,
“If a MPT is annoyed at our advertising campaign will they crack open their wallet inside our kitchen display or outside our kitchen display?”
Their website is a fruit salad of tastes and colours and it looks pretty good if you only flip by it. If you stay for more than eight seconds as I did you won’t forget the double whammy of the bathroom. A picture of a toilet revolves on an image carousel and the words with it tell more about their business than any crapper my bum ever shook hands with. “Hurry. Become a V.I.P customer and get the royal treatment.” That bit is for the blokes and this next bit lower down on the image is for their women customers, “Hurry. Become a V.I.P. Customer for a chance to win 1 of 10 Jurlique Body Pamper Packages.” I’m being sexist I admit. I mean who am I to make the assumption that blokes are not into pampering packages? (Come to think of it, I’m pretty pumped about a free voucher I got from the “Nail Wax and Polish While-You-Sip-From-A-Cocoanut” salon on my street.) I still do wonder about who BK is really targeting and why.
It seems to fit that their target sex is female. After all there is an image of a feisty woman giving a man an ultimation and damn! There I go again. I just made another sexist assumption. Please forgive me as I gave away my large plasma TV only three years ago and all those missages messages for women on the entertainment shows, and news segments, and magazine shows, and documentaries, and films, and advertisements, and community announcements are still with me. Let’s face it, Women beating on men is hot because everyone says that women beating on men is hot.
Ok, so big deal. So what if BKs target demograph is women? That rhetorical question I’ll answer anyway with a great big fat arsed:
“It matters when the collateral damage of your advertising campaign is the quiet shame felt by men who accidentally consume their images.”
Alright, that’s it for now. I’ll step down from my soap box and use what’s inside it for a long hot shower (not one of yours BK) before going to bed, but before I do I leave this last thought and it’s addressed to me and you who consume too much eye-and-ear filth. And as for the Bourke Kitchens out there who produce so little richness for a poor man’s world? You can read over the shoulders of the good men who have kept you in business for 25 years.
Dear Man,
I know that sometimes you hurt like hell as I do, and I know the mute button of life is your friend. The folk at Bourne Kitchen are not our enemy. Their poor ways come from the ignorance of the unkind and this is the face of our enemy, just as it is theirs also.
I say get back into the mind you love and close your front door from the outside. Now go for a walk with no iPod or phone and switch off life’s mute-button. Walk alone for a time and then maybe you might find, if just for a while, a solitude that no loneliness or the “Bourne Kitchens” of the world can ever reach..
Bourne Kitchens
249-261 Queens Pde
Clifton Hill Vic 3068
P: (03) 9486 2777 begin_of_the_skype_highlighting (03) 9486 2777 end_of_the_skype_highlighting
F: (03) 9486 2188
E: cliftonsales@bourne.net.au
Trade Division
Mark: mark@bourne.net.au
Bourne kitchen's burn
