Creampuff Revolution

Creampuff on the Lamb

Just noodling around the Facebook, as you do, and this ad column came up. The third ad down caught my eye:

What the - WHAT DOES FACEBOOK HAVE ON ME?? I knew this would come back to haunt me.

Creampuff Begins the Journey of Yoga

A long time ago, I had very good workout habits. I swam, I lifted weights, I elliptercized. Lately, my workout habits include dragging our 40lb dog around the neighbourhood once a day (mild cardio, strength-training) and occasionally doing a Billy Blanks Tae Bo video. And by "doing", I mean "marvelling at how sweaty the people on the video are getting while I sit on the couch and eat ice cream" (biceps). 

Katr and I felt like it was time to step it up, but our attempts at self-directed exercise have been poor in the past (see above re: Billy Blanks) and we decided that we needed a person trainer type to actually come to our house to gently nudge us into shape. Because otherwise, we totally wouldn't go.

I also decided our personal trainer would be named Travis.

Not sure where to start, I asked our hilarious friend Elisa, who runs Vancouver studio Kerrisdale Yoga, if she knew any personal trainers named Travis. She did - but she suggested that we should do yoga instead!

I'm not going to lie to you, guys. I was hesitant. Partly because yoga is slow (which I hate) and hard (which I also hate) but also, I know that yoga is taken very seriously by purveyors of yoga and when *I* think about practising yoga, I mainly think about this:

But Katr thought yoga sounded keen and none of Elisa's other contacts were actually named Travis, so she hooked us up with ... Jane. And thus our journey of yoga began.

I knew Jane was the right teacher for us when she did NOT end her "nice to meet you" email with "Namaste". She also didn't seem phased when I told her that we were enthusiastic students but that working with us would be like "teaching yoga to fat rocks". She just brought a lot of foam blocks. 

I was prepared for the slowness and hardness of yoga - but the one thing I was unprepared for was the amount of touching involved. I don't usually enjoy people touching me - but Jane gets right in there, adjusting here, gently pushing there, and occasionally just climbing on our backs in the hopes that her meagre 88lbs will help us actually get down in that dog. If our living room was the National Geographic channel, every Monday and Thursday evening there would be an hour-long show about a tiny monkey climbing all over some hippos.

We love her so much. She is awesome. So awesome that I won't reveal her last name because she's OUR yoga teacher, OURS and you can't have her!

We've only had about five lessons and so far, we're up to The "Smell Your Pits" pose - but I'm sure it's only a matter of time before she has us doing this:

I need to point out that this isn't some random awesome photo of some babe doing yoga. I ACTUALLY KNOW THIS PERSON - it's the lovely Michelle Girouard and I stole this photo off Michelle Girouard's website (or maybe her Facebook, I'm too tired from Foot Penis Pose to go and check right now).

 

Creampuff Sends an Angry Note

So I went over to Savage Love today to catch up on my perv reading and I saw an ad that sucked.

The ad was so sucktastic and generally offensive to me and I realize that by posting it here, I'm just giving them more free advertising but if you're like me, you're too lazy to click through to where I saw the ad in the first place, so here it is:

So I saw that and I thought "Oh look, some kind of dating service for shallow douchebags! And it's being advertised using the keen stereotype of fat women lying in their online personal ads in order to entrap helpless young Adonises!"

Because shallow douchebags intrigue me, I clicked through to Tigits.com to see what it was all about. It turns out that Tigits is a service that allows you to have a second, fully functional phone number - one that you can give out to first dates or business contacts, whoever - so that you can keep your "real" number private if you need to.

Great idea, right? Good for keeping your real contact info safe, good for avoiding crazy stalkers - probably something that women would enjoy.

So why does their advertising make the folks at Tigits sound like a bunch of shit slices? 

I had to know. So I send them this note.

Dear Tigits,

I love the idea of Tigits and think that it would be a fantastic service for my friends who are on and off the online dating. But after seeing your really offensive banner ad on NOWToronto.com, I wouldn't recommend Tigits to anyone.

 I get the idea of being able to answer calls from people you're interested in and avoid calls from people you're not keen on - but having your ad be a joke about avoiding an angry, lying fat woman is just kind of tired and also, ass-tastic. 

I guess if your target audience is shallow male douchebags, then that's a total win. But on your website, it seems like the product is also meant to appeal to women...some of whom might not be 36-24-36.

Anyway...just thought I'd offer a little "possible customer" feedback. Thanks!

best,

Roro

In all fairness, when Katr went to track down a version of this ad so that I could angrily embed it, she also found a version that's offensive to gentlemen. Equal opportunity douchebaggery! So, you know, kudos to Tigits.

I don't know if I'll get any response from Tigits - the only way to contact them was through their "Support" form - but after a disappointing federal election on Monday night, where I felt impotent and frustrated, it was somewhat satisfying to send an angry note to some lazy marketers. Don't judge - we all seek solace where we can.