On Profile Photos of Obnoxiously Hot Women

It's funny how quickly things change. In the MySpace days I would look at profile photos like this and think "low-hanging fruit", but today I just think "spambot".

Yesterday I cried because my pants didn't fit.

Please don't ask me where I found this. But isn't it amazing?

The older I get, the more stereotypically psychotic I become during my period. I didn't used to be this way. I used to be relatively normal and to pride myself on that anomalous sense of control. But last night, feeling that familiar pressure rise up in the general location of my ovaries, I was inconsolable, dragging my feet and slamming into walls and falling onto my bed in abject despair.

I also ate all the candies.

This is a trend that worries me. Every time it happens, I can't help but wonder if it's time doing its work, or if I'm behaving this way because of what TV taught me to do.* It is hard to know. I wish I had a team of scientists.

Humor me ››

The Best QR Code Action I've Seen in Awhile

Look how useful and not pointless it is! Look how good it makes people feel, how it provides value (giving to the less fortunate) while compounding that with a captivating experience (animation)! I even almost forgot this was eBay.

We should be thinking more about intuitive integrations between the real world and digital. And, because you can't say that kind of thing without an associated buzzword, industry people are calling this golden solution "SoLoMo" -- a contraction of social, local and mobile. This combo has great natural implications for tourism and hospitality, but also consider how intuitive executions can change our everyday experiences, too.

Like this eBay thing. This time of year, everyone's susceptible to holiday altruism and the spreading of cheer, qualities which extend themselves nicely to social sharing. Make it as easy as possible for users to cash in on emotional investments they're already looking to make, all day long as they traverse those chilly streets, clutching their peppermint lattés and passing fleeting smiles of hope at small children and the grizzled homeless.

Viiiiiiiia.

Benetton to Politicians: Kiss + Make Better

Benetton loves itself some shock value, a superpower generally used for good but often too provocative for comfort. Its latest went live in Paris this morning under the campaign name "Unhate."

Humor me ››

This is Your Date on Heineken

Okay. You know how perfume and car ads are predictable, banal and basically always objectively suck? Beer ads have this magic way of being the opposite. Think Stella, think Heineken -- hell, think Budweiser for every last Super Bowl as far back as you can remember. What is it about the beer sector that takes a possibility and just stretches it beyond imaginable elasticity...? I have cream dreams about doing beer. (The ads. Not, like ... bottles.)

I'm late to the game in discovering "The Date" (Wieden + Kennedy Amsterdam -- of course!), and probably wouldn't ever have seen it if I wasn't doing Epica Awards judging this year, but it has this fancy-free Shangri-La magic that makes you want to go back to the '70s and dance on a table or something.

The making-of is jam-packed with the same playful irony for double the time:

Think John Lewis for the Gifts You're ACHING to Give

Here's the requisite bittersweet holiday-countdown ad that yields inhuman cravings for tinsel and an advent calendar. (I have one already. It is sitting on the shelf and I twitch every time I look at it, because if you forget to start opening the little paper doors right on December 1, ALL IS LOST AND GOD HATES YOU.)

Anyway, this piece for UK-based John Lewis department store (now online and on mobile!) takes its sweet time building a nostalgic universe around an antsy boy in the days before Christmas. We can all relate to his impatience, even if his reasons turn out to be warmly opposite our expectations.

The ad is pensively punctuated by a delicate cover of The Smiths' "Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want" by Slow Moving Millie. Catch the making-of, plus a link to download the music on iTunes, on the John Lewis website.

This cosy fireside holiday ham is brought to you by Adam & Eve.