Live Longer

Not that my life is as empty as an Ethiopian's colon, but have you seen the new Calgon advert? No? I have.

In case you don't know what I'm talking about, Calgon is the water-softener tablet thing that you put in your washing machine/dish-washer so that it doesn't get limescale.

It is not the most exciting of products.

In fact it is dull as dishwater (do you see what I did there? No? You see, there's an expression 'dull as dishwater' that is applied when something is very dull indeed, because dishwater itself is often grey and quite colourless. The word 'dull' can apply to both something that lacks intensity of colour, and also to anything that arouses little interest. Something tedious. What I've done is apply this expression to a product that is both boring in itself, and is also relevant to dishwater. Do you see? No really, do you? Excellent. Moving on...) and must therefore have proved quite a challenge to the advertising agency tasked with selling it. Now, what sells? Sex obviously, but it's tricky to make a connection between limescale and lovelysweatypantingorgasms, so they opted for the other thing that sells: FEAR.

Fear sells brilliantly, all you have to do is shout "this might happen and our product is the only, repeat ONLY way you can prevent it" enough times at the viewer and you're selling your company for billions and retiring to a supermodel's loins before you can say 'Barry Scott'. It's not just product of course, adverts warning against STDs do this very well too (though I still believe that viruses would be cut by half if they simply showed somone picking up a 21 year-old underwear model in a nightclub, taking her home and discovering she has a penis so huge it has a Sky-dish bolted to the shaft). Calgon however, may have over-egged the pudding.

No sooner has the advert Mum's washing machine broken down than a repair man has appeared in her kitchen, pointing her with an icy bespectacled glare whilst cradling a heating element in his hands like a driver guiltlessly presenting a cat he's just hit to the child owner as he solemnly intones that it was really the child's fault for owning the cat in the first place. The advert Mum, horror of horrors, has been using a cheap water softener. Do you remember the commercial in Tim Burton's 'Batman' where the Joker points to a gagged fellow and says that he's not happy because "he's been using brand X" and the words 'OH NO!' flash repeatedly on the screen? It's like a doom-laden version of that.

"Cheap water softener is only HALF as effective!" shouts the engineer, somehow resisting the urge to shake the woman like a furious masturbator. "Half protection is like no protection!" he rages, the Mum flinching at the spit mist settling on her eyballs. "It's like him [frantically pointing at a boy cyclist, inexplicably pedaling around the kitchen] going out with half a helmet!".

Well...no it isn't actually. Besides, aren't they rather overstating the dangers of limescale? to take them at their word the slow build up of chalky deposits is a disaster of biblical proportions (only not fictional). Nations have fallen to it. Countries' topography radically altered by the sudden appearance of vast mountainous peaks of calcium. Continents absorbed as if consumed by a very hungry caterpillar. Planets burst like over-ripe pimples. Galaxies folded in on themselves like exotic origami. Universes perished like fruit at a Weightwatchers buffet, and realities voted out of existence by deities outraged by a lack of limescale prevention.

On the other hand, the plumber did seem to know what he was talking about.