No wine jokes please

Welcome to Idealog Weekly, the free email newsletter for New Zealand commercial creatives, entrepreneurs and anyone rich with ideas.

No wine jokes please

With New Zealand ads implying we’re are all out committing tequila-induced crimes, tourists might get a better impression of us if they stayed at home. After all, we’re now better known in more places for our refined wine than anything else, including … can we say it? … sheep. Taking this image replacement seriously, a bunch of Marlborough winemakers have wheeled futuristic wine vats into a historic sheep station. The sheep jokes must die, they say: making wine this good is serious business.

Getting lots of

Popular Mechanics is asking, “Could a bunch of teenagers in an after-school class really build the first mainstream plug-in hybrid not coming out of Detroit?” Didn’t they watch Grease? You can build anything in those high school workshops! Even a car that’s automatic, systematic and hydromatic with purple-hued tailpipes and 30-inch fins. A plug-in hybrid? Phhh, says Danny.

Simple

As much as we love shoes that sync with your PC and communicate with other shoes to exchange contact information, we much prefer a simple idea that people actually have a use for. Like keeping your jeans up—or, more specifically, keeping people from saying “er … your fly is … um”. Providing you’ve done it up to start with—there’s no known cure for drunkenness—the ZipHolder keeps your zip where it should be. You can buy one here, but first you must pass a small test. Read this please: “Här kommer en otroligt liten men väldigt smart pryl!” Yes, the ordering will be done in Swedish. Because we respect your intelligence, you see. (Via Gizmodo)

Do it after this

Idealog Weekly is all for helping inspire productive business ideas, but mostly, and most importantly, it’s about pro … crassssss … tin … a … tion. So here you go, the ultimate way to piss away 19 minutes, the complete series of Simpsons couch intros.

Cos you can

Ever wanted to unleash your inner hoodlum in a safe and controlled environment with no possible adverse effects? Here’s the site for you. It lets you tag anything you like on any website you like without fear of ending up splayed on a barb-wire fence. Just one hint, you might want to turn the sound down—it appears to be devised by a group so desperate to sell their album they are including “a 40 page gold-embossed hard cover book featuring an illustrated children’s story written by Slug,” gift with purchase.

Dangerous games

“It’s a hard road finding the perfect woman boy.” Not if you avoid playing Dungeons and Dragons, old man. The New York Times reckons early over-exposure to D&D can cause celibacy later on. Never mind. Look at all the great things you get to enjoy instead: renaissance fairs, painting pewter figures and being the original propagator of the inevitable backlash against Peter Jackson. All, clearly, way more fun than sex.

Um

We could tell you about what promises to be either a hilarious or God-awful Powerpoint presentation called ‘On the conditions and possibilities of Helen Clark taking me as her young lover’. But we think the title should be enough to go by. If it’s not, we couldn’t say it any better, or any more verbosely, that Eventfinder: “New Zealand’s first state-of-the-nation address for the Rogernomic generation—a punky Powerpoint-driven monologue exploring obsession, politics and the hopes and dreams of a passionate but confused generation.” Hey, its election year, get in the spirit. Just don’t point it at us.

If you happen to be in Porirua over the next couple of weeks, you should pop into the Inventor Next Door Expo. There’s no sugar to borrow, but your neighbour might have a great idea for making sugar into sugar sculptures. Who knows? Maybe they’ll even have a better idea than that.

Quote of the week

“The Ara project will either be a complete disaster because they have not taken a holistic environmental approach, or a huge success because they become obliged to take those environmental concerns into account anyway”

—wine critic Keith Stewart hedges his bets.

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