Tuesday 5 November 2013

A Cover Letter for Under the Covers

As my last post mentioned, I'm desperately seeking employment, as are most of the people I know these days. 

I have a couple of interviews lined up this week for writing positions, which is interesting to me because, despite 5 years education and a paper trail a mile long, I still don't consider myself to be much of a writer. I have a style that I stick to, but I think it's perfect for the current blog writing marketplace. 

Blogs are, for the most part, supposed to be fun and easy to digest, unlike dairy. Dairy is my proverbial bull and I am the china shop. If you're looking for heavy and lengthy there's tons of sites for that too, but I like the fun ones like Buzzfeed and Cracked

I recently applied for a position at my dream company, Sid Lee, again. I've probably applied there like five times in five different ways, so this time I got really creative. 

Sid Lee Montreal
75 Queen St, Montreal, QC H3C 2N6

Re: Position

My dearest Sid Lee,

I’ve watched you from afar for a while now. You don’t know me, but I know you. I’ve seen you grow from a tiny Montreal company, to a worldwide powerhouse, coveted by everyone. You’ve filled out very nicely in the last 20 years.

Word around town is that you’re in bed with Absolut now. That’s great, honestly. I’m happy when you’re happy. I’ll be the first one to say how nice Absolut is and everything (http://coco-moloko.blogspot.ca/2012/10/absolut-spotlight.html), but I can’t help but think that you’d be happier with me instead.

Hear me out baby I got what it takes to treat you right. I have a Diploma and a Degree in Communications with a major in Advertising. In University I learned how to write well. They called me the cunningist linguist in the class, something you can experience first-hand if you call me up, don’t be shy. In College I experimented with Creative Suite, which was as soft as a Cloud but was way too expensive. I don’t mean to be vulgar, Sid, but Adobe taught me how to do things with my hands that I never thought I could possibly do. Give me a chance to show you what I can do with these hands and this mind.

I wrote you a love song. Did you see it? I know I’m not the best singer, but you are my muse. Was I coming on too strong? Too many euphemisms? You can call me a pig Sid, but weren’t you always the one to say "A pig is a filthy animal, but a pig has personality, which goes a long way." Listen to my song babe, if there’s one thing I’m not lacking, its personality.

I just don’t know what I need to do to get your attention. I feel like you’re the most popular one in school, and you don’t even know I exist. That’s why I’m writing you this note, because if Breakfast Club taught me anything (which it didn’t) it’s that you should always try. I got all the qualities you’re looking for; I’m organized, a good team player, and I’m a great listener. I’ll come to your window and blast my love song out of a raised boombox, Say Anything style, just as soon as I can track down a working boombox.

Please Sid, call me so we can talk about this. My number is XXX-XXX-XXXX, and my email is XXXXX@XXXX.COM. I’ll wait by the phone every day for your call.

Love,

MY NAME
Do you think I'm gonna get the job?

Wednesday 30 October 2013

Update to End All Updates

Wow, have I been gone a while.

A literal TON of things have been happening to me lately, stealing me away from my precious Milk Bar. 

To name a few:

1) I graduated from a five-year school program and got two shiny pieces of paper
2) I moved to Montreal to pursue my medium-sized city dreams
3) I won a big contest/monetary award. More info here
4) I got to see BEYONCE!!! We were legit like 4 rows away from her, and it was that concert where she got her hair stuck in the fan. Unbe-weave-able!
5) I went to Europe for a month and basically went everywhere in the west and centre and it was fabulous
6) My mom came to visit me in Montreal, which was just super

But now I am at a crossroads. Basically I need a job yesterday. 
I'm calling out to you readers (reader?).


Playse help.
Looking for work in the Communications/Advertising industry (everyone: "duh") in Montreal.
I will work for almost nothing, but a girl's gotta eat. 
And I eat a lot. Like, Jabba the Hutt levels. 

Tuesday 23 April 2013

Some More Great Old Sexist Ads

These never get old, except for everything about them.


I know that having messy hair also makes me want to kill myself, but I usually don't use a noose, some poison and a gun to do it. Points to this messy haired gal for making sure she does it right the first time.


"Be the you he likes", not that terrible gorilla beast you become when you have cramps. Midol helps you "soothe accompanying irritability" that is inherent to every woman on all the periods she has in her life forever.


Housewives get tired of "having to do the same dull work every day" so much that it's a "mild form of torture"! Being a housewife makes any lady experience "boredom and emotional fatigue", whatever that is. It's definitely not a rewarding and life-altering experience for any gal, and surely a man isn't going to "make beds and get meals", no sir! 


This ad isn't so bad to me because it looks like it was made a long time ago, before the invention of photography. Nevertheless, back then there were 5 million women who wanted to get married. Listerine spent millions of dollars and many years asking every female on the planet if it was true. They all agreed that their main purpose in life was to find a man, marry him, and never be irritable or bored. 


Aww, the Volkswagon is dented! Look how sad it looks. Someone must have let a woman drive it! Everyone knows that ladies get flustered and overwhelmed when they have to do two things at once, like press a gas pedal and turn a steering wheel. She was probably applying lipstick at the time or lighting a menthol cigarette. The first line of the copy says "Women are soft and gentle, but they hit things." Truer words were never spoken. 


Women of the future will make the Moon a cleaner place to live. Thankfully, future technologies are in place so that women can keep the Moon sparkling clean. They also must adhere to strict safety measures like wearing a space helmet that stops at the neck, and wearing lots of mascara to deflect glare. Hands do not need to be covered on the Moon to allow for better scrubbing. 

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New ideas are scary. 

Thursday 11 April 2013

New Arrested Development Posters

OMGOMGOMG look! I can't believe it's actually happening!








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Love everything about this, especially the ice cream sandwich.
Season 4, yay!

Sunday 7 April 2013

Could a Viral Video be the Resume of the Future?

I just graduated from a 5 year Communications program a few days ago, I'll be getting both a degree and a diploma with my very own name on it.

But now comes the most dreaded time of any student's life, the time when you must go free into the world and try to get a job. It's no secret that it's tough to get a job in the current marketplace because it's hard to make yourself stand out from the crowd.

I've tossed a resume or two in Sid Lee's direction, but I didn't hear anything back, so I decided to take matters into my own hands.. and put a ukulele in them.


I've sent it to the HR person and now am just sitting back and waiting for the video to reach 1 million views. 

If I get a job from this the world will never be the same probably.

Friday 5 April 2013

Queen Bey

Beyonce released a teaser a few days ago, it goes a little something like this
Amazing right? And no explanation given. A few days late this commercial came out
Love it, love her, love everything about this.

And as if we're doing teaser trailers for commercials now, what a world we live in. I bow down to Beyonce, gon' wit chyo bad self guuurrrlll.

Wednesday 3 April 2013

Face Off Obsession

I'm obsessed with Face Off.

And no, I don't mean the 1997 movie starring Nicholas Cage and John Travolta.

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It's a reality contest on the Syfy channel (which apparently exists) about people competing to do the best special effects makeup. Kinda like Project Runway if they were making zombies. 
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I watched 2 seasons in 2 days and basically now I've decided that I want to do this somehow. There are so many complicated, expensive-looking steps on the road to making a finished piece, and the contestants usually have 2 and a half days to make, paint and style their finished looks. 

One episode in season 3 had the contestants making a new alien to put in the famous Star Wars Cantina scene.

They came up with some amazing things.
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Like this evil little Buddha in a robotic chair. 
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Or this party girl waitress, whose head looks kinda like a.... well, you know what it looks like.
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This aquatic queen alien chick looks like a hot squid woman straight out of Legend of Zelda.

But there's always some fails too.
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This guy was supposed to look like a soulful addition to the Cantina band, but he ended up looking like Darth Maul's burnt brother.
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This guy(?) looks like an abomination who just wants to be put out of it's misery. 
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All in all they make for wonderful little aliens. 
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Another stand out episode happened in Season 2 when the contestants had to add another character to fit in to the magical world of Tim Burton. 

The characters they bring to life usually have a complex back story and are driven by a set of morals, either for good or  for evil. Many of them could probably have their own stand alone movies and could definitely be made into toys. 

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This lonely bellhop lives in an enchanted hotel. He steals women's underwear when no one is looking. 

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The ice cream man can't figure out why all the kids run away from his ice cream truck when he pops his head out the window. How much do you love the sprinkles on this mouth and his waffle cone hat?

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This gender ambiguous cellist's love has become a cello. He/she must play the cello to keep his/her love alive. It is also slowly transforming into a cello.

Don't you just want to be a part of this world so bad!?

Check it out, but clear your schedule because you'll get hooked like I did. 

Sunday 31 March 2013

Selfless Portrait

Selfless Portraits is a web app thing where you're matched up with a stranger from anywhere in the world. You draw their Facebook profile pic and you're given another stranger to draw yours. It's so easy!

The final results can range from the super good...




To the super bad..ish?



I participated in Selfess Portraits and got this 19 year old girl from Brazil with an overexposed, bad-angled snap.
Kind of half-assed my contribution to her but ain't nobody got time for dat.


She looks like the kind of girl that would be into Andy Warhol...

After waiting for like a month I finally got mine back. Derek from Illinois really captured my spirit and chin.


It's probably the best I've ever looked.

I highly recommend checking out the website or participating if you've got the time. Derek proved to us all that you really don't need to spend very long on your final result.

Hope yours turns out better than mine.

Saturday 30 March 2013

Game of Thrones Season 3 Mash Up


OMG according to their website, Season 3 of everyone's favorite Game will be premiering tomorrow!
As Kermit the Frog once said, "Yaaaaaaaaaaaaayyyyyy".
Who's your favorite character?

Thursday 28 March 2013

(Fake) Nike Ads for 2013




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These are some great new (fake) Nike ads featuring sports greats like Lance Armstrong, Michael Vick, OJ Simpson and Oscar Pistorius.

They point out the high value that our society places on sports legends, and we tend to collectively forgive their many transgressions because of the many contributions(?) they give to us. 

I think it's high time we start lessening up the huge value of sport that we celebrate in North America. In Ancient Greece athletes were unpaid amateurs, and played only for pride, glory and possibly bragging rights.

Being the best of anything in the world probably comes with a lot of pressure, and there are people all over the world that commit crimes like these, but don't get such worldwide attention. The problem comes in when other athletes of all ages look up to these personalities as role models. If you are great at playing football and you see that OJ can get away with murder because he's great at football, what stops you from doing the same?

Obviously not all football players are murderers, but at least one of them (probably) is. I mean, he wrote a book called If I Did It. Come on.

Nike pays athletes a lot of money to use athletes as examples, and some of those athletes are even featured in this list. Some are not, like Tiger Woods

Many sports involve the player getting a ball in a hole by one means or another, why do we make them out to be way more than that?

Monday 25 March 2013

Ore-Oh My!


Whoever is on Oreo's creative team is a genius and deserves Al Gore's Nobel Peace Prize. And Oscar. 

Thursday 21 March 2013

Don't be "That Guy": Anti-Rape Campaign


Here's a great print ad from the Vancouver Police Department, and really timely considering all of the news coming out of the Stubenville trial.

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Too often the message is focused towards the women with warnings like "watch your drink!" and "always have a friend watching you". We should move to collectively shifting the message to "if you drug someone, these are the consequences". I have never been aware of such a rampant and clear message of victim blaming than in the Stubenville case these past few weeks. 

I sympathise with men in that they often have to "prove" their masculinity, especially when they're younger and insecure, and within a group of their friends. For younger males, sex is sometimes treated as a contest to see who can get the most girls in bed. The man with the lowest score is threatened with labels like "gay" or "pussy", especially when confronted by his team-mates in the sport that he identifies himself with. 

Females are not exempt from all blame either, two of the victim's friends have been arrested for issuing threats over social media. Despite what some (usually younger) people think, it's not anonymous and you can be held accountable for what you say on Facebook and over text.

It's within ultra rigid gender binaries that dominant masculinity and submissive femininity provide a backdrop for the horrible events in Stubenville can occur. As a society we need to re-evaluate not only the objectification of women but the hyper masculinization of man, which are never as prevalent as in high schools. It also seems as though rape is still a common occurrence worldwide, no matter the geographical location. 

As a 24 year old woman, I still don't understand why the threat of rape still has to be a worry that hums in the back of my mind whenever I go out at night, or when I'm walking alone during the day. I don't think it's fair that I should always have to watch my drink and keep my guard up, but I don't feel as though there's anything that I can do to change this. 

Now, news outlets and bloggers are frantically posting updates highlighting different places to point blame for the events of that horrible night in Stubenville. It's the boys fault, the girls fault, her friends for not stepping in, the coaches fault because he knew about it and did nothing, society's fault, football's fault, the parent's faults, you could go on all day. 

It was a huge combination of factors that lead to this story which has captured the attention of an international audience. Perhaps it will dissuade future rapists by the harsh example set from the verdict of Judge Thomas Lipps. Maybe it will prevent girls from pursuing a court case against their rapist(s) because of its potential to turn into a worldwide spectacle, blasted on every news outlet and social media platform, and she is demonized further by complete strangers.

Whatever happens, I hope that some good comes of this, and that we are shaken out of our dream-state in which equality amongst the sexes has been attained and women don't live in near-constant fear. I hope that this viral YouTube report make other news stations think carefully about how they report future cases like this one, and they acknowledge their position of power as the primary source for the general public to receive these messages. I hope that moms and dads are not only warning their daughters about how they should behave in social situations, but that moms and dads are warning their sons too. 

I really hope that some good comes of this, so let's not let this international focus go to waste. 

#endrapeculture

Saturday 16 March 2013

Bad to the Block






When it comes to ideas, usually the simpler, the better.
Exemplified here by Pilot Extrafine pens. Are Lego guys not subject to copyright though? 

Tuesday 12 March 2013

Mad Mentality


The new Mad Men poster is out! Is it full of spoilers or isn't it?
Is that Dick Whitman over Don's shoulder? Whose hand is that that he's holding? Why are the police there?

Love the illustrated feel! I think we need more illustrations in advertising, they really stick out form all the digital stuff out there.

Sunday 10 March 2013

Great angle.

This outdoor ad for the Vancouver Aquarium is super smart. Outdoor ads compliment the internet really well, because a well-placed, smart outdoor ad can go viral very easily. 

All you need to do is make one mock-up (this one looks like it's all Photoshop) and let the Likes, Pins and Retweets roll in.

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