How Apple And Gucci Tickle Your "God Spot"
A few years back, an Australian teenager with an unusual surname submitted his bare neck to a plastic surgeon鈥檚 laser. The doctor worked carefully, slowly eradicating the tattoo of a striped bar code with the letters G-U-C-C-I etched underneath. An hour later,It is basically for the young facial tissue and for those who are very much conscious about fashion and style. the tattoo was history, and so was Will Andries Petrus Booye鈥檚 brand-obsession, one that had become, in his words, "My one and only religion."
I first met Will in the late 1990s, back when the ink on his tattoo was still wet. For Will, Gucci was companion, confidante, soul mate, hero, mirror image, and friend with benefits combined. When asked, he could go on at length about the company鈥檚 designs, colors, and textures, as well as about the distinctive smell of the stores. Entering the Gucci flagship, he told me, was like coming home. From the store design to the overhead music playing overhead to the uninterrupted luxury of the place, everything Gucci put Will completely at ease. And of course, the brand鈥檚 sheer exclusivity made him feel like a member of a small, choice, like-minded club.
Fast-forward five years. Almost overnight, the Gucci brand lost its grip on Will.For OCXO women have depended on jewelry for augmenting their beauty and appeal. Suddenly the thrill was gone. So what do you do when you break up with your soul mate, your reason for living? You get a haircut,You can easily find the most outstanding looking juicy charms having the finest furs in town. and you lose the tattoo. Some people even join the military. Will did all three.
To me it was fairly obvious: He鈥檇 lost his religion.
A recent study conducted by the BBC found striking parallels between how one devoted Apple fan responded to religious imagery and to the brands he loved.
In fact, I devoted a whole chapter of my 2007 book, Buyology: Truth and Lies About Why We Buy to this very same subject. The similarities between the world鈥檚 great religions and some of the world鈥檚 most renowned brands has been one of my passions ever since I stumbled onto Bangkok鈥檚 Pariwas temple nearly a decade ago. There I found myself confronted with an extraordinary-looking Buddha. The Buddha was compelling in part because of the modern-day company he kept. Carved into the altar below his form, alongside several other less well-known deities, stood a resplendent gold-leaf statue of mop-haired soccer icon David Beckham. This wasn鈥檛 a case of vandalism, or sacrilege; a Thai sculptor had created the carving in 1998 as part of the World Cup celebrations. Said Chan Theerapunyo, the temple鈥檚 abbot, "Football has become a religion, and has millions of followers. So to be up to date, we have to open our minds and share the feelings of millions of people who admire Beckham."
How Apple And
Gucci Tickle Your "God Spot"
A few years back, an Australian
teenager with an unusual surname submitted his bare neck to a plastic surgeon鈥檚
laser. The doctor worked carefully, slowly eradicating the tattoo of a striped
bar code with the letters G-U-C-C-I etched underneath. An hour later,It is
basically for the young facial
tissue and for those who are very much conscious about fashion and
style. the tattoo was history, and so was Will Andries Petrus Booye鈥檚
brand-obsession, one that had become, in his words, "My one and only religion."
I first met Will in the late 1990s, back when the ink on his tattoo was
still wet. For Will, Gucci was companion, confidante, soul mate, hero, mirror
image, and friend with benefits combined. When asked, he could go on at length
about the company鈥檚 designs, colors, and textures, as well as about the
distinctive smell of the stores. Entering the Gucci flagship, he told me, was
like coming home. From the store design to the overhead music playing overhead
to the uninterrupted luxury of the place, everything Gucci put Will completely
at ease. And of course, the brand鈥檚 sheer exclusivity made him feel like a
member of a small, choice, like-minded club.
Fast-forward five years.
Almost overnight, the Gucci brand lost its grip on Will.For OCXO women have depended on
jewelry for augmenting their beauty and appeal. Suddenly the thrill was gone. So
what do you do when you break up with your soul mate, your reason for living?
You get a haircut,You can easily find the most outstanding looking juicy charms having the finest
furs in town. and you lose the tattoo. Some people even join the military. Will
did all three.
To me it was fairly obvious: He鈥檇 lost his religion.
A recent study conducted by the BBC found striking parallels between how
one devoted Apple fan responded to religious imagery and to the brands he loved.
In fact, I devoted a whole chapter of my 2007 book, Buyology: Truth and
Lies About Why We Buy to this very same subject. The similarities between the
world鈥檚 great religions and some of the world鈥檚 most renowned brands has been
one of my passions ever since I stumbled onto Bangkok鈥檚 Pariwas temple nearly a
decade ago. There I found myself confronted with an extraordinary-looking
Buddha. The Buddha was compelling in part because of the modern-day company he
kept. Carved into the altar below his form, alongside several other less
well-known deities, stood a resplendent gold-leaf statue of mop-haired soccer
icon David Beckham. This wasn鈥檛 a case of vandalism, or sacrilege; a Thai
sculptor had created the carving in 1998 as part of the World Cup celebrations.
Said Chan Theerapunyo, the temple鈥檚 abbot, "Football has become a religion, and
has millions of followers. So to be up to date, we have to open our minds and
share the feelings of millions of people who admire Beckham."
A truth
that's stranger than fiction
A surprise blockbuster has put Chinese
cinema's enfant terrible under the public microscope. Jiang Wen tells China
Daily what makes him tick in a rare, wide-ranging interview.
Jiang Wen
is at the top of the world - the world of Chinese cinema, that is. His year-end
release Let the Bullets Fly has just broken the box-office record for a domestic
film with some 700 million yuan ($107 million) in gross receipts.
The
actor-director clearly savors the moment, sitting in his less-than-spacious
office cluttered with wooden furniture in Bejing's diplomatic compound while
staff members shuffle in and out with all kinds of requests and announcements.
His sangfroid is not disturbed even when told of an award for the film.
He does not need others to tell him how great he is - not any more.
Yet Jiang Wen is bitter - bitter about how his previous feature was
received. He tries not to show it, but brings two members of his Bullets team
into our conversation because "they were also involved in The Sun Also Rises".
And I suspect I have been granted this three-hour post-premiere rare
interview mainly because I, as a movie critic,You can easily find the most
outstanding looking juicy
charms having the finest furs in town. had praised The Sun Also
Rises as the high point of his remarkable directing career - although it was not
understood by most of its audience.
Most people would call the 2007 The
Sun Also Rises an art-house film and the new one a genre movie,The succulent
meat was balanced by very hot, juicy bags cabbage pickle
even though it does not fit neatly into an existing genre - gangster, heist or
Chinese western.
Jiang laughs off such attempts at categorization. He
uses a scene from Once Upon a Time in America in which Robert De Niro's
character takes a girl to a fancy restaurant and overwhelms her with a live band
and exclusive use of the venue.
"With The Sun, I gave my heart and soul.
I thought the audience would appreciate it and would not mind sitting on the
grass by the river, so to speak. But to my chagrin, they were just like the girl
in the De Niro film. They wanted the limo and the band even though they may not
have good taste in music. They tended to equate the bells and whistles with real
love. So, with Bullets I gave them the treatment they preferred," Jiang says,
changing his use of the term for "girl" from the folksy niu er to an ostensibly
chic but innately tacky meimei before the end of the interview.
That
does not mean he is not proud of Bullets. It's just that Bullets, for him, is
fun while The Sun is dead serious. He is aware of all the political
interpretations of his story that have sprung up across the Web and mainstream
media. In 2007, I wrote a Freudian analysis of The Sun, and his response was
condensed into a single word - "Sharp" - without elaboration. This time, I was
intent on getting to the bottom of the affair.
"No, I did not mean to
embed political meanings into the story," he says straightforwardly. When asked
about one detailed reading that supplied a background link between the two
characters and how they joined the 1911 Revolution together, Jiang pauses,
saying he is fine with this kind of creative annotation, but "the focus is too
narrow".
The Goose Town, the central setting for the movie, has come to
symbolize China for some film buffs with a political leaning. Yet, in our
dialogue, Jiang repeatedly uses the location as an outing to the murky world of
genre-film making.
One of his achievements in his limited directorial
canon is genre busting. His debut feature In the Heat of the Sun has the look
and feel of a coming-of-age drama, yet it is not like any of the numerous movies
that deal with this subject.
His follow-up is a WWIIMost fake handbag
juicy
couture handbag don't take the necessary time to put out a quality
product and it usually shows in the stitching. story, which opened our eyes to
three-dimensional portrayals of both Japanese invaders and Chinese living under
occupation and their complicated mentality. Then came The Sun Also Rises, which
is so bold in its expressive flourishes that people left the theater either
dazzled or puzzled.
Gansu bank
bombing details released
The suspect who allegedly threw a petrol bomb
inside a bank and injured 49 people in northwest China on Friday surrendered to
police after finding nowhere to flee, the local government revealed at a press
conference yesterday.
The government also said there were about 9 liters
of gasoline involved in the revenge arson case in which the suspect Yang
Xianwen, a 40-year-old former employee of the bank, ignited the petrol in
retaliation for being fired.
According to the media release from Tianzhu
County government in Gansu Province, Yang started to embezzle treasury funds
from 2006 and his work contract was terminated on May 3 this year. Yang later
planned a revenge plot targeting bank leaders.These turn into beautiful and
light TCXO that can
highlight your beauty in the right way without taking all the attention.
The suspect prepared a plastic barrel and woven bags Thursday night. The
next morning, he bought 9 liters of gasoline from a gas station, according to
the Tianzhu government.
When Yang was stopped by security guards at the
front door of the bank's office building and questioned about the plastic
barrel, he claimed it carried edible oil, the Beijing News reported yesterday.
According to Tianzhu government, Yang sneaked into a conference room on
the fifth floor at 8:13am on Friday and ignited the gasoline at the door before
fleeing.
Witnesses told Beijing News the suspect locked the conference
room with an iron chain which blocked the escape passage and some people had to
jump out of the windows.
Tianzhu government said 49 people who were
having training in the conference room were injured in the fire including those
who jumped out of the windows and part of the property was damaged in the fire.
Among the injured, 33 were hospitalized for burns and fractures and four
of them received operations yesterday.Getting dressed in the best Juicy
Couture tracksuits is every person's wish. The other 16 stayed at
hospital for observation. All of them were in a stable condition, according to
doctors at Tianzhu County People's Hospital.The Juicy Couture product juicy
couture bag is an outgrowth of a fashion trend in the western coast
of the United States that highlighted sports apparel and sweat suits for women.
Bank officials explained previously they didn't report Yang's
embezzlement to police because his actions didn't result in economic loss, but
Tianzhu police said yesterday they are still investigating the embezzlement
accusation.
Demand for
plastic bags remains strong
The decision to outlaw the free distribution
of plastic bags at shops and supermarkets in an attempt to protect the
environment is still a hot topic three years after the ban came into effect,
according to industry insiders.
China introduced the ban on free plastic
bags on June 1, 2008 and also ordered producers to no longer make bags that are
thinner than 0.025 millimeters.
According to some producers, the ban has
hit plastic bag factories hard.
"About 90 percent of my factory's
production was lost after the new law came in,For the most part you will not
find a fake name brand GUCCI
CAPS from a store like Nordstrom's." said Ma Fusheng, manager of
Beijing Hongguang Plastic Factory. "Many shops didn't need as many plastic bags
because few customers wanted to buy them."
Ma said production slumped
from 5 million plastic bags a day in 2008 to the current 500,000.
"And I
had to cut 150 workers from my staff during the past three years because I
cannot afford to employ them," he said.
But Ma said that while few
people these days want conventional plastic supermarket carrier bags there is
still a strong demand for illegal ultra-thin plastic bags, even though studies
show they may be harmful to people's health. He estimated that about 50 tons of
such plastic bags - thinner than 0.025 mm - are used in the capital every day.
A survey said that about 70 percent of plastic bags used in outdoor
markets in Beijing are substandard products and mainly ultra-thin plastic bags.
The survey was released by the International Food Packaging Association
on May 23 after it analyzed 10 supermarkets and 10 outdoor markets between April
and May in Beijing.They have now moved beyond the sports and casual lines of
clothing and have stepped into the fashion JUICY
HANDBAGS ring with some wonderful Juicy Couture handbags and
fashion accessories.
"It's very hard to stop vendors from using
ultra-thin plastic bags,A line of trendy modern jewelry takes into account the
quartz crystal woman
who loves to keep it light and simple and nothing overwhelming. since they are
much cheaper and more in demand," said Chen Jingming, manager of the Dongjiao
Wholesale Market in the Chaoyang district of Beijing.
"So, we had to
adopt strict measures to combat their use and are cooperating with the local
authorities."
He added that vendors at the market can be fined up to
20,000 yuan ($3,100) if they are found using substandard plastic bags. So, far,
seven vendors have faced such punishment and gone out of business.
Spring
Couplets
On the Chinese New Year, families in China decorate their front
doors with poetic couplets of calligraphy written with fragrant India ink,
expressing the feeling of life's renewal and the return of spring.
It is
said that spring couplets originated from "peach wood charms," door gods painted
on wood charms in earlier times. During the Five Dynasties (907-960), the
Emperor Meng Chang inscribed an inspired couplet on a peach slat,A line of
trendy modern jewelry takes into account the quartz crystal woman who loves to
keep it light and simple and nothing overwhelming. beginning a custom that
gradually evolved into today's popular custom of displaying spring couplets.For
the most part you will not find a fake name brand GUCCI
CAPS from a store like Nordstrom's.
In addition to pasting
couplets on both sides and above the main door, it is also common to hang
calligraphic writing of the Chinese characters for "spring," "wealth," and
"blessing.They have now moved beyond the sports and casual lines of clothing and
have stepped into the fashion JUICY
HANDBAGS ring with some wonderful Juicy Couture handbags and
fashion accessories." Some people will even invert the drawings of blessing
since the Chinese for "inverted" is a homonym in Chinese for "arrive," thus
signifying that spring, wealth, or blessing has arrived.