February

This one didn't run in Communicate. A mixture of timeliness (it just missed press day) and editorial concern at the drug references. Huh.

February

On Tuesday February 22nd, Gulf News was wrapped in an advertising feature from a Dubai-based property developer, replacing the day’s dose of front page grim news with ‘advertorial’ from the company. Good stunt, you might think. Until you actually started to read the copy. Now, let us remember that this is not an inexpensive thing to do: at rack rates, you’re looking at way over Dhs 60,000 as an investment. And the tragedy of this particular stunt was that the company quite obviously doesn’t really know what it wants to say. And it certainly didn’t invest in employing anybody with even the barest minimum of writing skills. In fact, it appears to have allowed the whole thing to be written by someone who has just taken LSD. This is not only illegal, it is a bad thing to do when you’re writing copy for a hugely expensive advertising feature. As you read through a page of the finest gibberish, you start to realise that the man that wrote it was gingerly picking out the letters because the keyboard had turned into a dragon’s tummy.

You could tell this from the main headline alone. “Highest standards of living unveiled as the designer’s curtain rises globally”. The designer’s curtain rises globally? This is blither of the highest quality. Only a mind under the influence of something powerfully chemical could have written this. But the complete nonsense of it compels the hapless reader to delve deeper. And be rewarded richly for doing so. A new building has a “surreal interior, the likes of which your company’s boundless imagination never dreamt of”. So my designer has a curtain (a global one, at that) and my company has a boundless imagination. Interesting. What’s more, the building is designed by Lord Norman Foster (“the most astounding living architect of our era”) and “his spacious mind is manifested the second you step in”. And then we go onto new heights of complete tomfoolery as we step into the lobby “where your senses are whisked into the captivating universe only a master can create.”

Certainly, this stuff is the product of a mind even more spacious than Norman Foster’s. And, I submit, a mind struggling to function under the influence of a powerful and twisted psychotropic experience. A mind being, indeed, whisked quite vigorously.

The property company itself, “so unique, so singular” comes in, shockingly, for some praise. It has a vision, you see. In fact, a vision for “filling every niche’s demand when finding there is a gap in a certain area”. Cool. The secret of the company’s success is that, apparently, they build where there is a demand. This is something they should not have revealed: a cat that should have stayed firmly in the bag. Now every property developer will steal this visionary secret and start building to meet demand.

Oh, but there’s more. One development is “targeted for this emerging and unmet market of a classy profile”, another features perks: “other perks embody an anchor supermarket” gushes the prose. So curtains rise globally, architects have spacious minds and perks are embodied. Oh, lordy!

But the acid casualty hasn’t finished messing with our minds yet. The California Sunshine is biting hard now. There’s a bad undercurrent, Chairman Mao has replaced the dragon on the keyboard and he’s ranting from the top of a marshmallow: “Success breeds success if seeded in an environment of refreshing impulses, mutual exchanges and the unfolding of synergies”.

He’s sweating now, his breaths coming in gasps as he tries to churn out copy with the tiny remnant of his mind that’s not surfing on candyfloss. One development “sits just across the fences from the sights of other GCC countries” and another is “perched on 67 acres of picturesque entourage”. Picturesque entourage? He’s slipping away from us now, slowly being lost to the Matrix.

We’re near the bottom of the page, feverishly tapping out the last couple of paragraphs and trying to concentrate as the room sways and hellish voices scream from the dark shadows in the corners. The trip’s turned bad and there’s a Balrog outside the door, banging to get in. The keys are sticky, sucking at his fingers and then biting with little sharp piranha teeth. He’s gone metallic, Big Brother is taking over his personality: “A good business for everyone should be one that is in a valuable sector of the economy that is highly sought after by a significant number of people” his mind shouts out as he struggles to type. And then, thankfully, the blackout comes and he collapses, moaning and twitching, to the floor; saliva running down his slack, idiot cheek.

Somebody, anybody, should have read it before it ran. But I’m glad they didn’t bother. It really did make my day.

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