X-Men Origins: Wolverine

***SPOILERS AHEAD***

The main problem I see with origin stories and prequels is that they have the potential to be really boring, as we already know how things turn out. The story needs to be pretty damn good on its own, or what’s the point? The writers of Wolverine don’t seem to agree with me on this, as they’ve gone the George Lucas route of ‘less story, more explosions’.

What was I really expecting, you ask? To be fair, my expectations only extended as far as stuff getting slashed up with adamantium claws, and a few shirtless Hugh Jackman scenes, and on these counts I wasn’t disappointed. There’s an abundance of slashing claw scenes, as well as a few too many gratuitous slow-mo close-ups of the claws being unsheathed. It’s like nerd porn. The shirtless Hugh scenes are even more gratuitous, and as an added bonus there’s a bit where he runs around completely naked for a while. Unfortunately I must be growing up or something, as I’ve realised that shirtless/naked Hugh just isn’t enough.

The ‘story’ starts with wee Wolverine as a child back in the 18-somethings, who appears to be a bit sickly. He’s still sprightly enough to jump out of bed and stab his weird bone claws into the guy who just killed his dad, only it turns out that the guy he thought was his dad wasn’t, and the guy he just killed was. But there’s no time for daddy issues or explanations of this mysterious plot point, because Wolverine has a new brother, Sabretooth. And they’re about to do a war montage! Guns! Claws! Big cigars! And this is all the brotherly bonding you get, because right after the montage that Stryker guy from X-Men 2 recruits them into his team of (all male. Just saying…) mutants who do sword tricks and try to retrieve some amulet for no reason. Then the brothers have a falling out when Wolverine stops Sabretooth from killing some guy and then wanders off to Canada to live in a cabin and chop wood. Bastard.

Apparently this is enough reason for Sabretooth to hunt down The Only Girl In The Movie, who also happens to be Wolverine’s girlfriend, and kill her. And it’s pretty sad, because I really grew attached to her in those three minutes as she drove Wolverine to work, fetched him beer, and told him a whimsical story. But she’s much more valuable in death than she was in life, as her death serves as a plot point to make Wolverine roar a lot and get pumped full of adamantium so he can enact the classic superhero revenge scenario and kill some guy over some girl.

Then there’s a lot of claw slashing and Wolverine walking in slow-motion with fire in the background and a weird scene where he has a boxing match with a guy in a ludicrously fake looking fat-suit. No real reason for this, other than that it gives Wolverine the opportunity to make snarky comments about fat people, cause they’re so fat and funny. And when they move, they jiggle! Oh, the hilarity. Also, Gambit shows up, presumably because so many people complained about him not appearing in any of the X-Men movies. According to Dan he was ‘not French enough’, so I’m not sure it was quite the moment X-Men fans had been waiting for. At least he was pretty.

Of course it turns out at the end that The Only Girl In The Movie isn’t dead after all, and she is, in fact, Evil because she seduced Wolverine and faked her death so that Wolverine would think Sabretooth killed her and get the adamantium bones so he could defeat him, and then Stryker would be able to use him as an indestructible human weapon. So it turns out that all that stuff that happened for no reason actually did have a reason. Except that reason makes no sense. Seriously, that’s a pretty convoluted scheme. Especially considering that Sabretooth and the girlfriend (whose name is Kayla, apparently) staged the fake death in the middle of a forest that Wolverine just happened to stumble blindly into. He could just have easily spent the rest of the movie sitting on his couch saying ‘Where’s Kayla? She’s usually home by now.’ What happened to the tried and true ‘dump body in Wolverine’s bed where he’s sure to see her’ plan? Also, she’s looking pretty clean and untraumatised, so I’m guessing he didn’t take the time to BURY her or anything. Way to leave your girlfriend’s corpse lying around to get eaten by wildlife, or prodded with sticks by inquisitive schoolchildren.

Anyway (and this is important, or it would be if this plot, like, made sense), it turns out that Kayla has the power to persuade people to do things when she’s touching them. Also, we know that she really does love Wolverine, because when he’s yelling at her a bit of saline dribbles down her face.

So why did she trick him into this ridiculous scheme? Because Stryker has her mutant sister locked up in his evil lair, and this was the only way to make him release her. Hey, wouldn’t it be awesome if she had some kind of power she could use in this situation? Some way of persuading him to…oh. That’s right. SHE DOES. But apparently it’s much simpler to spend a while living with some guy in a log cabin and then faking your own death than TOUCHING SOMEONE’S ARM AND MAKING THEM DO YOUR BIDDING.

My head hurts.

It turns out Stryker was lying about releasing the sister, so Kayla asks Wolverine to bust her out with his claws – again, instead of just using her own power to make Stryker let her out. Then there’s an awesome scene where Wolverine looks at each different cage with a mutant in it and furrows his brow and you can see the cogs grinding away in his brain as he thinks ‘That can’t be her sister. That’s a man!’. That happens about five times until he decides that all this thinking isn’t getting him anywhere, and he just smashes open all the cages. Kayla hugs her sister and Wolverine gives them a weird look, like ‘Oh, the girl? That makes sense, I guess.’

The mutants all escape, except for Kayla who’s been shot and decides that she’d rather stay in the evil lair and help Wolverine by…lying on the floor until the building collapses around her. Then persuading Stryker to bugger off AFTER he’s put two adamantium bullets in Wolverine’s head. Because the only thing that can kill him is the metal he’s made of. That makes sense. Of course, he’s not dead, because he’s in all those other movies, but there’s an awfully long shot of his immobile body as if we’re supposed to think he might be. Turns out Stryker managed to hit the memory centre of his brain dead-on, while cleverly avoiding damaging the bits that might make him crippled or blind or something. So when he sees Kayla’s corpse (for real this time) he doesn’t remember who she is. That’ll teach her for being a bad, bad woman and breaking Wolverine’s heart.

And what of Sabretooth? Well, he and Wolverine fight a guy with no mouth on top of a tower and learn about the power of teamwork. Then they seem to have forgotten what they were fighting about and stand really close to each other for a while. Fair enough, by now I’ve forgotten who enacted each ridiculous plot point as well.

On the plus side, it does make X-Men 3 look a whole lot better.

Incidentally, when I typed ‘wolverine’ into wikipedia, this is what I found:

Isn’t it cute? Apparently it is a member of the weasel family and 'has been known to give off a very strong, extremely unpleasant odor, giving rise to the nicknames "skunk bear" and "nasty cat."' I’m thinking that our Wolverine should’ve done just a little research before having that name engraved on his dog tags.

The comedy of storytelling

We’re currently 17 days into the Melbourne International Comedy Festival and I’ve seen 19 shows so far. There are 11 more on my shortlist, and I’ll most likely end up going to a few more spur-of-the-moment ones as well. It’s madness, really. Accidental madness.

Before I lived in Melbourne I didn’t think about stand-up comedy very much. There isn’t much comedy of any kind in Canberra, live or otherwise. I saw it now and then on TV, and later at a few comedy clubs in London, and yeah, it was fun at the time, but there didn’t seem to be much to it. One guy makes some random observations for ten minutes, then another guy comes out and does the same thing, followed by another, and another, ad nauseum. Entertaining, but ultimately shallow and forgettable.

Oh, my pre-Melbourne naivety.

The comedy scene wasn’t something I consciously chose to become involved in, but sort of fell into when I moved to Melbourne through a friend of a friend of a friend…and before you know it, everyone I know is either a comedian, a fan or a reviewer or all three. And it’s brilliant, not only because they’re all wonderful people, but because I’ve been exposed to a comedy scene I never knew existed, and it’s introduced me to all sorts of innovative ways to tell a story.

I’ve recently remembered something that Chuck Palahniuk said when I saw him speak a couple of years ago. After some early forays into writing terrible Stephen King rip-offs, he apparently began to develop his own writing style after it was suggested that he try to just write the way he and other people tell stories orally. The part that stays with me is when he said that he sees a lot of stand-up comedians as they’re the only professional oral storytellers left in our culture and that writers can learn a lot from the way they use timing, delivery and rhythm to tell a story.

Now that I know how comedy works in Melbourne (festival comedy, at least), this means a lot more to me. It’s rare for me now to see a festival show that doesn’t have some kind of theme or plot or idea tying it all together – that isn’t, essentially, about telling a story. There’s even a Storyteller’s Club for just that purpose. And when I talk to the comedians I know about their shows and their intentions, it seems clear to me that what they’re primarily focused on is the story or the message they want to get across, not the jokes. Obviously jokes are a vital part of anything that calls itself a comedy show, but I’ve started to think of these comedians as people who want to say something meaningful about their world, their society, themselves, but just happen to focus on the humourous aspects of their story. So far this festival I’ve seen shows about politics, war, cancer, and the end of the world – all potentially humourless topics made hilarious by performers who see the funny side of the stories they feel driven to tell. As Chuck suggested, the delivery has a lot to do with it. The stand-ups I see now are light years away from the ones I used to see on TV – they use props, multimedia, music, lighting, as well as their own physical and vocal talents, to craft their story. And that’s not even taking into account the sketch shows, the musicals, the plays, and even the museum tours.

There’s also something very compelling about the ‘oral storytelling’ factor to a live comedy act. In a culture where everything is recorded in some way – written, filmed, conversations blogged or held over email or facebook – there’s an added lure to a show that you know you may never see again. There’s an immediacy that isn’t there with something like film, where you know you can just pick up the DVD if you miss it in the movies. Even seeing the same comedy show on a different night can lead to a slightly different show and experience. And even if these shows are never performed again after the festival ends, they can still live on in true oral storytelling tradition, passed from person to person, evolving as they go. As much as we try to pin our stories and experiences down to the page, or try to capture them with a camera, I don’t know if anything can really replace the urge to simply tell someone a story, or the pleasure of hearing someone tell one. Maybe that sense of engagement with the performer, the sense that they’re talking directly to you, is one of the biggest attractions of a live comedy show. While this isn’t something that can be directly translated to written stories, I can’t help but feel that there’s something I can learn and use to some effect in writing.

The search for female authors continues…

As part of my ongoing quest to read more work by female authors, I present my latest crop – the good, the bad and the ugly.

Clown Girl, by Monica Drake
It’s been about five months since I read Clown Girl and I’ve been trying unsuccessfully to write something about it ever since. It’s such a multi-layered book that every time I think I’ve managed to convey the essence of it, I notice something else that makes everything I’ve said seem too simplistic. So I’ll limit myself to saying that it’s a dark, complex story that perfectly captures that feeling of limbo that comes between one phase of life and the next, and all the possibilities and trepidation that come along with that. The story is that of Nita, aka Sniffles the clown, who is caught in a cycle of sickness, poverty and loss; torn between using her clowning abilities for money or art…something that I think any creative type can relate to. That may sound like a bit of a downer, but the story is infused with equal parts cynicism and idealism, and Sniffles’ clown persona gives the novel a surreal and darkly comical tone. And it’s so, so refreshing to spend time with such a relatable female character who hasn’t been dressed up in stereotypes. Highly recommended – can’t wait for Ms Drake’s next book.

The Making of Mia, by Ilana Fox
Warning – I’m going to ruin the ending so that no-one will be compelled to actually read the book. It’s for your own good.

In stark contrast to Clown Girl, The Making of Mia is ‘chick lit’ at its most unashamed. It’s the first chick lit I’ve read (unless you count Jane Austen, which I don’t) and the only reason I did was because the author is a friend of Dan’s and he bought a copy. I tried to approach it with an open mind, I really did.

It’s about Jo, who dreams of becoming a (ahem) ‘journalist’ for a glossy women’s mag, but is too fat and unattractive to be anything but an assistant, despite her superior skills at writing articles about fashion and weight loss. Despite a flourishing freelance career that allows her to live in a Miami penthouse (just like real freelance writers…?), all she really wants to do is return to London and humiliate the boss who taunted her when she was a fat assistant. Cue several chapters of jogging, eating lettuce and, eventually, plastic surgery so radical that her best friend doesn’t recognise her.

I was really appalled by this book – firstly because of the surgery issue, which is presented as the only reasonable avenue for Jo to take. There’s a token sentence at the end of the book about ‘now she realised that women’s magazines had given her an unhealthy body image’, though this doesn’t prompt her to remove her cheek implants. Secondly, because none of the female characters have any real agency. Jo uses her ‘feminine wiles’ to sucker and then blackmail her boss, starting an ‘alternative’ women’s mag with the proceeds. Her friend at the rival magazine works at sabotaging it so that Jo’s magazine can succeed. The other female friend lives off a trust fund and has a string of unsuitable boyfriends. There’s a really strong message here that women can only succeed by using trickery and their physical appearance to get one up on the men. And it’s not an ironic or critical statement on gender roles in business – it’s presented as a triumph for the female characters that their wiles and trickery have been used to good effect. I expected it to be fluff, but I didn’t expect the extent of its shallowness or the total lack of integrity. It’s still fluff, but it’s poisonous, destructive fluff.

Darkmans, by Nicola Barker
I’d give a plot synopsis, but the truth is that not a lot actually happens. It’s set in small-town England and follows an assortment of slightly odd characters. The grim atmosphere is palpable and there’s a suggestion that something supernatural is happening throughout the book, but it’s character rather than plot-driven, so there’s no real pay-off in that regard. The writing style is interesting; on the plus side there’s a lot of dialogue, on the severe minus there’s barely a sentence that isn’t broken by parentheses. These distressed me to the point where I shouted at the book on occasion, but the friend who lent it to me said she didn’t really notice. Sometimes I wish I lived in that world.

It is compelling though – in 800+ pages I never wanted to stop reading. And despite a sting of disappointment in the ending, I’m now starting to appreciate what I actually got rather than what I expected. Approached as a character study rather than a supernatural thriller, it’s much more satisfying. It's certainly well written and uses language in an interesting way.

In Pursuit of Hygiene – Helen Razer
I’ve always loved Helen Razer. She was a formative voice on Triple J during my teenage years, and her book on depression (Gas Smells Awful) might’ve saved my life. Unfortunately that love wasn’t nearly enough to get me through this book. The blurb made it sound like an irreverent critique of contemporary feminism, but it turned out to be a weird collection of old radio transcripts, wallowy semi-fictional vignettes, and random lists of stuff Helen hates. Published in 1996, at the height of Ms Razer’s Triple J fame, I can only assume that it was intended as some kind of promotional exercise to market her outside of radio. Thirteen years after the fact, it comes across as a bit empty and pointless, which is probably why I found it for $6 in an op shop.

Giants of the Frost – Kim Wilkins

I know I can always count on Ms Wilkins for a bit of well-researched, historically interesting supernatural fiction. This one is set at a weather research facility in present-day Norway, with a back-story based in Norse mythology. As with all of her work, it’s compelling, intelligent, and a cut above most fiction of its genre. And I love reading genre fiction by Australian authors, as it seems to be a largely ignored area of the literary landscape of this country.

Two-face

It's often said that the more symmetrical your facial features, the more attractive you are. I found this neat tutorial in Digital SLR Photography magazine that puts that theory to the test with a 'face-flip' to see how you'd look if your features really were symmetrical. I decided to give it a try both out of curiosity and to improve my Photoshop skills.

Here's the original photo:



Somehow I never realised I had so many freckles...still, it's been a long, hard summer. I'm not quite vain (or skilled) enough to Photoshop them out though.

And here's how I look with two right-hand sides on my face:



Overall it's pretty similar to how I really look. The face is slightly wider. I thought the hairline would look weird with two partings in it, but it looks pretty much like it would if I pulled the front of my hair back, right down to the widow's peak (which is hidden in the original photo). I started to feel a little smug at this point, as my face is clearly perfectly symmetrical. I felt somewhat less smug after looking at the second photo:



So it's true: the left side is the evil side. Notice how the face is narrower and the head is actually a bit pointed at the top, which must mean that the two sides are different widths. Obviously the hair gives the face a very different look as well. I'd expected that the nose and lips would be the most different, and while the lips are not as wide in the left-hand photo, the nose looks about the same in all three.

The biggest surprise to me was that the shoulders seem a lot broader in the left-hand picture than the right-hand one. I'm not sure if it was just the way I was standing (I did try to face the front as much as possible) or if I really have one shoulder broader than the other, but either way the effect is weird.

I find it interesting that one picture looks like me and one doesn't so much - it was the same with the model used in the magazine. It's like one side of the face is dominant in the vision for some reason.

Overall I think I'm glad I have two sides to my face. I may not be symmetrical, but hey - it's what I'm used to.

Sometimes it’s hard to be a woman...

…especially when you have nerdish leanings. It’s still a sad fact that a lot of nerdy/sci-fi media doesn’t bother much with decent female characters, and it’s something that really bugs me. The latest show to piss me off in this regard is Heroes.

SPOILERS AHEAD. I’ll be discussing everything up to episode 15 of season 3 (Trust and Blood), so if you haven’t seen up to this you may want to exercise caution.

Nerd girls have been disappointed by the lack and quality of female characters on Heroes since it first started, and though I really enjoyed the first season I have to agree. When the show started, there were seven male heroes (Nathan, Peter, Hiro, D.L., Matt, Micah and Isaac) to two females (Claire and Niki). Add to this the roles of Mohinder, Noah Bennet, Sylar and Ando – the first a non-empowered regular character (who now has powers) and the latter three recurring roles (now regular characters). Sure, there were other regular and recurring female characters, like Simone (the gallery owner), Eden (the ‘pusher’), Candice (the shapeshifter) and Sandra (Claire’s mum), but the first three died by the second season and Sandra’s role and amount of screen time continues to fluctuate wildly.

Also problematic was the stereotyping of the two female heroes, who seemed to fit neatly into the virgin/whore dichotomy. Claire, a teenaged cheerleader who, despite being virtually physically indestructible, needs to be saved; and Niki, an internet stripper with an evil alter ego and a power she can’t control.

They did make an effort to add more female characters in season two, but it was pretty short-lived. There was Maya, an intensely irritating character who also had an out of control power that caused her to unwittingly kill people when she became emotionally distressed (a metaphor clearly written by a man), and was only controllable by her brother. She shagged Mohinder, cried a lot, then moved to New Jersey and was written out. Monica, an awesome character with an awesome power (muscle memory), who was ultimately made to fail in her first heroic act and was written out. Elle, the unstable electricity-producing girl who lasted into the third season, then teamed up with Sylar and was promptly killed off.

Daphne the speedster appeared in season 3, and Angela Petrelli was upgraded to a regular character who seemed to have the potential to be quite interesting. Niki died and was replaced by one of her triplet sisters, Tracy. We also got a lot more of Claire’s two mums – Sandra and Meredith the firestarter – which was great while it lasted. Now we’re deep into season 3 (or Volume 4: Fugitives, if you prefer), and here’s how things stand: Daphne = dead. Meredith = gone, possibly dead, after losing control of her fire ability. Sandra = reduced to a few lines and carrying a washing basket. Angela = given up all agency she might once have had and following every whim of her idiotic sons.

(There’s a lot more to be said about the types of female characterisation on this show – why are so many of them not able to control their powers, or enjoy them? – but this is long enough already.)

We’ve now got eight regular male characters with powers. While D.L., Micah and Isaac all departed from the line-up a while ago, Mohinder, Ando and Sylar have taken their places. And the women? Well, we’re back to season one, with just Claire and Tracy (I know she’s a different character to Niki, but they’re both Ali Larter so I’m saying close enough). Also, Sylar appears to have gotten himself a sulky teen apprentice who can emit heat-rays from his fingers, so we may have to up that male number if he sticks around. Apart from Kristen Bell maybe having something better to do (like, um, Pulse), I can’t think of any reason why they didn’t just keep the Elle/Sylar dream team together. I guess Sylar just likes whiny emo kids more than hot women who can shoot lightning from their fingers. There’s no accounting for taste.

The most recent episode shows the aftermath of a plane crash brought about by Claire hijacking Nathan’s attempt to round up all the heroes and contain them. Despite having just managed to kick a guy in the head, sneak onto a plane though the wheel cavity and bring it down at gunpoint, she suddenly turns docile and doesn’t put up much of a fight when her two dads send her home to think about what she’s done, young lady. Tracy manages to make a run for it, only to be recaptured due to her own stupidity. And Daphne speeds in, saves a few people, but can’t outrun a bullet or three. The men all manage to run away somehow, even pudgy Parkman and terminally klutzy Hiro. The episode ends with our female heroes scared, trapped or dead, and da boyz standing around in the forest trying to look cool and plotting their revenge. Pass me a bucket, please.

The worst thing about all this, and the reason I’ve stuck with the show this long, is that they can clearly do better. They have had female characters with the potential to be interesting, but they either write them out or steer them down the path of cliché. The show is in a unique position to tell a comic-style story without any outdated source material bogging them down in gender stereotypes, but they’re not taking advantage of it. I’ve stuck with the show through flip-flopping character motivations, sometimes shoddy writing and even Kristen Bell’s departure, but this continued massacre of female characters – and effective disempowerment of the two remaining – could be the thing to turn me off it for good. Heroes, shape up, unless you really want to lose any female fans you still have.

The end may be nigh, but we can still be civilised

I’ve been thinking a lot about the end of the world for, oh, the last 13 years or so – ever since I first read The Stand and spent several years convinced that I had the superflu every time I got a cold. I grew out of this eventually, but the paranoia has returned somewhat since I moved to Melbourne, where every flu I’ve had has been worse than the last.

I’m not exactly sure what it is about post-apocalyptic movies and literature that’s so appealing, especially as they seem to drive me to a slight panic. It could be that the idea of having your life pared back to a pure survival instinct in the wake of a crumbling civilisation incites a kind of primal thrill that isn’t usually present in the urban Western world. I think at least some of it is that gratuitous car crash gawker instinct that makes us want to see something destroyed – and what better than an entire society or world?

Whatever the reason is, it drives me to periodically consider whether my footwear is suitable for all the running and kicking of heads involved in a zombie apocalypse before I leave the house. Most of the time I don’t actually change into my Docs, but I certainly think about it a lot. When I first arrived back in Canberra after living in London, my first thought was that a plague had hit and wiped out all the people in my absence. My father, who was driving me home from the airport, gave me a patient smile and reminded me that Canberra doesn’t need a plague to empty its streets. I still spent the next month afraid to leave the house in case an army helicopter shot me down in a quarantine massacre.

I’ve started writing at least four apocalypse stories/novels over the last few years, the most recent being for my NaNoWriMo attempt last November. It began with vastly increased temperatures and sudden power cuts all over Melbourne. So the Melbourne heatwave a couple of weeks ago seemed extra ominous. When the power started getting cut off around the city, it seemed perfectly reasonable to me to start thinking things like ‘What if it never cools down and the power never comes back on and all the water dries up AND IT’S LIKE THIS FOREVER!?!?!’ I’m prepared to grab some practical footwear and a big stick and try to fend for myself against a ravening horde of zombies and/or crazies, but I’m not sure I could do it in 40+ degrees.

I voiced this concern to someone at work (though with slightly fewer exclamation points), who laughed at me like I was a crazy. I suppose this should’ve made me feel like my paranoia was unwarranted, but instead made me think things like ‘Let’s see if you’re laughing when there’s no more air-conditioning.’

But now we’re in the midst of what The Age is calling ‘Australia’s worst natural disaster’, and I realise that for a lot of people the apocalypse has come, their world has burned and crumbled into nothing. They’ve lost friends, family, their homes and in many cases, their lives, and in the end it didn’t matter if they had their running shoes on. For a lot of them, there wasn’t time to run.

I’ve never known devastation even close to this, but about six years ago I did stand on the Mount Ainslie lookout in Canberra in a smoke haze, and watched the fire on the horizon as it ate up the outer suburbs, and wondered what the hell I was going to do if it kept on coming. Would my ’78 Mazda make it out of town? Would there even be a road open to get me out? I was house-sitting for my mother who was in Sydney – would I leave her house to burn? Would I even have a choice? That’s about as close as I’ve been to actually believing in one of my apocalypse scenarios, and even though it didn’t come true for me, it has for a lot of other people.

I’m planning to donate blood to the bushfire appeal as soon as I hear back from the Red Cross (who are asking for donations of both blood and money), and will hopefully be able to contribute in some way to a couple of fundraisers/appeals. Partly out of relief that it wasn’t me, as well as a little guilt that my fevered imaginings have become reality for so many people. And partly because, well, if we can manage to keep our generosity intact, maybe we can survive the apocalypse after all.

Shoes and fat feet

Since the demise of the dumb Libra ad, I’ve been on the lookout for another ad to hate. Last week my dreams were answered as I idly flicked the TV over to the last ten minutes of Bones (a show that, despite the trifecta of awesomeness that is David Boreanaz, archaeology and the real daughter of Donna’s mum from Twin Peaks, I can’t seem to get into).

The ad is for NIB health insurance, and features a woman lying in a hammock looking at her feet and treating us to an inane inner monologue that goes something like:

‘I love these shoes. They make my feet look thin. Oh no! I was wrong. They make my feet look fat! I have fat feet! I hate these shoes. Wah!’.

The tagline is something along the lines of ‘You’ve got better things to think about this summer than health insurance. But when you’re ready, we’ll be there.’

Well, I know that the best thing I can think of to do this summer is lie around thinking about shoes and how fat I am. It’s going to be awesome! Forget going to a lovely sunny beer garden, the beach, the park or a friend’s place – clearly the best place to be is alone in a hammock. And who needs an actual conversation when they can think about their fat feet for hours on end? I’m astounded by the way the ad executives have seen right into my soul and mapped the vast, shoe-filled wasteland of the female mind.

Perhaps a tagline like this would be more accurate: ‘Don’t be like this vacuous twit. Spending your summer filling out forms in our office would be better than that’. Or: ‘Once you’re done wasting your life in a hammock, waste your money with us’.

To be fair, there’s a man-version of the ad as well, which shows a guy cooking on a BBQ and thinking endlessly about how many sausages he’s going to eat. Because as we all know, men enjoy to eat of the beef. Later he’ll probably drink some beer and look at porn. Though at least he’s actively engaged in doing something, and there are children playing in the background to show that he’s spending time with other human beings.

And there’s a third ad, which shows a man standing waist-deep in a pool astride some kind of floaty sea creature. I didn’t un-mute the TV in time to hear his musings, but he appeared to be stroking the head of the sea creature very attentively and somewhat creepily. I’ll have to reserve judgment on this one for the time being.

In a way, I’m sorry that I’m not currently in the market for health insurance. Boycotting products with stupid ads kind of loses its power when you weren’t really considering buying them in the first place.

And finally: who wears shoes in a hammock anyway?