Ah! Celine Dion. Sometimes the random albums that arrive on my doorstep are a bit of a mystery, but we all know Celine Dion. One of the most popular artists the world has ever known, shifting more than 200 million albums worldwide, she isn’t just one of the biggest selling English acts of all time (although, yes, she is), but she achieved that having only learned to speak English around the age of 20, four or five years before The Colour of My Love was released, and continued releasing French-language albums in between her English releases. She also speaks and performs songs in Spanish, Italian, German, Latin, Japanese, and Mandarin Chinese. (Thanks, Wikipedia.)
What we have here is her second English language album, released in 1993, and the source of several of her biggest hits, The Colour of My Love.
I don’t know if you’re familiar with Toffifee. It’s a sort of over-packaged nutty caramel confection that a distant relative might buy a grandparent for Christmas, or that might be the only product you recognise if you visit a German supermarket.
In a move common to all European confectionary when it’s advertised in the UK, Toffifee released a new TV advert a couple of months ago that has somehow made it on to the airwaves without anyone involved realising that it looks at least 30 years out of date. Presumably nobody involved in the entire campaign had any sense of irony.
This post isn’t really about anything other than my need to share with you just how naff the whole thing is.
This item and/or apparatus has recently been found on the Pouring Beans estate. We would like to return it to it’s rightful owner. If it is yours, please let us know in the comments, and include proof of your ownership by mentioning something that only the owner of this item would know, such as its serial number, commemorative inscription or a description of its bizarre smell.
If it’s not yours, but you can tell us what it is, we’d be equally interested. Thank you.
Hello there. Chris here, from the chart-topping band The Papples. Thanks for joining me.
Years ago, when we were hard at work writing and recording songs for our third album, Pop Squared, we made a start on a song about the lead singer of Norwegian pop sensation A-Ha that never saw the light of day.
Well, lucky for you, every dog has his day, and every tired old half-baked Papples idea has its day too. I can now present to you the finished lyrics to a lost classic: “Everybody Fancies Morten Harket”.
Years ago, when Kev and Ian started the podcast, they tried to come up with a name for it. That was, I think, what the whole first episode was about, though they only succeeded in naming the episode “Your Mum Loves a Sexy Pony”, and since then the podcast itself has always just gone by the decidedly provisional name “Episodes”.
I decided, therefore, to take it upon myself to fix this, and have consulted the internet for advice.
The website Business Name Generator has a helpful tool where you can type in some words to do with your podcast and it suggests great podcast names you could use. Here are some of the ideas it came up with.
Beans Millennium
Beans Battleborn (what?)
Beansgenix
Beans Pros Only
Beansque
That website is self-evidently awful, so I looked elsewhere. Another website, called CopyWritingCourse, has a different generator that asks what your podcast is about and then what your name is. I told it our name is Beans and the podcast is about Pouring. Here are some much better ideas.
Horsing Around with Beans
The Beans Taco
True Pouring Stories
Real Time With Beans
A Breath of Fresh Pouring
Generation Beans
The Pouring Dream
The Beans Perspective
That website is better, but still leaves something to be desired. Finally, in desperation, I turned to WorthStart, who have just posted a list of several hundred podcast name ideas. I scrolled past “Girl Podcast Names” and “Football Podcast Names” to see what they suggested for funny podcasts. Here’s the pick of their suggestions.
True Story Bro
Young Billionaire
Berry Blue Beauty
D’Artagnan
Defiant Princess
Deluxe Dream
All of this is a long way around to tell you that, having investigated all the available options, “Episodes” appears to be the least terrible name for our podcast. So, unless you particularly like the name “Deluxe Dream”, that’s settled. Thank you.
It occurred to me the other day, when Kev trademarked the name “Metal Horse™”, that we’ve trademarked quite a few terms over the years, and the terms that make up our intellectual property must now be quite substantial.
I have, therefore, conducted several exhausting days* of research to discover just how wide-ranging our various trademarks are, and I can present the results to you now for the first time. So here are all of the Pouring Beans trademarked terms, every last one, in chronological order.
For a while now I’ve been looking for my next big business idea that will expand my already substantial entrepreneurial portfolio and take me to the next level. I’m ready to be the next Jeff Bezos and I think I’ve come up with the product that’s going to get me there.
Now, excitingly for you, I’m offering you the once in a lifetime opportunity to get in on the ground floor with the biggest idea of the century. Throw your cold, hard cash my way and reap the benefits. No more work for you. Once this idea takes off the hardest you’ll ever have to work is when you decide which of your tropical beachfront homes you’ll visit next week. Will it be Bermuda or the Seychelles? Goa or Bridlington? The choice, and the gold-plated superyacht, will be yours.
Here’s the pitch. Brace yourself.
What’s big right now? What is everyone into? The internet.
Where are people spending their money? What’s right on the fashions? Internet-enabled objects.
But everything’s on the internet now. Cars, fridges, electric toothbrushes. What part of your life hasn’t been connected to the internet yet?
Easy. Grass.
Grass: worthless without Bluetooth connectivity
Introducing iGrass™, the internet-enabled lawn.
Webcams are embedded in your lawn, equipped for 4K video streaming and with nightvision capabilities
Microphones at soil level capture every glorious rustle and every growing blade
IntelliPoke™ probes infiltrate the underlying strata of leafmould, mulch and root systems to provide real-time feedback on moisture levels, nutrient balance and worm density
These key technologies connect to the iGrass HD app (available for iOS and Android) via Bluetooth, allowing you to monitor your lawn in real time, from wherever you are, and receive automatic push notifications whenever an unwanted weed takes root or a cat has a wee nearby. You can also share pictures, beautiful data infographics and animated GIFs of your digital grass on social media straight out of the app.
Everything is better once it’s connected to the internet and if your frankly mediocre lawn is ever going to turn into something you can be proud of you need to get it online pronto. iGrass™ is the product to help you do it.
Convinced? Of course you are. Quick, chuck me your life savings. You won’t regret it.
