Get creative, not suggestive?

Here's another of my letters to TODAY newspaper, edited and sanitised.

11:58 AM March 19, 2009
Letter from Chen Khin Wee

I’D LIKE to think I am an open-minded man with a healthy sense of humour for the occasional risque joke. But being bombarded by “pornographic” suggestions while I was sitting on the MRT was less than appetising.

I can stomach one or two risque allusions but not five, as featured in a suggestive advertising campaign by a hamburger restaurant: “Some like it long, but most like it thick”; “Be careful where you shove this thing”; “Get $2 off on a thick oral”; “You may be sitting on something thick”; and “It’s gonna get messy”.

The language seems to have been lifted straight from an erotic novel. At best it is in poor taste, at worse it is plain obscene. How can the authorities let these so-called family-oriented businesses get away with it?

Can the creative minds behind the advertising campaign come up with nothing better? Do they have to resort to such vulgarity to sell?

One Comment from a reader said:
"Rude and outrageous. They think they are being smart.Even on national radio it happens."

http://voices.todayonline.com/letter/EDC090319-0000001/get_creative_not_suggestive.html#Letter

Jaywalking kills! Really?

Banners have been put up around NTU's campus proclaiming that "Jaywalking kills!" My first thought is, "yeah, so do eating too much meat, skydiving, serving national service, cleaning your windows..."
Coming from a land where if you don't jaywalk, you don't go anywhere, it made me think about the irony of this banner in our institution of higher learning.

On campus most of the roads are simple two-way roads with many speed bumps along them. Cars are few and far between and buses and the occasional delivery truck move along them at snail pace. If the university see fit to remind our university student that jaywalking kills, and with the implied message that they should walk an extra 50m - 100m just go cross a zebra crossing when a quick dash across a 10 foot wide road would do nicely - I think there is something seriously wrong with the cognitive ability of our undergrads.

What has happened to the simple skill of looking left and right and left again before crossing which even primary school children possess in less developed countries? Have they lost this ability and are therefore incompetent to perform a simple task of crossing a road safely? How different is the skill demanded of a driver to spot a pedestrian on a zebra crossing and to slow down from the skill required to spot a pedestrian about to cross a road. Likewise, is it rocket science for a pedestrian to check if there are oncoming cars before crossing a road?

The implied message of the banner to pedestrians seems to be "you are not clever enough to look left-right-left before crossing a road safely. Don't do it. Jaywalking kills!" Alternatively, it is saying "Drivers are dumb. They only know how to slow down when they see a flashing yellow globe and black-white stripes. They won't know how to slow down if they see a human on the road." Presumably they will panic, step on the gas and run him over.

Nah...I don't think jaywalking kills. I think it is stupidity that is the culprit. If someone is stupid enough to cross a road with scant regard for the traffic situation and literally walk onto the path of an oncoming vehicle, we should consider it natural selection.

PS Have a look at this