further signs of the imminent apocalypse

The main problem with going to the cinema over and over again is the ads. You get to see them a lot – and what a pitiful crop there is at the moment. Sports stars seem to be the flavour of the month, as if anybody still remembers the Olympics! If they aren't flogging Red Bull by telling you how important it is to be 'in the zone' (and what does that have to do with me?, I wonder) they are mysteriously appearing inside people's houses to tell them about Santander's mortgage deals. The people concerned (one of them is Karl from Pulling, now reaching the apotheosis of his career as Man Opening Fridge) look unsettled and embarrassed at the materialisation of Jensen Button or whoever it is in their kitchens and living rooms. Who are you and why are you telling me this?, they seem to be thinking – coincidentally my reaction to the Red Bull ads. Cleverly Santander have taken my own reaction from me and manifested it on the screen, so where does that leave me, I ask you?

Frankly, pissed off.

Then there's a woman archly describing to a friend her Canadian holiday in terms of a 'passionate affair', in what seems to be a heroic attempt to associate Canada with rampant sex. I wish the advertisers well in their endeavour, but am struck by the woman's (strikingly orange) friend, who is meant, I suppose, to look envious and intrigued, but instead looks merely uncomfortable, like she has stumbled in from an advert for Immodium. It's a non-speaking part, but she really makes the most of it I think, implanting in my mind a definite association between Canada and the general region of the lower bowel which I'm fairly sure wasn't there before.

Finally, there's a Shetland pony being made by computers to dance, in an advertisement for – I dunno, the internet or something. All this modern technology, and what have we achieved? Have we solved world hunger? No, but we have made a pony look like it's doing the moonwalk. This is exactly why our civilisation is doomed. Nostradamus foresaw this (and also, according to some translations, the Harlem Shake), and if he is to be believed, you should be putting down your i-phones and making your peace with God right now, folks.