It’s the rain that makes them crazy…

Being all cooped up indoors makes people nuts. I know our cats get all loopy. So perhaps it’s all of the recent bad weather here in Wellington that has made some people flip their lids.

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First let’s talk advertising. I spoke a little while ago about Jerk-vertising (ads that seem to say “buy our product, become a jerk”). The new Lift Plus “Sharpen Up” ads are the latest in the Jerk-vertising trend.

They always were cutting it pretty close, but the latest “prank’ where the gang trick a female flatmate into walking naked into the living room…?

BAD BAD BAD!!!

This is verging on sexual assault. I suggest you try it on your female flatmate and see how funny she thinks it is. Actually better make it a thought experiment.

And then, an ad for the new Toyota RAV has been pulled by the Advertising Standards Complaints Board.

The board found the advertisement breached three principles in its code of ethics:

• that advertisements should be prepared with a due sense of social responsibility,
• should not contain anything likely to cause serious or widespread offence, and
• should not contain dangerous practices which encourage a disregard for safety.

The 17 complaints received about the ad included that the ad “would be disturbing to some children to see a ‘mother’ and ‘father’ trying to hurt each other”

I had no real beef with the ad, but I can understand why an ad that shows a man trying to kill his wife was pulled. Self-appointed Political Correctness Eradicator Wayne Mapp couldn’t:

"It's a killjoy attitude that's so typical of the politically correct. Don't they realise it's a spoof?"

Who is “they” Wayne? The children? And does it matter when it clearly breaks the code of ethics? And what else can we show as long as it is a “spoof”.

In other news:

Hurricanes attack coach Aussie McLean should know more than most after long stints with the Crusaders and Canterbury.

But, surprisingly, McLean believes home advantage is more legend than fact. At least he did BEFORE the game against the Waratahs in Sydney:

"You play on green grass with white paint and goalposts at either end and you don't play anywhere other than on the rugby field," he said. “…but whether it makes any difference to the result I couldn't really say. It's more myth than anything else."

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Statistics, unfortunately, don’t bear him out. Home ground advantage is well documented and studied. While it varies in effect from sport to sport (and indeed from team to team) playing at home has a positive effect on your score. The Champions League believes in it with a home goal being worth one competition point and an away goal being worth two.

This is not to say that your team will win all of its home games. Just that your average score at home will be better than your average away score.

This week Hurricanes’ Head Coach Colin Cooper said that he wondered about “home town pressure”. But surely the Hurricanes think that “you don't play anywhere other than on the rugby field” (see above).