green with ... boredom

The inside cover of the latest edition of one of my favourite magazines features a two page ad for Plascon paint. The left side is dominated by the following:

Green
is the new mainstream. Once a global
issue taken on by the few,
it has now come home.

Literally.

No way.

Really? The new mainstream? When, pray tell, did that happen? What ground-breaking news!
To anyone who’s been in a coma for the last 5-10 years!

YAWN.

Frankly I find this kind of shit so insulting on many levels.

A) please don’t pretend that you’re cleverer than me,

B) please try and display a little more creativity than trotting out the same tired ‘green is the new black’ line, and

C) please try and remember there’s a global environmental crisis on the scale of a Spielberg disaster movie playing out in our backyard and manipulating that to sell products such as PAINT is just not a clever marketing move.

Especially when reading on (which I can’t help doing ‘cos I love a little anti-marketing self righteousness as much as the next guy)...

Recycling, saving energy, choosing
organic, preserving the planet, it’s
all about embracing nature and
discovering innovative ways to live.

Yada yada yada.... and then the kicker:

Our Plascon Palette of 2009 is filled
with colours that mimic nature and 
bring its life-giving energy to the
home.

Oh. My. God.

I was at least expecting to read, at the end of this depressing marketing wank, that Plascon paints have become more eco-friendly. That they were ‘discovering innovative new ways’ to make paint, that they were all about ‘embracing nature’.

But no, seems it’s the same old paint, just in hues to make us feel all chummy and green. Like smug little eco-warriors in the comfort of our own (exquisitely painted) homes.

Paint to do for us what dreadlocks did for those first brave souls chaining themselves to trees in the Amazon and the like.

Goddamn sometimes I get depressed at the state of the world. As if looming environmental doom wasn’t enough to worry about...