Bakker Bugle Blog

Monday’s dinnertime can be a bit tedious. It’s been only ten hours since the weekend of shared experiences, so there isn’t much news to report. The whole work-week stretches out ahead, keeping one’s mind on business rather than one’s spouse. This Monday was blessed with the label on a discarded bottle of Coke.

Anita and I sent a significant portion of our “together time” eating dinner and marveling at the Kissy Puppy. When we retreated to each of our designated corners of the apartment, I decided to follow up.

Note from the Staff: We recommend clicking on the images in this post, in order to fully appreciate the genius of American soda-pop advertising in the European market.

I followed the link advertised on the label, to find a record-setting website. The "www.coca-cola.lu" website easily set the record for “404 Message that Wasted the Largest Quantity of Will’s Time” by leading me to watch an anthropomorphised webpage dance around and then say, “I ran away for the summer” (as I loosely translate it). Furthermore, the webpage/human hybrid’s blog, which he/it so heartily recommends? It’s not worth the electricity required to render it on one’s screen.

But I was relieved to find something else to pass the time, when I noticed the website’s address: http://www.coca-cola.lu/threeway.php

I was intrigued, curious even, and I decided to try the tabs on the upper-right corner of the website to learn more about the constituents of this “threeway.php”. If you’d like to be whip-sawed, mentally, by the astoundingly cynical relativism of contemporary advertising, you should try it too!

First, get a dose of mega-corporation-approved feminism by clicking on the “Coke light” tab and then watching the commercial that features kicky and beautiful young women misbehaving, in a fashion that was probably described in a meeting as “fun like Drew Barrymore but as bankable as Jennifer Garner.”

If all those strong women make you uncomfortable, you can return to standard-issue 21st-Century male chauvinism by clicking on the “Coke Zero” tab. You’ll be greeted by a solicitous female body with her inconveniently-needy head and face covered for your pleasure. Gentlemen, say hello to the burqa, Coca-Cola style!

If you attempt to find a viable ideological alternative by clicking on the “Menu” tab to the left, you’re likely to find a broken link. I was disappointed that there was no follow-through to the comely bikini’d lady offering “Coke Mania”, which I still envision as a scene from Scarface. I never did find the promised “Happy Games” from the original label, nor the “Happiness Factory” (which I found improbable from the start).

Needless to say, this vitriol is unfair. I’m really just angry that I can’t learn more about the Kissy Puppy.