You’re having a laugh!

Posted on September 27, 2013 by tashfriday

Good morning Tash Appreciators,

I’ll keep it short and sweet this week.

As was discovered in one of TF’s satellite offices this week, most people enjoy a good prank; particularly when they have masterminded and implemented it. Just like a good Tash, pranks can lighten the mood when folk are a bit down and can also invigorate people when they’re lacking energy.

Just for the hell of it, here are a selection of TF’s favourite pranks:

Pranks can go wrong though, badly wrong. The most obvious example of that is where the person upon whom the prank is being played does not find it funny. Perhaps worse, though, is where the person doing the pranking takes it too far. This might be where there have been a series of pranks and the ante has been raised to such an extent that something must eventually go wrong. There are a fair few examples of these too:

In the wrong hands, the Tash can be a dangerous thing too. For example, at a recent beard and moustache championship held in New Orleans there were stunning examples of superlative moustachery (not a word, but I’m having it) such as this:

While, in New York, Justin Bieber was trying to pull off this monstrosity (you might need to look closely):

Tashes, like pranks, should only be attempted by those who know when they can and, more importantly, can’t be pulled off.

Have a great weekend folks!

#keepgoing

‘Star Trek’ Teleportation Prank Confuses Mall Shoppers (mashable.com)
Guys Prank Buddy by Replacing All the Tap Water in His House with Beer (gawker.com)

Tashcrawl 2014

Posted on September 20, 2013 by tashfriday

Good morning Tash Appreciators,

First this week, an announcement. Quite independently of TF HQ, a sub-crawl (it has apparently been christened by one particularly poetic Appreciator as a “Tash-Crawl”) will take place tomorrow in Glasgow. I understand it will start with a large lunch at the Counting House and the first stop will be at around 2pm at Times Square, next to St Enoch Square station. All are welcome and although Tash related apparel is recommended, it’s not essential. The arrangements will be on Facebook and twitter. There is a fair possibility that, during the course of the afternoon, this:

May turn into this:

For those who may not be familiar with Glasgow’s subway system, the Tash-Crawl is but the latest incarnation of a very old Glaswegian activity – the subcrawl. Only in Glasgow would people willingly spend the best part of a day travelling in a smelly old orange train purely in the interests of finding a novel way to have fifteen drinks. What makes this even stranger is that Glaswegian comedy duo Francie and Josie used an entirely complimentary song about the subway in their set:

It’s strange where people get their enjoyment from, I suppose, and another example of that is the release this week of Grand Theft Auto V: the fifth incarnation of what must be one of Scotland’s most successful exports.

GTA, as it’s usually called, has made Dundee/Edinburgh’s Rockstar North over £500 million in it’s first week and is apparently even more popular than a good Subcrawl. Some people will find it difficult to understand where the fun is in a game where the player is encouraged to commit a variety of pretty awful crimes. Some may even think the game is dangerous.

TF isn’t a platform from which to preach morality and I’ve got nothing to add to the debate about whether games like GTA should be allowed. However, what I will say is that we should be pleased that a Scottish product has managed to be so successful for so long. What is clear is that regardless of whether it’s a subcrawl (which could hardly be said to be healthy) or a violent video-game, people tend to be interested, now and again, in things that aren’t good for them.

This week’s Tash is a man whose activities would easily fit into the plot of GTA. Although he’s a dangerous and unpleasant chap, we still find him interesting. There have been numerous news reports about him over the years and Eric Bana even starred in a film about his life. I’m talking about Mark “Chopper” Read:

If you’re wondering where his ears are, he asked one of his pals to cut them off with a razor blade while in prison. See what I mean, you’re interested, aren’t you!

Have a great weekend folks!

#keepgoing

GTA 5 is criminally good say video game fans (scotsman.com)
Grand Theft Auto V Jacks Global Sales Record from Take-Two Interactive (technabob.com)

Can’t Hold Us

Posted on September 13, 2013 by tashfriday

Morning Tash Appreciators,

The subject of TF from a few weeks ago has been on my mind. The future starting slow can be a pain in the neck for all of us – waiting just isn’t fun. So, this week, I’ve got a few examples of people for whom the wait was worthwhile.

First up, for the hipsters, a rapper who seemed to emerge from nowhere with a track about fly second-hand clothes:

Macklemore, complete with Tash – a man with style.

For most of us, the first time we came across this chap was with his track “Thrift Shop“. Personally, though, I preferred his second single, “Can’t Hold Us”. From a TF perspective, this is a much better song. It’s about raising yourself up and generally not taking no for an answer.

Perhaps surprisingly, “Can’t Hold Us” was first released in August 2011. It was only after the monster success of “Thrift Shop” that Macklemore spent big bucks on a good video to accompany the track and effectively re-released it. As of July this year, over three million copies of “Can’t Hold Us” have been bought in the US alone. He’s also playing in Glasgow tonight, if any Appreciators happen to be in that part of the world.

Looking back in history, there are numerous examples of people who have had to wait half a lifetime or more before getting where they wanted to be.

Benjamin Franklin didn’t sign the Declaration of Independence until he was 70, making him the oldest signatory:

Ray Kroc was in his fifties when he started to think about turning his family owned business into a franchise which now serves 68 million people every day – McDonald’s:

Susan Boyle didn’t hit the big time until she was 48:

And, this week’s Tash didn’t become President of South Africa until he was 76:

If we think the future starts slow for us, imagine what it must have been like to spend 26 years waiting in prison. I think sometimes we can be too impatient. Sometimes, but by no means all the time, we should sit back and prepare ourselves for the moment when the right chance comes along; at which point, we’re ready to grab it with both hands.

Have a great weekend folks!#keepgoing

TGI Friday

Posted on September 6, 2013 by tashfriday

Hello Friday Appreciators,

The last few Tash Fridays have seen some examples of classic Tashes. While that’s all well and good, I wonder sometimes whether TF focuses too much on the Tash and not enough on the Friday.

Like the Tash, Friday is one of those things that is universally appreciated (hence the change to this week’s usual greeting). I bet that if you all looked on your Facebook news feeds today, at least one person will have posted something like this:

For most of us, Friday at 5pm is the point where we are furthest from our next day of work and for that reason we can’t get enough of it. To prove that universal appeal, you only need to look at the global chain of restaurants which uses an acronym of “thank goodness it’s Friday” as it’s name.

It may mean something different to all of us, but the feeling of turning the computer off and flying out of the office on a Friday evening is common to us all. I think that feeling it’s a combination of this :

And this:

Of course, there is a Tash connection to both of those clips. The song in the first video is “You Make My Dreams” by Hall and Oates and the second is an example of Carlton Banks’ dance from the Fresh Prince of Bel Air (essential Friday viewing when I was younger). John Oates had one of the greatest Tashes in rock and roll:

And both Will Smith and Alfonso Ribeiro are well versed in the ways of the Tash:

The point is, both Tashes and Friday are part of that long list of small things that make life worth living (along with cider on a hot day, showers with good water pressure etc) and it’s no wonder that the combination of them seems to have an appeal.

Have a fantastic Friday and a great weekend.

#keepgoing

The Future Starts Slow

Posted on August 30, 2013 by tashfriday

Hello Tash Appreciators,

I came across a Nike advert called “just do it – possibilities”. It’s pretty good:

It looks at various every-day people who are starting out in sport and asks what’s stopping them from taking their participation to the next level. Like many Nike adverts, it challenges the amateur to ask more of themselves: to run further, jump higher and fight harder than they have in the past or ever thought they could.

The choice of music used in the advert is interesting too. The song is called “The Future Starts Slow” by The Kills, and I think it hits the nail on the head – if you want a future filled with success, you’re going to have to expend a lot of time and energy in getting there. In sport, and life generally, it’s often the initial stages that are the most difficult as, although it never gets easy, once you’ve started to get better you can least look back and see the progress.

This week was also the 50th anniversary of Dr King’s “I have a dream” speech. TF has covered this in the past but it was a long time ago and I’m sure you’ll forgive me for coming back to it.

The most famous part of the speech (the “I have a dream” part) is towards the end but, at the beginning, Dr King talks about President Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation. He says that, one hundred years after the Proclamation that slavery was to end, the “black man” (I’ve changed the words used) “is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land”. He says that the Proclamation was a cheque which has not been cashed and he talks about now being the time for the bank of justice to pay out.

I guess that the speed at which ambitions are reached is directly proportionate to the scale of what you’re trying to achieve. You can go from being able to run a mile to running a marathon in a few months, but even Abraham Lincoln’s efforts couldn’t speed up a civil rights movement that took 100 years to give minorities even a semblance of equality.

All of that being said, fifty years after Dr King’s speech, we can look back and see real progress not just in the US but around the world. Sure, there is a vast amount of work to be done in the fight for equality but the future now doesn’t seem quite so far away and it’s coming more quickly all the time. I guess all we can do is think “we’ve come this far, why can’t we go further?”

I’ll leave you with Dr King and his superlative Tash. Can it be any surprise that such a man chose to wear one:

Have a great weekend folks!

#keepgoing

P.s. If you haven’t read the speech, it’s well worth it: http://www.archives.gov/press/exhibits/dream-speech.pdf

Curtain Raiser

Posted on August 23, 2013 by tashfriday

Good morning Tash Appreciators,

After an extended break, TF has reopened for business refreshed, reinvigorated and ready to raise the curtain on the next season of Tash Friday.

As this is the season opener, it seems only appropriate to go back to the roots of TF. Although the level of Tash related paraphernalia appears to be cresting a wave of popularity at the moment, that wave has been building for years. Even as far back as the turn of the last century, a Tash was seen as an essential element of what the “ideal man” should look like:

That’s Eugen Sandow, the man who some people say was the father of modern body building. He measured Greek sculptures to find the proportions of “The Grecian Ideal” and then lifted weights until he had sculpted himself into the desired shape. At the time this photo was taken (in around the mid 1890s), he was seen as having the ideal male physique. We can only assume, as he was a man that honed his appearance, that he saw his Tash as an essential element of what the ideal man looked like.

These days, we still attempt to sculpt ourselves. Some of us do it literally and work to achieve a desired body shape; while others take a more figurative approach and work until other ambitions are achieved. TF is here to encourage you to keep going and to press on towards those goals.

Back to today, one man who appears to have harnessed the power of the Tash to propel himself to greatness is this guy:

Looks like chicks really do dig him…

That’s Lachlan Morton, a 21 year old cyclist who, after starting to rock a Tash last month, has been putting a hurt on his competitors in literally every race he’s ridden . TF has been bike-heavy of late (and many of you have made your views on that clear) but, on this occasion, I make no apologies for including Mr Morton. The reason for that is the recent addition to his race-bike:

When he appeared at the start line with this first licence plate (he’s been using a couple in recent weeks), he raised a few eyebrows and I’m sure some saw it as a pretty arrogant move. However, not only does he not take himself too seriously, he knew something that his competitors didn’t: that he’d worked harder than them in the run-up to the race and that he was able to beat them; which he promptly did, all on his own.

That, fellow Appreciators, is how it’s done. Hard work, and the confidence which comes with it, can be big factors in whether we are able to achieve our goals. One can imagine the reaction Eugen Sandow received when the people of Victorian England saw that he was lifting weights in order to look like Greek sculptures! I suspect his response was the same as Lachlan’s – “I’ll show ’em…”

Have a great weekend folks!

#keepgoing

Ask not what you should be thankful for…

Posted on November 22, 2012 by tashfriday

Good morning Tash Appreciators,

Some are under the impression that TF is based in the US (N.B. not everything that is syntactically incorrect and littered with spelling mistakes emanates from the United States) and others lambast TF’s American leanings. This week, we embrace the US-bias, and one of the great American traditions – Thanksgiving.

If Thanksgiving is one of the most famous American traditions, John F Kennedy is one of the most famous American Presidents. In his inauguration speech (pictured below), he asked that his fellow Americans “ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.”

Maybe we should not ask ourselves what we should be thankful for (there would surely be too many things to think about), but what we have done to make others thankful. I daresay that’s a shorter list.

Earlier this week, I heard an exceptionally cantankerous chap – who will not be happy with his views being compared to those of JFK – arguing that people these days spend too much time trying to insulate themselves from society. He said that we should invest more of our time and effort in trying to improve the world around us rather than blocking out all interaction with it. The ways he suggested doing this were fairly radical but the core of what he was saying was pretty indisputable: that only by working together will things improve. That seems to fit pretty well into what JFK said. It also fits the idea that we should ask ourselves what we have done to make others thankful.

Of course, there is one thing for which we will all be thankful – The Tash. For that, we must thank the ‘Tashfather’ (apologies, that’s awful):

Have a cracking weekend y’all!

History repeats itself: first as tragedy, second as farce.

Posted on October 4, 2012 by tashfriday

Bonjour Tash Appreciators!

The BBC has just finished a mini-series about the “Masters of Money”. It was in three parts and covered the theories of Keynes, Hayek and Marx. The facial hair alone tells you they’re interesting:

John Maynard Keynes:

Friedrich Hayek:

Karl Marx:

The point of the programme seemed to be that the problems with the economy are more complicated than just stimulus v. austerity. Apparently both have advantages and disadvantages. Whoddathunk. It also followed the current political agenda whereby the issues that no-one wants to discuss are ignored and we just argue about whether history tells us to spend or save in times of economic strife. The main subject of this debate, the Wall Street crash, followed years of hardship, not the most prosperous time in human history. It’s arguably not all that relevant and by focussing on it we ignore other issues where debate might be useful.

One area where there is no debate is the seemingly unchallenged view that benefits for those who can’t be bothered working should be cut. “One Nation”/”The Big Society” apparently means a choice between working for crap money or being left to fend for yourself. It’s maybe an attractive idea to cut benefits altogether but, if you look back in time, we’ve been there and done that – it doesn’t work.

Back in the 19th century, politicians weren’t as media-savy and they said exactly what they were doing. Just like today, they tried to split the poor (those on benefits today) into the deserving and undeserving. The deserving got help from their local parishes (local authorities today) while the undeserving were sent to the poor house (prison today). Things only changed when Rowantree and the other enlightened men of the time took matters into their own hands and provided jobs in newly invented factories. There followed an industrial revolution and Britain’s economy led the world.

Another example where the UK is possibly blinkered is the EU. You can expect to be laughed at if you even mutter the word “federalism”. Again, if you look at the 19th and 20th centuries, history tells us that we are infinitely better off together than apart. I seem to recall a similar scepticism across the Pond but, if you forget the Civil War, that worked out pretty well.

There are other examples of us ignoring history but you get the picture. What we do next is a tough decision, but we do ourselves no favours by allowing the debate to boil down to spend v. save. We’ve been dragged into circular arguments about narrow issues when we should be thinking on a macro scale – like Marx – and actually having a useful debate. Over to you to work out what you think.

Have a great weekend folks,

Cheers

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