LIVE NUDE FISH

I saw the sign on Route 298. LIVE NUDE FISH. On one of those little A-frame sign holders. It caught my eye. I don't deny it. And let's be honest, the FISH part was not the hook, shall we say. Echoes of the 1980s, working in Midtown Manhattan, before Times Square and its environs went all Disney on us. The neon signs said LIVE NUDE GIRLS. Or am I misremembering the lures and bait that pedestrians faced then? One had to be curious about the diction, the word choices, though, several blocks from the literal Madison Avenue, the promoters of carnal license seemed to need no lessions in the ad game. The NUDE was an obvious allurement, as old as the hills (well, not the wording but the stark naked commercialism trading on human weakness; nothing new there), but LIVE? Surely, DEAD would be a turn-off, except for creepy necro types. Why not WOMEN? Too much Mrs. Robinson? Or MEN or ADULT PERSONS? We've come a long way, baby, since then. Or have we? On a scale of 1 to 10, how far? Fin de siecle. Finis. Something's fishy here.

arrested

My eye caught this billboard ad:

Caption:

"We know where you're coming from."

Profile of a person, with a shadow of a soldier in the background.

Arresting and provocative.

Hall of Fame of Delicious Ad Copy Married to Tasty Images

. . . goes to Haagen-Dazs:

photo of chocolate ice cream on a floating spoon

all we add is cold

Just five all natural ingredients. Simply perfect.

image of Haagen-Dazs container of five milk chocolate ice cream

images of five ingredients: chunks of chocolate, cubes of sugar, glass of milk, an egg, whipped cream on a stainless steel French whip (whisker, egg beater)

Anti-Semantic Banking

As part of a new ad campaign, HSBC Bank barks forth with this online copy:

A headline of:

there's no small change

Followed by:

Choose a more impactful way to bank.

It's all part of the green, eco-friendly bandwagon, which is fine, which I salute. The HSBC site says they were the first major bank, in 2005, to be recognized for being "completely carbon neutral." Fine. Excellent. Even without a hyphen between carbon and neutral. Alleluia. I get it. I'm green with usury.

But let's ponder impactful.

Yes, it is found in dictionaries; yes, our dynamic, living language gives birth to new words every day. I don't subscribe to the pedantic or superior view that yesterday's solecisms can't become today's standard form. You might say it's sort of like clothing fashion and style.

Impactful, how do I hate thee? Let me count the ways.

Well, for one, I believe it all stems from "impact" as verb, arising from environmental impact statements in the U.S., starting in the 1970s. With that usage, "affect" flew out the window like some threatened or endangered bird.

Impactful carries with it all the weight of seriousness it doesn't deserve.

It abdicates responsibility; it lets the writer or speaker avoid taking sides as to whether we're talking good impacts or bad.

I loathe it.

You can bank on it.

p.s. At least the spellchecker hates it, too, for once (for nonce).