When words hit the road

I steered the Jensen into the slow lane of the M4, and began to read the route signs welcoming me to the outer London suburbs. Ashford, Staines, Hillingdon - impossible destinations that featured only on the mental maps of desperate marketing men. Beyond Heathrow lay the empires of consumerism, and the mystery that obsessed me until the day I walked out of my agency for the last time. How to rouse a dormant people who had everything, who had bought the dreams that money can buy and knew they had found a bargain? (J.G. Ballard, Kingdom Come 1)

If you've ever wondered (as I did in my girlish naivety) whether a "Jensen" is a real existing car and not another technological chimera from Ballard's eutopic suburbias, today's Spiegel has a whole photo series of the "Jensen Interceptor III."

Just enjoy the pictures and don't read the text (and don't - DON'T - think about fuel efficiency). According to the comments (I only ever read the comments, really), it's full of unforgiveable mistakes about the intricate inspirational conduits of international auto design.

He's Alive!

Now what do you think this enormous crash test dummy is doing here?

1) he is in the process of erasing the woman's short term memory with the aid of an everyday device known only in The Dimension Where Crash Test Dummies Rule

2) he and she are members of a suburban theatre group enacting a scene from Frankenstein or Paradise Lost (he's Eve, tempting Rosemarie)

3) this is an intimate instance of courtship. He is handing her a pack of worm bait (or contraceptives?) that he usually keeps in one of the many pockets on his exceedingly fashionable survivalist waistcoat (currently on sale at Aldi for EUR 9,99)

Nooooo! You silly semiotically overcharged fools (been reading too much Derrida lately, have we?). He is offering her a packet of painkillers to assuage the pains in her arthritic knee (daintily indicated by her gloved hand on her leg).

Only a German marketing genius could come up with this at once subtle and surreal suburban snapshot.