Ping-Pong Rehab

We use ping-pong for all sorts of things here- sweating off a hangover, settling arguments, hiding from colleagues, avoiding our desks, running off lunch, working up a thirst for the pub and combating extremism.

When Enough Is Enough

We're not afraid of a bit of homoerotic dressing at your liberal Karmafunk. And with so many cyclists here, there can often be an overwhelming amount of skintight gortex and men's technical wear on display.
But there comes a time when the balance tips towards the plain preposterous (what a great word - don't think I've ever written that before).
You make your own mind up, but here's Ben in his latest getup with a most extraordinary new pair of what Gap would call 'girl's capri pants' but what I'm sure the shop Ben bought them from described as 'urban cyclist's utility wear with cutting edge design and a technical fibre matrix'.
Plank

One Day A Rain Will Come To Wash All This Filth Off The Streets

Yes, the nicest techno ad agency in the world has had a few run ins with the lesser mortals of wonderful species, namely thief filth.



It started last week when some dirty pikey stole lovely Shiv's bike (it must have been just about the most cumbersome steal imaginable what with it being a rather clunky folding mountain bike, but they nicked it anyways), and then last night vigilante Dave had an encounter with a suspicious Wembley baggy boy in the garage.



Now for those of you who know Dave will know that he is both the nicest bloke you will ever meet, and also the most terrifying. If you are a Guardian reader you may recall they printed his story in their Saturday magazine detailing how he scalped a would be burglar with a shovel. Since then Dave has been living somewhat on the edge, like a slightly younger and less creased looking Charles Bronson, looking for trouble and dealing with it.



Over the weekend he caught a couple of snots trying to steal some bikes near where he plays football. So Dave locked them in one of the pitches. Given that the walls have a 15 metre high perimeter, they could well still be there. Then Monday evening comes by. Dave, following a hard day of being a creative genius and getting to the hardest level of Medal of Honour, discovers said Wembley boy in our unlocked garage trying to get into our company mini.



When challenged by Dave (who may have been sharpening a meat cleaver at the time, but maybe not) the little tike said 'I'm looking for me dog innit'.



Dave (who may have been cutting his naked forearm with a a razor sharp filleting knife as he spoke) strongly encouraged the young rascal to leave our premises immediately. As the young man left the building Dave felt compelled to help him on his way with a polite little slap.



OK, it may not have been a polite slap, maybe it was a wee bit more enthusiastic than that. So, it looks like we'll be under siege soon for the massed ranks of the pikey massive.



We'll keep our heads down but if you are nipping out west to see us, bring a weapon.

See you later drinks for Will and Aaron

Will and Aaron (above) playing cider hands at The Enterprise. Its when you tape alcohol to your hands preventing you from doing anything else but drink. It is an efficient game for stopping people smoking, going to the toilet, buying drinks, over using hand expressions when talking and getting people so drunk they wear red hats for the whole night and dance like Freddie Mercury.

More Shed Madness

Readersheds.co.uk | Vote now for Shed of the year 2008 | National Shed Week - July 7th 2008

Continuing our shed theme, this may well be the site to end all sites. Plus it's got a shedblog. Wonderful.

Is This A Good Look?

Robin.
He's a top bloke, a good creative and someone we all want to spend time with.
And when you have such an amazing garden as we do over here at Karma Ground Zero, it's understandable that you want to kick back, relax and wear some fashionable eyewear to protect your beady little ones from the sun's harmful rays.
But somehow I'm not convinced about Robin's latest look. it could be the lad's seafaring features don't naturally suit a terrifyingly on-trend set of specs.
Or it could be that it's just all a bit sinister.
So, I'm posting this piccie and putting it out there for all 3 of our regular readers to vote on.
Hit?
Or Miss?
You decide.

Our favourite advert and website this year

Robin came across this this morning and it won't leave our minds.
If you know the creative who made this advert (we suspect (s)he lives in Rainham) could you put them in touch with us please?
www.rainhamsheds.co.uk

Oh Blimey!

Bad news at Karma Mansion: the boys downstairs in the edit suites have discovered some unwanted friends scurrying around in the dark. Not-nice-at-all. Dave wants to hire them and give them a desk with the rest of the creatives, but we're going to send in Rent-A-Killa to sort them out. If anyone knows a humane way to get rid of them, keep it to yourself, we're going for shock and awe

Have You Got The iTunes Bottle?

You know those M&S ads that look really nice, have won lots of awards but, oddly, have driven the business into the ground (funny this industry of ours, isn't it?), well this itunes picture is a bit like that.
This is no ordinary itunes. No, this is the current playlist booming out of our speakers at East Anglia's 3rd favourite agency network.
Everyone here gets to man the digital decks and play their own flavas (I'm just so down with the kids with all my hip street lingo, innit).
Now, good idea in principle, a bit daunting and slightly buttock-clenching in truth as your own particular DJ-ing can come in for a fair bit of criticism.
Oft are heard the words "I'm sorry, but just who is on the bloody decks and will they kindly go home early".
Each agency character has their own preferred style, with Fern taking us on her occasional psychedelic rambles, Hattie giving us a bit of Turkish folk insight and Team Australia taking us on a magical mystery tour down-under and back again (whether we like it or not).
Currently McGrath is doing the spinning. He tends to do it early before the youngsters arrive for fear of public ridicule.
We'll ask Digi Craig if there's a way we can show you all what's currently playing on our blog. Call it our musical Twitter, or Mitter. what a great idea. Can I flog this to Microsoft and retire please?

Will and Aaron's leaving drinks

It's ending where it all began... The Enterprise, Chalk Farm. Tomorrow night.

Join the Kaumanauts

We found these nice little cars on the interweb the other day (here is one outside our office). Not only do we like their cars but they too replace all their C's with the better looking K. And unlike Addisson Lee it seems they have taken a lot of thought into helping you navigate the journey of life. Here is their Karma Story for proof-

"Karma Kars is the koncept of lifestyle guru T obias Moss.The guiding philosophy of Karma Kars is the T aiost beleif that "the journey is more important than the arrival". The fleet of the famed 'Ambassador' Kars have been lovingly styled to T obias's ethical principles of kraftmanship. Join him and his karmanauts in navigating the journey of life".

Not sure how reliable they are though...

www.karmakabs.com.

We know its been a while and we are are sorry, truly sorry. Especially to the seven subscribers we have, so hear is seven personal apologies- Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry and sorry.

We don't have one excuse so here are a few- We have been very, very busy creating ground breaking work. We've been on holiday. We've just been ignoring the blog. We've been playing table tennis. We've been at Glastonbury. We've been saving the world. We've all been in The Priory. It takes us 3 weeks to commute to and from West London each time. We have moved to Miami.

Anyway we are back. hello again.

mmmmmm......gu (dot dot above the u)

Thanks to Hattie's always very friendly emails and gu's limitless generosity (they are the nice dessert people who put a couple of funny dots above the u of their gu) we are all spending our Thursday afternoon full to the brim with chocolate goodness. In return, Tom agreed to pose with a pack of their gu (above).

The Bodeans video

You may know we at Karmarama love Bodeans. You may also know that to celebrate our love Tom and Robin wrote a song. If you are a little bit weird you may also know that Dave, Sam and Nick from Bucks. produced the tune. What you didn't know is that this thumping tune now has a video featuring cardboard cut outs of Will and Aaron.



You now probably know this is all just a bit weird.

(Rumor has it Will and Aaron owe Dave, Sam and Nick a Bodeans, but we're not getting involved)

Hyde the hen- The night out.

Last Thursday saw us all go out to celebrate Alex getting married next Saturday, and in true hen night style there are a few stories to tell.

The evening began in the garden with potent cocktails served by Paul, our in house naked butler (below). Presents were given to the hen and in keeping with UK hen night standards and regulations 97.5% of them were cock based products.

We lined our stomachs with some great food made by Siobhan, jumped into some of Fern's amazing fancy dress (again adhering to UK hen night standards and regulations) and headed into town.

And to a karaoke bar. Thanks to the bottle of wine Craig drank on the way from W14 to Leicester Square it did not take long for him to take control of the mic and start the proceedings. Eventually Nathalie (below) managed to wrestle him off the mic and proceeded to belt out some classic Britney Spears.

Fern 'Sandy' Miller led the girls in a bit of Summer Loving...


Will 'Danny' Flack replaced the inferior mic for a more traditional beer bottle approach to lead the T-birds.

Jono put the mouse head on...


...and The Hen finished things off with a bit of Tina Turner. Good Times.

Karmarama Kake Off

It's been an awful long time since we held a huge baking competition in aid of Shelter's Cake Time
But your forgetful correspondent was nudged into action by a letter from Shelter thanking us for our contribution of £71.23 and promising to send us a special cookbook as a present for getting our funds in early. I'm a bit worried that this effectively cancels out our contribution (I know every little helps and everyone was very generous but I was reminded of this sketch)
but anyway, we all had a lovely time and filled our faces with the offerings.
True to form, the competition was extremely hard fought.
From Sid's emotional blackmail (he named his offering the tears of tiny children), to Jono's shameless last minute icing sugar branding

to Siobhann's handpicked blossom embellishments to K-Broadcast's employment of a professional cookery writer to Phil's recruitment of a special friend to bake an extravaganza in 6 layers of coffee cake and fondant icing (which backfired somewhat as the judges insisted he had bought it from a shop) every tactic was employed to make the judge's job as difficult as possible.

Luckily we had some genuine expertise on the panel... Phil's family friend, the celebrated Polish bon viveur as chairmen, our own Ann Hunter as a fearsome quality control expert and Natalie who, despite looking like a frail wisp of a thing, proved she could put away as much cake as both of them combined.
In the end prizes were give for Originality (my own Giant Jaffa Cake, an idea purloined from this brilliant website as a tribute to the famous Cake or Biscuit ruling ), for Prettiness (Rod's boyfriend's coffee cream confection. Apparently he avoided disqualification because sift the flour himself) for Deliciousness (Sarah's delectable Pineapple Upside Down Aussie Cake) and lastly, the overall Grand Prix to Hattie's astonishing fresh stawberry & cream gateau.


And now we are all morbidly obese. Hey ho.

More New People - What it this, the jobcentre!

And here's the last two for a while because they are more than a handful to deal with. Going by the name of Gemma and Lisa, but we've no idea which is which, they are currently lighting up the creative discipline here. But you don't want to hear it from boring old me - here they are in their own inimitable style:

We made the smallest ad in the world. (in the process of being put in the Guinness book of world records)
We were hungover when the pic was taken.
Were not actually northern. Though both of our dads were miners.
Gemma is a qualified ear piercer.
Lisa hates ice cream.
Robson Green saved Gemma’s life.
Lisa has met Paul Daniels.
We wrote the tag line for the home office.
We both appear alongside Stelios on the Easycruise documentary on Living TV.

Welcome daughters of miners, mine's a pint of black pudding

Step up Steph

And it's another hello to a newbie. Steph joins us by way of a couple of flakey agencies (only joking - honest) to help our growing team on Nintendo in the glamourous and highly enviable role of Account Manager. Now Alex and Claire can relax just a tad, especially as Alex (or Geezer Bird as she is affectionately know here) is getting married very very bum-clenchingly soon. So thank gawd for Steph. And here's a little know secret of hers:
"I am a true cowgirl at heart and worked in rodeo when I travelled through Australia. I even had a rodeo name, Stephie-lee! I have a real Stetson and through the Winter months, am rarely seen without my cowboy boots. In fact, I have been known to wear them to bed."
We shall be exploring the last revelation in some detail over the coming months, and Tom has put himself forward to get to the bottom of things. Nice one.
Welcome Steph - back to work now tho'

Meet Lucy - Front of house ain't taking no more crap

Hello To Lucy, our new front of house receptionist thing person.
She's great, right northern and not to be messed with. Here she is in her own words:
"The mighty Carlisle has the enviable title in the UK as being the city with the highest Teenage pregnancy rate, and it is with great shame that I confess I let my town of origin down in this department.
Rather than bringing a hungry bairn to the table and a stabbing outside Gregg's, I instead offer an arts degree from the toon and a year spent in Brooklyn NYC working at Teen Vogue magazine, on a film set and completing a jewelry design course.
I went to art College in Barcelona and would love to ultimately settle there in the sun, with sangria, cigarettes and lots of loons.
I have a borderline obsession with traveling and mountaineering sports, and hope to complete my second attempt of the Haute route this year.
Celebrities do my nut in (apart from Karl kennedy) and I'm a bit of a tree hugger at heart.
Favourite karaoke tune is sweet child o’mine and I'm proud of my northern roots because we have the best banter."
See, she's clearly bonkers. Say hello and ask if it really is grim up North next time you're in

Happy 8th Birthday!

May 1st. A day of drama, revolution and the birth of adland's best kept secret. 8 years ago, sat round his kitchen table, Dave 'do you want to feel my head' Bonawhatsit decided he should go straight, lose the red boot laces, and get a proper job, so he created what we now lovingly refer to as 'Karmarama'.

To mark this important occasion we had cake and a few drinks around our newly opened Barmarama. Taking a break from a busy work schedule, manic pitching and frenzied shopping for anything lemon for our summer wardrobe (you read it first here, lemon is going to be oh so very big this coming season), we gathered and had a couple of drinks to say 'Thanks for the job Dave' and general chit chat.


And in an eye-wateringly poignant moment, the Karma partners were presented with their very own steel tankards to keep behind the bar at all times, whenever a bit of magical lubrication is needed.


A marvelous time was had by all. A bit of fun and frolics in the garden. And then we all went back to work because we are a hard-working bunch.
Happy birthday us. All cards, presents, hugs or kisses gratefully received