Wednesday 7 January 2009

The Top Colours of 2008

Colours are amazing things, useful on so many occasions. Whether you’re a sports fan deciding who to cheer for, an artist looking at your palette or a racist deciding who to throw a stone at, colours are essential.

2008 was a great year for colours, with many new ones being discovered and invented. Some were rubbish, while others were superb. So which were the colours that epitomised the year of our Lord, 2008? Let me kick them at you like a farmer kicks a chicken. (Hard)

1: Elaborate Orange
Elaborate Orange was the winner of Good Housekeeping Magazine’s annual “Design a Colour, You Dicks!” competition. This entry, which won its creator, Mandy Higgins, $150 and an apron, has a tangy foretaste and elements of surprise.

2: Spink
Spink is what you get when twenty thousand Eastern European refugees walk across a red carpet. To see it is to faint with ecstasy. I’m fluttering now just writing about it.

3: Tragically Hip: The Colour
Invented by Canadian rockers The Tragically Hip, this colour was featured on all the band’s promotional material last year, including album covers and tour t-shirts. It’s a bit like mauve, but with a deeper quality of feeling and an understandable sense of injustice at the inequities of the world.

4: White
When the International Colour Foundation upgraded White’s status from ‘absence of colour’ to ‘actual colour’ last year, fans of this much-maligned hue rejoiced. And with good reason! It’s responsible for eggs (except brown ones and those weird speckly ones) and 90% of the world’s supply of blank printer paper.

5: Matthew, Prince of Beaumontford
When a minor British royal gave birth to a small, undulating ball of colour, the Queen decided to give it a title and treat it as if it were a real royal child, instead of feeding it to her corgis as her advisors suggested. MPB (as it’s known in colour-fan circles) is a cross between red and green, but tinged with sadness.

6: Twitter Black
This is the colour that your fingers and thumbs turn to when you spend all day sending text updates to your blog. Twitter Black is a good indication that you’re about to die, and so comes sixth in my list.

7: Charonesque
Few will forget the events of May, when a beautiful asexual alien appeared in a field in Kentucky and promised to reveal the secrets of universal peace and eternal joy to the assembled media and political representatives. ‘Charonesque’ is the name given to the colour of the mysterious matter that emanated from his hands, flying over the land in dovetail-shaped majesty and instilling a sense of awe, wonder and love in everyone present, up until the alien was shot seventeen times by the American military and taken away for testing.

8: Blutt
Now that it’s impossible for many people’s teeth to become any whiter, dentists developed this new colour, which is several shades more transparent than regular white. Complicated surgery is the only way you can get your teeth to be Blutt, and it hurts like a barbed-wire condom.

9: Extreme Lilac
Do you think you’ve seen lilac before? YOU HAVEN’T!!!! You haven’t seen ANY COLOUR AT ALL until you’ve seen EXTREME LILAC!!! EXTREME LILAC is MORE LILAC than ANY LILAC you’ve EVER SEEN!!!! It’s more lilac than A THOUSAND TONNES OF LILAC FUCKING A LILAC SEAL!!! IN SPACE!!!!

10: Green of Anne Gables
Designed to coincide with the anniversary of a book that people love despite having never read, Green of Anne Gables is a new kind of green that looks like a tree barfing up a lawn. Only greener.

12 comments:

Erin Alberty said...

My coworkers are looking at me. Totally lost it at "Green of Anne Gables."

words...words...words... said...

I think that I would love Elaborate Orange. Also, as much as I like them (and I do), mauve is the perfect color for the Tragically Hip.

Clippy Mat said...

green of anne gables!
good 'un.
:-)

katrocket said...

Fuck, you're brilliant, in spite of my disappointment that once again, brown get's left in the dirt.

The Imaginary Reviewer said...

Erin: Glad to hear I'm still causing trouble in offices everywhere...

WWW: Isn't it, though?

Clippy: Thanks! It's the greenest of the green.

Beckeye: It was omitted due to space restrictions, and made it to number 12 (11 was Catastrophe Yellow).

Kat: Thank you, and sorry.

Red said...

I clinched at "barbed-wire condom." Yikes.

Anonymous said...

Strangely, I just purchased an extreme lilac shirt! So I concur. Next I'm aiming for a "Matthew, Prince of Beaumontford" tuxedo with gold cufflinks.

Also, Tony is thinking you limeys sure spell things funny.

Gwen said...

My optometrist has confirmed I can contacts colored Spink. Soon everyone I make eye contact with will faint with ecstasy.

Anonymous said...

I'm glad to see orange is making a comeback. A girl from our high school went to the prom in an orange dress. Poor pumpkin girl.

The Imaginary Reviewer said...

Red: Yeah, writing that line was fun. "It has to be barbed-wire," I thought. "But a barbed-wire what?"

Tony: Dude, that ensemble would look spiffing!

Gwen: They don't already? Aw...

Suze: And you say you lack blogging material...

the queen of awkward said...

"Tragically Hip: The Colour": I love it! Hysterical, thanks for the laugh and encouragement!

Unknown said...

White isn't the absence of colour. Black is.

other than that, wonderfully witty.