Mancans, Part 1

http://www.mancans.com.au/

Not to be mistaken with any other rare physical, genetic or hormonal disorders, Man Cans are the sudden onset of unwanted unmanly physical appendages. Think of them as a warning sign, a way of knowing it’s time to stop acting like a Nancy boy and act like a real man.

Not man boobs, man cans, which are totally different and have nothing to do with body fat and everything to do with being a sissy. They are caused by:

• Knitting, macramé and decoupage
• Listening to Sadé or Celine Dion
• Flower arranging of any sort, ever
• The showing of any emotion other than anger or happiness
• The watching of romantic comedies at any time
• The owning of more than one grooming product
• Buying a car painted Champagne, pink, lime green, orange or baby blue.

This is actually a pretty half-arsed list. If they’d listed things like “Looking at yourself in the mirror for more than thirty seconds” or “Talked to a woman you didn’t want to screw”, then the whole “Your masculinity is under attack!” thing might have resonated with insecure men, but… Flower arranging? Owning a pink car? Knitting? Nobody concerned with being unmanly is going to even have considered those things. I’ve never even done them and I’m a mangina, for fuck’s sake.

There’s also a commercial in which a dude is seen to grow man cans because he cried during a sad movie. Christ, have you ever watched a sad movie with a “real man”? The guys are so emotionally stunted that they’ll cry at anything, up to and including the bit where K9 blew up in last year’s Doctor Who, even though he’s been blown up half a dozen times already and always ends up being repaired later on.

I was in floods. And even though I KNEW K9 would be back, when he bravely sacraficed himself I coulnd’t stop crying.

It was the little antenas rotating and tail wag that did it.

I’m glad i watched this episode alone. I could barely speak afterwards.

The closest I’ve come to crying was when they cast Catherine Tate.

There’s very little else on the site (mancans.com.au, not Outpost Gallifrey), and it wouldn’t be worth blogging about on its own, except…

They’re advertising… something. Something manly. Something so manly you can’t sign up for the mailing list unless you also sign up a friend. Thankfully, I have a lot of redundant email accounts.

We can take pot-shots at what the site is possibly advertising, since whois.com gives us:

Domain Name: mancans.com.au
Last Modified: Never Updated
Registrar ID: R00010-AR
Registrar Name: Melbourne IT
Status: OK
Registrant: CADBURY SCHWEPPES PROPRIETARY LIMITED
Registrant ID: ABN 78004551473

Manly chocolate, a la The Yorkie? Attempting to replicate the success of Coke Zero by making a diet soft-drink for men (and using equally-inept viral marketing tactics)? Since it’s telling us to count down to September 2nd, are the missing 11 days from 1752 involved? No, wait, that would be too interesting. Chocolate shaped like boobs. There.

Will return to this come September 2.