Is Wes Anderson Getting This Down?
Got linked to this article about the "marketing genius" behind Jagermeister and Grey Goose. This paragraph made me laugh:
Pretend for a moment you’re the man himself—Sidney Frank, liquor legend. First, you should be aware: You transact much of your business from bed, wearing pajamas and smoking a cigar (it is written into the prenup with your second wife that you are permitted to smoke cigars in bed). When not in bed, you wear a bow tie at all times. Also, you maintain a phalanx of full-time golf pros, at a cost of perhaps half a million dollars a year, simply so you can watch them play the game. You can’t swing a club yourself anymore—too old—so you golf vicariously, directing your pros shot-by-shot down the course. "Hey kid, hit a three-wood to the right of that water hazard," etc.
At first I was thinking that was James Caan's character in Bottle Rocket, but the more I think about it, the more I think about it, the more I think that could be what Max Fischer from Rushmore grows up to be. Or maybe it's Mr. Henry, Max, and Royal all rolled into one, somehow. Anyway, what a paragraph.
Raised on Promises
This story on The Consumerist about a girl being turned away from a doll hair salon for having a cheap(er) knockoff of an American Girl doll has been stuck in my head recently, for two reasons. One, it's a heartbreaking tale about classism and people being rude to a 6-year-old girl, but two, it stuck that Tom Petty song in my head.
I Hate IKEA
I bought this unfinished changing table from IKEA a couple of weeks ago, along with an unfinished TV stand. Both are made from solid wood, which is uncharacteristic of IKEA; typically, they'd like to sell you something made from MDF, which has a nasty habit of leaching formaldehyde into the air in your house. I was excited at the idea of buying unfinished furniture from them. I scored some non-toxic, 100% pure tung oil from Lee Valley to finish each piece off with.
The first warning sign this was going to be a colossal pain in the ass was the phone call after I placed my order on the Web. See, IKEA doesn't like the idea of just letting you order your items online without having to talk to anybody on the phone, so rather than quote you the shipping and taxes, they make some poor guy call you back with that information a day or two after you order. IKEA has changed their shipping fee rates, so they were trying to charge me $120 to ship $160 worth of stuff to me.
I told the guy there was no way I was paying that, so he should cancel my order. He came up with a counter offer: If he split my two-item order into two one-item orders, IKEA would use normal shipping carriers to get the items to me, rather than sending a truck with a big IKEA sign painted on it. This little trick knocked 50% off the shipping cost. Does IKEA really think people are going to spend 75% of the cost of an item on shipping? This seems nuts to me.
When the items arrived, I got a new surprise. Seems IKEA thinks 'unfinished' means "slap all sorts of stupid, hard-to-remove warning labels all over stuff so you can't finish it yourself." I personally take 'unfinished' to mean 'not yet finished,' not 'never to be finished'. The sticker in the photo above basically just says "Don't leave your baby unattended on this" in 15 different languages. So I'm stuck trying to get this stuff off before I slap finish on it, and it'll probably always look weird because the sticker glue set into the wood. Couldn't they put a flyer in the box? Or print this helpful message on the bag containing the hardware, so I'd only have to look at it then?
It'd be great if IKEA had an ironic slogan I could make fun of to sum up this post, but all they offer is "affordable solutions for better living," which I can't turn into anything worth writing. So I'll just say screw IKEA!
Putting Your Best Foot Forward
Just got another entertaining spam for Rolex replicas. Here's the subject:
Your cash, pale broomrape
I'm sorry, but 'broomrape' really doesn't put me in the buying mood...
Hello, My Name Is ______
I went to the local No Frills last night. No Frills is like the low prices version of another supermarket chain around here. They paint it an embarrassingly bright shade of yellow, which i think is a way to make as many people as possible choose the non-discount supermarket unless they're really, really sure. CAUTION: ABANDON ALL SELF-WORTH, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE, FOR YE ARE TOO CHEAP TO BUY PREMIUM BRANDS is the shade of yellow they're going for.
One of the ways they "save you money" is by making you bag your own groceries, which I'm fine with, since I used to do that professionally. You also have to pay like five cents per bag, which is great because I'm sure it encourages people to conserve, but for some stupid reason, they expect you to know how many bags you want before they even start scanning your items. I found this out the hard way... Apparently I spaced when they asked me how many I wanted, because I ended up at the end of the checkout aisle without any bags. Lucky for me, someone left a cardboard box on the ground there, which I liberated.
I think the reason I was distracted was the checkout clerk's badge said her name was "ANA L." Apparently, one of the frills they don't supply is proofreading name badges for humorous names. I can just picture this woman's first day on the job. "Congratulations on your new job at No Frills, Ms. Lexam! Here's your name badge and smock!"
I think if my first name was Ana, I'd change my last name to Mal and take up the drums.