Free Advertising? I don't think so

Why is it that companies think people WANT items covered with product names?

For instance, every vehicle on the road has an emblem on front and the back plus most also have a manufacturer name and model as well. Why do they do it? Do they think I care that this generic looking car is a Chevrolet Malibu while that generic looking car is a Ford Fusion and seeing the name will somehow inspire me to go buy one or the other? The way I see it, people who really do care about things like that don't need the additional information. And don't forget the inside where you will find the company logo on the dashboard, floor mats, steering wheel and any place they can think of putting it. Well, I am not much of a "car person" but still, to me this seems dumb. My favorite current example is that there is a model of pickup truck where the word 'Chevrolet' is across the back of the tailgate in what has to be at least twelve inch high letters and it spreads all the way across, almost always in a contrasting color so it "stands out" better for those who are following you to see. Well, all this tells me is that I don't want a vehicle with something so tacky on it and that means I should avoid Chevrolet since it is something they made.

Then add to the fact that every DEALER thinks they need to also add their information to the vehicle. Somehow this has become an accepted practice but I am sure it is simply a spin off of the manufacture doing it all over the place. When you buy a car they always seem to have a dorky dealer license plate border (that amazingly most people do NOT remove immediately; personally, I would leave it laying on their lot) as well as "Joe's Cars, Sometown, Somestate". Well sometimes this is OK because they put on a sticker which takes all of a minute to remove but what about the ones where they have actually riveted a piece of plastic to the back of the vehicle?!? I am appalled at this and as with the tacky twelve inch letters above, this is an anti-advertisement as far as I am concerned. Really, the dealer knocks a hole through the metal to hang their stupid logo? What moron first thought this was a good idea and that no one would care about the holes in the car?

What I have decided is that next time I buy a car I will get the final price haggled out and once they give it to me in writing, then I will discuss the cost for advertising for them. So what is a reasonable advertising price? $100/month? $50/month? $20/month? I mean, how much do they regularly spend on idiotic radio commercials? And is that more effective than letting every car on the road read their name on my vehicle? Anyway, take that amount and spread it over the life of 60 month loan (which is what most people seem to do). For the sake of conversation, say I was willing to take a pittance of $20/month. That means they either have to get that shit off the car before I leave the lot or take an additional $1200 off the price.

I won't even begin to discuss the (il)logic of putting 'Abercrombie' across the rear end of a pair of much too short shorts on a much to cute teenaged girl...

Give Me Some Darts

Do you want to know what irritates me? Well, actually, there are probably a lot of things that irritate me but I will try to focus my attention on just one for now. What irritates me (this morning) is drivers who will try to cut into a lane of traffic at the last minute rather than waiting their turn like all the cars in front of them. It is not like they accidently get into the wrong lane; they simply drive down the adjacent 'Only' lane and cut in at the last minute, expecting others to move for them. I see it almost every day and I just wonder what makes people think they are so damned special?

There is one spot on my morning commute where this is very common. Coming off the interstate there are three lanes; left, straight, right. Well, almost all traffic goes straight and invariably there is some dumbass who thinks they are too good for that big line of 10+ cars and will go down one side or the other full speed and cut into the straight lane. What sucks is that they can easily do it since those who actually have a basic concept of driving ettiquite and therefore are in the correct lane are at a stop behind the stoplight and will always be slower than the morons.

If you truly screwed up and got into the wrong lane, don't keep driving forward. What you should do is sit there with your signal on (in Georgia? yeah right!!!) and basically admit you messed up. If you do that, I will let you in almost every time. If you insist on being one of the idiots who tries to keep moving and cut in, I promise you I will be that annoying asshole who parallels you and won't let you over at all.

Now if I could only find a way to block both the left and right turn lanes coming off the interstate...

P.S. As for the title, read this.

A Black Day at the Office Part 3 (The End)

By now you have probably read both Part 1 and Part 2 of this much-too-amusing-to-me saga with the icing. Well, I have one short followup post on it then I am officially done with the topic. Tony mentioned something when taking the picture the other day and I was not sure what to make of it. I don't mean I did not believe him, but rather questioned the degree to which the effect he was describing really happened.

Apparently black icing, after a little time digesting, comes out as blue poop. This is where I doubted him until I made it a point to look for myself (not his, my own, not that it probably makes it less gross that way). I don't mean slightly blue, I mean it looks like someone dropped either food coloring or a blue toilet cleaner thing into the clear water. Very interesting for sure and had I not known to expect it, it may have really freaked me out since it never would have occurred to me what actually happened. And no, I did not take any pictures because even I have standards, as low as they may be. If you want to see, you will have to try it yourself.

Twiddling (Thumbs, not Rackets)

Last night my grandmother, mother (Pam), niece (Jill) and nephew (Drew) arrived for a weekend visit from Ohio. That necessitated the house being cleaned. We acquired the dogs in October and I am not sure the house has been cleaned at all SINCE October really, so it was quite a project. It is not that nothing has been done, just not a lot. For instance, the basement bathroom has taken approximately five 'restarts' when the shower has been cleaned, the toilet, then other stuff comes up and three weeks later when I get back to it, I have to redo the shower and the toilet rather than moving ahead with the sink, tub and floor. This seems to be the cycle around most of the house where a lot of half finished cleaning projects are underway. Actually, Diane has been painting the spare bedroom for close to two years now for the same reason.

Hmm... now that I am thinking about it, the garage has been half (well, maybe quarter) cleaned since April so the cars have to park in the driveway, the flower beds never actually had all the weeds pulled last year, nevermind this year but for the third time, I have the wheelbarrow out in the yard and there is a very nicely cleared section surrounded by a jungle. Then there are the potted plants on the deck that I bought three years ago and never did anything with (amazingly, most are alive and well in spite of the lack of care).

Yes, that was another tangent... family, visiting... Grandma is 92, Drew is 5, the temperature is 100° so what do you do to entertain them that does not involve going outside and is not going to completely bore one or the other extreme (or me, for that matter)? On previous trips they have been to most of the common touristy type places like the zoo, aquarium, botanical gardens, mall, baseball game, etc. but the issue I still have is, even if we went back to any of those, the heat is a killer and will make it not worth the effort. So now what? Well, mom did say jokingly "we could clean the garage" so maybe that will work.

God help me, the best answer I came up with so far was Chuck E. Cheese...

P.S. As for the title? Read this. Who says you can't learn things reading the crap I write?!?

A Black Day at the Office Part 2

As you may have read, we had black cake in the office yesterday but I had no camera. Well, as luck would have it, today there is leftover cake and I have my camera with me so ate a piece for breakfast. Please excuse the fuzzy picture, I just handed the camera to Tony but did not change the settings to Full Auto so it was not cooperating with him and I did not realize it until I looked at the images later.

The One That Got Away

I have been in a sad mood recently. Blame it on my [lack] of a special someone in my life. It has been that way for many, many years (ie, almost forever) but every so often I get depressed about it. I am funny like that; I am generally outgoing and flirtatious with everyone except those who truly catch my attention and/or interest. I suppose it is because I don't want them to think I am just playing around or being flighty or whatever. Anyway, on those times when I do feel my life is lacking something it makes me short tempered, tired and generally unpleasant. Yes, I know some of you may think 'and this is different how?'. Well let me say that I don't much care when others think I am as happy as a bear with its foot caught in a snare, I only care when it gets into my head and makes me quasi-dysfunctional, like now.

When I get this way, a lot of times I think about what might have been, mistakes I may have made (but really? who thinks I could have possibly made a mistake?!?), relationships I have screwed up, etc. You know, your basic self analysis/beat yourself up mentally for being a moron type stuff. So what do you do when you are really sad about your lot in life? I don't know about you, but I start typing names into google. Of come on now, don't act like you have never done that before... actually, it can be fun to do even when in a good mood just to see what you can find. Go ahead, do it right now, click that link three rows up, google yourself and see what links come up, I will wait...

...are you done yet?

So were they interesting or scary results?

Back to the story; when I do that, until _VERY_ recently, I got zero, zilch, zip results for my actual name. I would find my first and last name on pages, but never together and therefore, obviously, never pertaining to me. Well, there is actually one link out there now but I won't mention it specifically since I know a few people out there who may or may not read this some day, who might actually want to figure that one out on their own for a different reason.

Last night when doing that, I learned that the only woman I can honestly claim to ever have truly loved, got married. Before you think I have lost the love of my life, I will clarify and say we dated when we were in college together and that was ten years ago. ::note to self: you can stop waiting on her to realize her mistake now:: Anyway, it is not that I think about her often. In fact, I had not for 3-4 years after we broke up until my dad asked me one day "so, what ever happened to..." which of course prompted me to type her name in for the first time ever a couple years ago. Since then I probably have only done it 2-3 times, essentially about once a year. I suppose it is more curiosity than anything else with her; I always felt like things were never allowed to 'end' properly and since she was my first love, I suspect I will always care about what happens in her life, even vicariously, since she was such an important part of mine for a time.

So I wrote all of that to say this [not that she will ever see it]. Congratulations Laryssa, I really am happy for you and wish you the best in everything, as I always have and always will. For whatever it is worth (nothing, actually, but I will say it anyway) I remember your last poignant comments to me as being extremely difficult to both say and hear. And while it took me a long time to realize it, I appreciate your honesty and by the way, you were right. Of course, I dwelled on it for a few years; you may not even remember what you said anymore... ::grin::

Thank you for being one of the best highlights so far in this drama (or should I call it a comedy of errors?) of mine called "life".

Hotlanta

On the way home from work today at about 2:30, the thermometer in my car topped out at 111°. That is pretty freaking hot!!! And remember, the temperature in ATL usually is at its peak around 4pm so in theory, it will be even hotter. Heck with those people in places like Phoenix because unlike them, we _DO_ have humidity around here so it is just nasty.

The best example of how this heat works is the dogs. In the spring, they would literally go on at least 5-6 miles of walks per day which was usually broken down to 2 in the morning, 2 after work and 2 after dark and this still left them with excessive energy more often than not. Once summer got here the afternoon one was cut out since they had no interest in being outside at that time of day. What they do instead is go lay in the yard and maybe romp around a little bit but only for very short spurts. Over the past few weeks even the night walk is gone but they don't seem to mind. The realization that I have come to is that when they go out in the afternoon that heat totally drains them so they are probably sleeping better now than ever before and that is with almost no exercise. I don't know who came up with the phrase 'The Dog Days of Summer' but their dogs were like mine; a hard day involving a large amount of doing nothing followed up by nap. Come to think of it, it is early afternoon right now, really hot, and I could use a nap...

A Black Day at the Office

Today one of the ladies in the office turned 40 and we had our monthly birthday lunch. The lunch itself was not all that exciting; I mean, not that it was bad, just not worth mentioning here. Dessert, however, was fun!!! In honor of the evils of 40, we had a black icing cake from Publix and let me tell you, that was MUCH more entertaining than it should have been. Black icing turns your tongue and lips black and does not come off easily. That, of course, means that two of us were running around playing 'zombie', 'gum disease', 'dead guy', etc and cracking ourselves up. Antonio actually had a cool "black drool" thing going on which about killed me. I just wish I had a camera to share this with you...

Blog This aka Read at Your Own Risk

I was bored at work one day so got the bright idea to create a blog.

It was a little more elaborate than that, but that is the quick version. From time to time I will read blogs of a few people I know through letterboxing (by far my biggest hobby/interest) and I decided that I wanted to do one too since 1. I do a bit of travelling with it and will write up "trip reports" and such that people seem to like reading and 2. I was bored at work one day so got the bright idea to create a blog. But then I decided that such a focused topic would probably not interest most of the world [I can't say 'most of my friends' since there really are not a whole lot of those out there, and those that do exist are mostly letterboxers]. Besides, I do have many thoughts on a variety of topics which I am sure people would _LOVE_ to read about so instead of limiting myself, I decided to make one specialized blog for letterboxing and this one for "everything else".

So there you have it. I have no idea how often I will post, if I will include links or pictures or any of that other crap, but when the mood strikes me I will write. Call it therapy, call it mental diarrhea, call it experiencing the world through my psychosis, whatever you want. I don't have any idea what you might expect to find here so maybe we can all have fun exploring together. The posts here may be short, they may be long, they may be humorous, they may be irritating, they may be scary, they may be revealing, they may be light-hearted, they may be introspective, they may be offensive, they may be boring, they may ramble on, they may seem pointless, they may have spelling errors, they may be grammatically challenged, they may be kid friendly, they may be rated NC-17, they may be just about any old random thing that comes to mind that I feel compelled enough to mention. Read at your own risk.