Push the Product

A few years back, there were only two stores in Catahoula. Boudreaux owned one, and of course, Thibodeaux owned the other one. Boudreaux was very successful, sold all kinds of merchandise, and made loads of money. Thibodeaux, on the other hand, hardly ever had any customers, and just sold enough to keep his store open.

Day after day, Thibodeaux would watch as people went into Boudreaux's store, and leave with all kind of stuff they had bought. Thibodeaux just had to find out what Boudreaux's secret was. He walked across to see Boudreaux, and asked him, "Boudreaux, we got de only two stores in town. But you have all de customers, sell all kinds of stuff, and makin' tons of money. I ain't got no customers, I don't hardly sell nuttin', and I ain't makin' no money. What's your secret?"

Boudreaux tells him, "Mais, Thibodeaux, my fren, you gots to push de products." Thibodeaux asks, "What you mean, 'Push de products?' " Boudreaux tells him as he spots Ms. Hebert walk in to the store, "Watch, an' I'll show you." He walks over to her and says, "Mais, a very good morning to you, Ms. Hebert, what I can do for you on dis fine day?"  Ms. Hebert says, "Mais hello dere Mr. Boudreaux. I'm jus as fine as fine can be. You got some of dat grass seed?"  Boudreaux says, "Mais, sure, I got plenty of dem seed." He puts the seed on the counter and asks, "What you gonna do wid dat seed, Ms. Hebert?"

"Well, you know my front yard is all dirt, and I'm tired of all de dust, so I'm gonna plant me some grass." Boudreaux says, "Well if you gonna plant dem seed, you gonna need a hose and a sprinkler to water dem seed."

Ms. Hebert says, "You know, you right. You better give me dat too." Boudreaux says, "And you know, you should get some fertilizer to make dem seed grow." Ms. Hebert says, "Mais, O.K."

Boudreaux then says, "Ms. Hebert, you know, when dat grass starts growin' all green and tall, you gonna have to cut it. You gonna need a lawn mower, too." Thibodeaux's almost pee'd in his pants as she tells Boudreaux to sell her a lawn mower too.

As Ms. Hebert leaves with all her stuff, Boudreaux tells Thibodeaux, "See what I mean, Thib?  She come in here for a fifty cents pack of seeds, and left wid five hundred dollars of stuff. Dats what I mean 'Push de product' ."

Thibodeaux goes back to his store mumbling to himself, "Push de product. Push de product." While he is waiting, he sees about ten more people walk into Boudreaux's store, and come out with all kinds of stuff. Finally, Mrs. Broussard comes into his store, and Thibodeaux thinks to himself, "Push de product." He says, "Mais, good morning, Mrs. Broussard. How are you on dis fine day?"  She replies, "Well, I'm not doin' too good today. I started my 'monthlies' today, and I need some of dem Tampons. You got some?"

Thibodeaux, still thinking, "Push de product", runs to the back of the store, comes back with the Tampons, and says, Mrs, Broussard, you gonna need a lawn mower to go wid dem Tampons?"  She asks, "What you mean I'm gonna need a lawn mower?"

Thibodeaux says, "Mais, I figure a woman in your condition can't do no foolin' around, so you might as well mow de grass!"

 

 

Girls' Activities and Barbie Dolls

One of those sporadic topics that comes up in the upbringing and education of children centers around what are proper activities for children to engage in in their playtime.

This is especially the case with girls.

Recently, an article in Atlantic provided a typology of three types of girls that pre-adolescent girls are encouraged to be:  "graceful girls" ("girly girls"), "aggressive girls," and "pink warrior girls."  Basically, the graceful girls were described to be encouraged to be very feminine, and to pursue activities like ballet classes.  Aggressive girls were encouraged to be edgy and forceful, to compete with boys, to de-emphasize feminine qualities, to develop cutthroat and aggressive, and to go out for soccer.  And pink warrior girls were encouraged to be nonphysically competititve, but to be the equal of boys.  Like in pursuing chess or other competitive outlets.

Like most typologies, these were overframed or oversimplified.  In fact, very few young girls' experiences in parental encouragement fall into one category only.  For example, I was in many ways the typical tomboy turned "girly girl," maybe being the last-born was part of it.  But I also played softball for a while (not well) and did track.  I found, by the way, that the boys in track were most encouraging to girls.  Kind of like geeks: they're so amazed that a girl would be around that they bend over backwards to encourage her.

Another area of parental angst is what types of toys children play with.  Some parents (and schools) get troubled when children play with gun-like toys (even super soakers).  It's as if these eight-year-olds will grow up to exterminate a whole passel of Native Americans or druglords or French waiters or Yankees or clowns.

Hmmm . . . . clowns? 

But the old standby, the Barbie doll, has also attracted official irritation.  Let's face it: Barbie's figure is totally supernormal.  Only women with improbable technical augmentation can compare.  And Barbie is a quintessinal material girl!  Nothing spiritual about Barbie.   They even cavil about Barbie's prediliction for color schemes: heavy on the pink and mauve.

There was even more umbrage with the old Bratz dolls.  Somehow, nervous adults saw them as little hookerettes.  Or maybe it was the name -- parents find it convienent to have well-behaved children and want to do nothing to cause otherwise.

I think there's an overconcern for the effect that these activities have on children.  Barring dangerous pursuits, most of us come out of childhood okay.  And parental pressure can abridge the scope and enjoyment of children's pursuits.  Surely, being a tiger mom or a helicopter parent is no fun for either parent or child.

Sometimes time spend doing nothing is time well-spent.  And it's nice to be able to sample a variety of possibilities without a heavy adult agenda being behind that.  Isn't schooling enough?

Mistress Wanda Explores New Dimensions in B & D

Unlike most in her specialized field, Mistress Wanda the Dominatrix tries to be continually imaginative in her search for exotic kinks.  After all, even people into Bondage and Submission get jaded after a while, and it's good to perk up customer interest.  She found that the old standby props, black leather, rubber costumes, or Nazi regalia, began to be less appealing after a while.  The trade magazines came up with very little in the way of innnovativeness.

Even costumes with the naughty schoolteacher with her ruler or the Wall Street executive became passé.  

So, she decided on a little variation on the classical theme.  How about a revival of the Fascist kink from Mussolini's day?  It was surprisingly hard to find the armbands with the fascist symbols (internet neopuritanism being what it is), but a little artwork produced something workable:

 

Being an innovator, Wanda wore it on her cat suit for one of her favorite regular customers and styled herself Elle Duchess.*  The poor man, he was startled.  He asked Wanda,

 

"Why are you wearing that emblem that was on old dimes?"

 

Oh, damn!  There was a time when the Good Old U.S.A. has fasces on their dimes, back when they were silver.  Sometime later they thought they'd switch feces for fasces by using whatever alloy they're made of now.**

 

 

 

 

Another customer burst into laughter upon seeing the Mussolini emblems.  Clearly, her history-challenged customer base just wouldn't get it.

 

So she tried a different tack: dressing like a pizza delivery person.  Somehow, she touched an atavistic nerve, and this costume became one of the requested ones!  Wanda was tipped well.

 

*The feminine of Il Duce.

 **An awful play on words, I admit.  I'm shameless.

 



The Georgia Guidestones: Manufactured Weirdness

Let's face it:  Some places have a surer reputation for weirdness than others.  Novelists Carl Hiaasen and Dave Berry have an easy job in finding credible material for bizarre stories set in Florida than many other writers electing settings in other localities.  This also helps television's Burn Notice; but there's a lot of bikinied eye candy to attract male viewers as well as the wry humor.  Florida has it's own Fark.com tag; and who can forget the hanging chads of 2000?

Other states make a brave attempt:  New York with its brashness and rudeness, California in general, Seattle with its coffee mania, and Nevada, which would be weird even without Area 51.  [I suspect that the real weirdness is in Area 50; but this is some kind of government plot to hide it.]

Yes, South Carolina has South of the Border, a non-p.c. stopping point for Northern tourists on their migratory ways to Florida.  And Louisiana has the Mardi Gras, with the inducement of female tourists flashing their boobs for gaudy Mardi Gras beads.  It's a tame dissoluteness from their otherwise existence of oppressive rectitude.

But some places suck with dullness.  Redneck jokes aside, what do people think of with Mississippi?  Well, gambling casinos at Gulfport or Tunica that exact a regressive tax on the less prosperous and probability-challenged visitors.  At least Alabama has the Big Naked Dude (Vulcan) in Birmingham, mooning nearby Shelby County and their second-best mall.

But poor Georgia manages to be dull.  Sure, there's Hotlanta [sic], with its dismal airport and myriad Peachtree streets.  And a faux Alpine village called Helen.  Somehow, it's hard to work up an appetite for seeing Georgians in lederhosen or drindl.

However, in Elbert County, GA there's the Georgia_Guidestones.  This 19-foot monument is composed of four slabs.  Each side of a slab has these ten guidelines or principles in one of eight major languages:

1.  Maintain humanity under 500,000,000 in perpetual balance with nature.
2.  Guide reproduction wisely — improving fitness and diversity.
3.  Unite humanity with a living new language.
4.  Rule passion — faith — tradition — and all things with tempered reason.
5.  Protect people and nations with fair laws and just courts.
6.  Let all nations rule internally resolving external disputes in a world court.
7.  Avoid petty laws and useless officials.
8.  Balance personal rights with social duties.
9.  Prize truth — beauty — love — seeking harmony with the infinite.
10.  Be not a cancer on the earth — Leave room for nature — Leave room for nature.

This monument, or whatever it is, has been around for over 30 years.  Who produced it, why it was placed in an out-of-the-way location, and numerous other questions are unanswered. 

I like the one about petty laws and useless officials.  But how can that be brought about?  The same with many other of these guidelines; they sound great on first reading.  There's a little pie in the sky present, erected by some dreamer.  

God knows there have been attempts at universal languages, like Esperanto.  If I learned it, could I eventually be thought to speak it like a native?

Could these Georgia Guidestones simply be a cosmic joke erected by some wealthy anonymous person to provide numerous Georgians with puzzlement?  Some think already that they figured it out: it's Satanic, in some way.  Well, Old Nick can work in odd ways too.

It's open to speculation regarding conspiracy theories too, such as the New World Order and the Rosicrucians.  Or it could be some cosmic humbug.

But I'm inclined to see serious intent with this monument.  After all, it did not include an eleventh principle:

11.  How 'bout them Dawgs?

Best and Worst State and Provincial Flags

Back in 2001, the North American Vexillogical Association asked its membership to rate the U.S. state flags, the Canadian province flags, and flags of the U.S. territories.

The average ratings the members gave the various flags resulted in the top ten flags being those of New Mexico, Texas, Quebec, Maryland, Alaska, Arizona, Puerto Rico, District of Columbia, the Marshall Islands, and South Carolina.

The ten worst flags were New Hampshire, Idaho, Wisconsin, Kentucky, Minnesota, South Dakota, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, and Georgia.

Actually, the NAVA membership tended to downgrade any state flag that incorporated the state seal on a monochromatic background.

A good flag design should be simple, with clear colors, and not too many elements.  State emblems make them hard to distinguish.  They should be identifiable at a glance.  One commentator's opinion, is one that a good design can be identified at a glance (even in a stiff breeze!) and be easy for people to sketch.

I can add a new element: Can the state flag be incorporated into a swimsuit?  At present, there seems to be only two states' flags that are so utilized: Texas and  Maryland.  (Thanks to Heidi for the information.)

A recurrent problem of this type of item is, quite frankly, the design limitations emanating from the flags themselves.  Most seem to incorporate the state seal, and the flag design is hardly simple.  And seriously dull.

In my opinion, the best potential swimsuit ones are for states with simple, straightforward flags: Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Hawaii, Tennessee, New Mexico, and Texas*.  Alabama uses a dull, red-x design that could work, but provides little interest.  Arizona has that really neat sun, and that could work, partcularly on the bikini bottom!. The neat anchors on Rhode Island's could serve for one cup of a bikini top, as could the three stars in the circle that appears on Tennessee's. 

In my opinion, the most replicable pattern for bikini-makers is that of New Mexico's state flag.  Imagine a yellow bikini with the stylized sun one one or both cups of the bra!

What Would Jesus Do?

I don't think this was covered in Religion classes.

 

Angelique's Hints to Guys on Appearing Douchy

I realize that subtlety is not the long suit of many guys.  But for those who wonder, this is not an age-related thing; you can manage to look like or act like a douche whether you're 18 or 58!  So let me count the ways of exhibiting those tell-tale signs.  And, of course, for your own purposes, you might wish to come out of the closet as a douche-in-training, or a full-fledged weirdo.

1.  Popped collars are a possible sign.  Not bad; but needs some supporting evidence.  Having more than one popped collar drives home the point.

2.  Tattoos, especially visible when you are wearing conventional clothing.  Neck tattoos lend an especially ominous appearance.  And, for God's sake, teardrop tattoos, whether earned through homicides or not, are a sure turn-off.

3.  T-shirts with lewd or vulgar messages.  Hey, we get the point: you have a lot of undifferentiated hostility that must come out and we're targets of opportunity.

4.  Calling people "dudes."  Or using expressions like, "Bros before hos."

5.  Penis substitute rides.  Seriously, is automotive showing off really for you? 

6.  Wearing hats or helmets with alcohol dispensers built in.

7.  Cargo pants.

8.  Multi-hued golfing ensembles.

9.  Having muffler cut-outs and other "notice me" features on your wheels.

10.  I have a bias against guys (and ladies) who attend fall football games while being bare-chested despite thermal implausibility, and having their faces and chests painted in team spirit colors.

11.  Using a cell phone in a restaurant or theatre for non-emergency purposes.

12.  Having a Jersey Shore tan, whether from a tanning booth or from spray-on.

13.  And having unkempt, greasy hair.

14.  When parking your vehicle, occupying two or even three parking spaces.

15. But, mainly, it's attitude.  That entitled, "I'm so special that the rules don't apply to me" attitude.

16.  Special note: if your actions merit your being described as "acting like a male reproductive organ," then you are truly being douchy!