sockjockey, the MenEssentials Blog

March Rant

2009-03-08T11:23:00.005-04:00

Three months after it began in earnest, my web site redesign is done. As with any massively detailed and thoroughly engrossing job, its successful completion has left Gimp simultaneously percolating with delight and limp with an overriding sense of bereavement. Can’t be helped, I suppose. When you invest this much of yourself to an assignment whose deadline is self-imposed and therefore rigidly obeyed, it’s hard to go about your post-project life and not be aware that something large, like a lung, has gone missing.

It was a welcome diversion, I must say. News of the economy since last November has been terrifying, if you follow this sort of thing – and who doesn’t these days? Add to that the scrotum-shriveling spectacle of financial panic as it eviscerates your market … at Christmastime, no less; the one season upon which many retailers bet their entire businesses. And, newly separated, I spent my holidays without the kids or extended family.

It’s been a gloriously shitty year. To tell the truth, Gimp is a little fed up. With everything. This blog; the web site; suppliers all clamoring for money (“Hey, why don’t you drop everything you’re doing, right now, and overnight a check?”); customers flying into a frenzy when their parcels arrive a day late due to a National Fucking Holiday; jerkoff pickup-truck drivers; my dog’s kidney stone; gutters torn by ice from the side of my new house; Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce raising my personal line of credit interest rate by a full percentage point, because none of their money-grubbing-asshole-fraudster-should-all-be-in-prison colleagues are using bailout money to actually ease the credit crunch; rightwing goofballs declaring Barack Obama’s presidency an utter failure, one month after he’s taken office; Canada’s Conservative government spending millions on attack ads against the leader of our Loyal Opposition, almost immediately AFTER an election and in the middle of a financial crisis, because Stephen Harper wants us all to know that Michael Ignatieff is a big stinkhead. Jesus tap-dancing Christ, where does it all end?

I’ll tell you where. Aboard the Celebrity Summit, bound for Dominica from Puerto Rico on March 14. You read correctly: Gimp is checking out for a week; in a way, doing his part to rebuild the economy by spending money he doesn’t have on a cruise of the southern Caribbean, youngest son and girlfriend in tow. My first true vacation in five years, maybe longer.

You’ll excuse the attitude, gentle reader. It isn’t you vexes me, but life, and I’m taking my tonic in less than a week. I’ll write again, perhaps even optimistically and without a healthy side dish of venom, when I get back.

Peace.

Brookstone sucks, Vuzix rocks

2009-01-23T05:46:00.011-05:00

You’ll forgive me if I’ve been incommunicado of late. I’m redesigning the MenEssentials web site, from scratch. My poor weed-addled brain, it seems, can process only one major task at a time.

With much sighing of relief, I have come to the successful conclusion of an annoying but not unexpected customer-service experience. I thought I might share it with you. You know, as a sort of cautionary tale. Also, because Brookstone still won’t answer my emails, publish my reviews of their service, or otherwise lend me voice to my mounting frustration – and what good is a blog, after all, if I can’t bitch in public?

In my “I love my electric snow blower” post of December 11, I mentioned once that I have an uncanny ability to pick from myriad identical consumer products the one defective item on the shelf. What can I say? It’s a gift.

That particular form of luck kicks into overdrive especially for the holiday shopping period. I know this, so I take additional care in my Christmas gift selection. This season, for instance, I stood for nearly half an hour in front of a stack of Xbox 360 game consoles, trying to calculate which was the least likely to have been manhandled and damaged by Best Buy’s careless customers or staff. Seems a smidgeon ridiculous, I’ll admit. But an original Xbox, that I bought as a gift for my boys several Christmases back, came out of its carton in completely dysfunctional condition and Toys ‘R Us wouldn’t exchange it for another that worked. I had to mail the wretched thing to Microsoft and wait almost two months for a functioning refurb. So it goes.

My luck also extends to online orders. Naturally, I have no control over which of the many identical items arrives at my doorstep, so you would think my odds might improve when someone else – a warehouse employee, perhaps – does the picking for me.

I spent almost two weeks casting about for a well-considered gift for my eldest son. He’s 20, lives nearly rent-free with his mother, has his university fees covered, and waits tables part-time at a popular eatery in downtown Ottawa. Meaning, he has more money than God. Not exactly the easiest kid to buy for.

While tooling around the ‘Net, I came upon the Vuzix iWear AV230 Video Glasses at Brookstone.com. This is a goofy looking iPod accessory that allows you to view downloaded videos and movies on the virtual equivalent of a 44” HD screen. In surround sound.

They weren’t cheap. Neither was shipping: $82.00 for “express” delivery, plus $33.00 in taxes and duty, applied together as a lump sum and therefore impossible to know for certain which unspecified tax I was paying or what percentage the duty consumed.

My small, lightweight, $82.00-plus-$33.00 express-delivery parcel arrived nearly three weeks after I made my purchase. (For reference: my entire business is about cross-border delivery. I know precisely the kind of manure Brookstone's three-week delivery schedule and shipping/duty/whatever smells like.) Still, I was thrilled. I bought the product on November 29 and was mortally a-feared it might not show in time for Christmas. So I wrapped it up and stuck it underneath the tree.

First mistake. I should have tested it. But I don’t own an iPod – and I figured Brookstone is a big, reputable company: if anything goes wrong, they’ll make good. Which of course was my second mistake.

By the time my son opened his gift, gave it a whirl, and came to the immediate conclusion that his video glasses were defective, Brookstone’s 30-day return policy had long since expired. No extensions for holiday purchases. Certainly no extensions for international orders that take three weeks to arrive.

I called six times between Christmas and New Year’s and never once managed to reach a live human being. Instead, I received a cheery message about Brookstone’s customer-service hours (I was calling well within them), followed by a don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you variety of hang-up. I switched to email:

Hello,

I purchased a pair of Vuzix iWear AV230 XL video glasses (S/N 701285) on November 29, which arrived defective. I have followed the startup instructions, several times, and replaced the battery with several fresh batteries, but the glasses continue to play only audio and no video. Even the On-screen Display, which should appear immediately after the product is powered on (according to the user manual), does not display.

I realize that your return policy is for 30 days past the purchase date. However, I am hoping you can make an exception. I do not own an iPod and I am separated, so my son (the recipient of my gift) was only able to try out the glasses with his iPod Nano (third generation) yesterday. The product was shipped defective; it did not work out of the box.

I request an RMA Number so that I may return the defective item for one that works. Please respond at your earliest convenience.

Thank you.

Seems reasonable enough, eh? I’m still waiting for a response.

(I also submitted to the Brookstone.com web site a lucid, dispassionate review of my experience. It was never published.)

Long story short. Once it became clear that Brookstone wasn’t at all interested in my problem, I contacted the manufacturer. According to the Vuzix web site, these guys also produce military and medical applications on top of their consumer electronics. You might imagine what their service is like for a single pair of iPod video glasses. Or you think you might.

I called New Year’s Eve – New Year’s Eve! Reached an exceedingly polite support rep by the name of Todd Ferguson. Todd quickly understood that my video glasses were on the fritz, issued a very speedy RMA, and bid me a pleasant holiday. I mailed my busted specs to Rochester, NY the following week. Todd contacted me a few days later to let me know that his company had received my return, fixed their product that same day, and shipped it back to me later in the evening. I was floored.

In the end, my son received his one and only Christmas gift from me – a month late, but it works and he’s suitably agog. That massive, shit-eating grin the first time he tried them … it was worth the hassle.

Thanks, Vuzix. Screw you, Brookstone.

Six reasons why a White Russian is the perfect holiday beverage

2008-12-27T09:21:00.003-05:00

Eggnog is fucking revolting. We’re talking here about uncooked scrambled eggs with sugar. No man in his right mind would consume this toxic sludge on any other day of the year.

White Russians offend the lactose-intolerant. If you think the anti-smoking lobby’s social engineering tactics are extreme, try waving a Caucasian around a crowded room. You might provoke a slightly more hostile reaction by leaving peanuts at the kiddie table – but, seriously, why would you want to?

White Russians are like milk shakes. For alcoholics. These babies go down a little too easy, so guzzle responsibly. Knock back a half-dozen and you’ll be making passes at your grandmother.

White Russians are grown-up versions of piña coladas. I defy you to look like a responsible adult while straw-sipping from a bowl of tropical fruit and a tiny umbrella. You might as well have arrived at the party in a white limousine with your prom date on your arm.

Real men don’t drink Baileys. Sure, the commercials make it look like those hot women are gulping semen from shot glasses. But in the real world, chicks don’t behave that way in public and guys never wear purple velvet.

The Dude drinks White Russians. Need I say more? If you think I do, then you’ve clearly been home-schooled. Go away, you ponce.

How to make a classic White Russian

2 oz vodka
1 oz Kahlua
2% milk

Pour vodka and Kahlua over ice cubes in an old-fashioned glass. Fill with milk and serve.

I love my electric snow blower

2008-12-11T15:49:00.004-05:00

I don’t fawn over yard implements. A lawnmower cuts grass. A rake collects leaves. Cutting grass and collecting leaves mean extra work for me. Extra work is bad.

I suppose these devices are labor-saving, in the sense that it’d take longer to manicure my lawn with pinking shears. But, seriously, giddy exhilaration for a yard tool? That’s like working yourself into a froth over oven mitts. Some things are simply beneath a man’s dignity.

Yet I find myself in near ecstasy for a tool that has rendered obsolete my utter distaste for shoveling snow. I’m talking of course about my brand-spanking-new Toro 1800 Power Curve electric snow blower. And, no, before you ask, this isn’t a paid endorsement.

I have a notorious reputation among friends and family for bad luck when it comes to consumer goods. Of the local grocery’s hundred or so identical packages of microwaveable tortellini Alfredo, I will always pick the one that was accidentally filled with Gerber mashed turnip. If I choose a vacuum cleaner off the shelf at Wal-Mart, I’ll invariably discover at home that the factory people forgot to install its suction parts. Every new car I’ve owned has been a stinker. Even my pricey MINI Cooper S, whose front and rear wiper motors and the entire power steering system blew just a few days after my warranty expired.

You may wonder, then, what prompted me to commit five hundred bucks to a skimpy-looking electric snow shovel, when a cool thousand would have acquired one of those massive, throaty, gas-gulping, penile implants you push around your driveway with every taut muscle your groin can summon.

Indeed, a self-respecting hunk of testosterone like me should warm mightily to the awesome geyser produced by an overpowered snow mulcher bristling with rivets and other manly features. But I’m not one for such extravagance. Sure, the price of petrol has dropped like Paris Hilton’s frillies, but it’s maintenance of the thing that exasperates me. Calculating the correct oil-to-gas ratio, polishing spark plugs, purging fuel lines of sediment – even if I were skilled enough to perform these tasks without setting myself on fire, I’d still hesitate. The machine should work for me, not the reverse.

In spite of my history with new gadgets, and ignoring my nefarious male ego urging me to more power, I opted instead for electric. A shiny red Toro, not vaguely reminiscent of the little red wagon I pulled behind me as a kid.

If you read the reviews on Amazon.com, this particular machine is the frugal snow-blowing connoisseur’s idea of manna from Heaven. Some reviewers literally gush like teenage girls at the mere thought of their exquisite devices – such is the geek subculture growing up around the Power Curve. I could hardly resist.

It was something of a challenge to find a dealer in Ottawa. For some arcane reason, Toro doesn’t seem to think of Canada as a good market for its snow removal equipment. We got only 13 feet of the damned stuff last year.

Anyway, I finally located a nearby reseller and called ahead to check for availability. They had one in stock and the next day was to be our first brutal snowfall of the season. I paid for it, sight unseen, over the phone.

I’ll spare you the details of my pickup and hair-raising transit home. Snowstorms bring out the jackasses in this town.

Suffice to say, I was nearly aquiver with anticipation by the time I plugged in my new purchase. I performed a silent genuflection, breathlessly squeezed the starter bar – and nothing. Not a peep. My spiffy new Toro sat there, mocking me with its dysfunction.

This of course is the point where lesser men would swear like lesbian feminists at a Larry Flynt film festival. Not I. Defective appliances are my kith and kin, so to speak. As it turned out, this particular malfunction was entirely the doing of my electrician, who’d been working at my home the previous month and somehow disconnected my outdoor power supply. No biggie. I plugged into a supplementary outlet and gave ‘er another go.

To say the Toro Power Curve works well is something of an understatement. It was like blending a Margarita with an industrial wood chipper. I made short work of my driveway – ten minutes, tops, and with a heavy accumulation of slush – then regarded my neatly swathed lane with the kind of masculine pride that comes after a bitter job easily accomplished.

My neighbors snicker now when I pull out my little red snow blower. I care not. My driveway’s just as spotless as theirs. And for the same reason I don’t drive an SUV – my dick’s big enough, thank you very much.

Christmas spirit in mean times

2008-12-02T10:38:00.008-05:00

Retailers have a different perspective on the holidays. It’s not that we’re a curmudgeonly bunch – well, maybe some of us are; I know I am. But by the time the holiday shopping season kicks into high gear, we’re already dreading it.

Starting sometime in July or August, suppliers send out the first of their frequent, and increasingly alarming, order-now-or-forget-Christmas appeals. Most retailers don’t go into the black until December; yet we must dedicate considerable sums of our meager earnings to stock purchases that won’t pay off for another few months, then pray to the gods of consumption that this year’s seasonal buying frenzy doesn’t suffer a premature ejaculation. That particular money shot is virtually worthless if it goes off in your pants.

Forget for a moment that the Big Boxes have already decimated your market with their near-limitless advertising budgets and eye-popping discounts. (That’s more a problem for unwitting Wal-Mart employees, whose only protection from the deal-maddened mobs are a pane of glass and a faulty hinge.) Forget also that many consumers this year will defer their Christmas expenses in favor of simpler luxuries – like food, or heat for their repossessed homes.

Forget all of it. Because by the time those first holiday orders arrive at your transom, you’re already cringing from the mere insinuation of Christmas carols. You’re strapped for cash. You’re doing your best to ignore suppliers’ first (second/third/whatever) overdue payment notices. You’re stressed out and barking at your dog. Acquaintances come to greet you with a hearty handshake, but glimpse the madness in your eyes and fearfully retreat. Your only comfort is that other shop owners have the same haggard expression written across their faces. And there’s still three weeks left to Christmas.

So it is that I find myself wishing the holidays over, before they start. Which, truly, is stinkin’ thinkin’ but can hardly be helped.

I fear many shell-shocked consumers are of the same mind. When the news is nothing but bad – (Did you hear? Canada’s government is about to collapse. Happy holidays!) – it’s difficult to find joy in the spirit of these mean times.

But find it we must, all of us. Look for it in the company of friends and family. Look for it in the warmth of home after a long day’s labor. Look for it in the faces of your children, because Christmas still holds magic for them – and presents need not be expensive, or many, to fill their hearts.

We are not our credit cards. We are not our Calvin Kleins, or Perry Ellises, or Ralph Lauren Polos. We are whom we love, and how we love. We are conscious living things who can, if we wish it, find meaning enough in any small moment.

There’s snow now outside my window: huge, fluffy puffs of it drifting soundlessly everywhere around me. It’s breathtaking…

Clear your guns!

2008-11-20T12:04:00.003-05:00

There’s much to be said for a good morning crap. Indeed, I’m the kind of guy who takes a measure of pure satisfaction in his daily constitutional. And why not? A reasonably effortless and timely bowel movement not only feels great; it’s up there with solid, concrete-splitting erections as a bellwether of good health. “The gastrointestinal tract is a processing unit that metabolizes all of the nutrients you take in and eliminates all of the body’s waste,” says Dr. Amy Foxx-Orenstein, president of the American College of Gastroenterology. “What comes through it is reflective of how well or how ill the body is.”

Good to know, right? In an ideal stool-emitting scenario, your torpedo should launch with minimal fuss and sink immediately to the bottom of the bowl. This means you’re in fine form. A poop by any other description – pebbles, lumps, floaters, spaghetti, or tall-boy beer cans studded with Doritos-like daggers – should always give one pause. So too should not going at all.

Harvard Health Publications lists an alarming cornucopia of ailments associated with chronic constipation in men. These include the inevitable lifestyle factors (read: diet and narcotics use) through to neurologic disorders, depression and anxiety, and bowel diseases. Most times, it’s the amount of rabbit food you consume in a day.

The experts at University of Oxford Epidemiology Unit would agree. In 2004 they published an investigation into the relationship between nutritional/lifestyle factors and bowel movement frequency. Their findings? I quote: “Being vegetarian and especially vegan is strongly associated with a higher frequency of bowel movements.” Which seems thoroughly obvious, on the surface, but it supports my personal thesis that vegans really are full of shit.

Of some interest, to me at least, is Oxford’s finding that men crap more often than women – on average, 10 per week versus nine for women. I’ve yet to come across any information for why this might be, although you can refer to my vegan thesis, above, if you like.

Of equal – nay, of considerably more interest, are those guys who report sexual arousal during defecation. Something to do with stimulation of the prostate – which certainly sounds innocent enough, when compared to, say, erotic asphyxiation at the extreme end of the Sexual Weirdness Scale. Not that any of this is on topic, but I do find it curious.

I have a good buddy who says you can set your watch to his bowel movements. That may be more information than any friend should share, but I dig his point. Men must in fact be ever boastful of their bowels. Particularly, to doctors. They say more about your state of health than you’re likely prepared to admit. But admit it. The alternative … well, why contemplate?

8 is hate

2008-11-16T08:36:00.004-05:00

Download the poster (PDF, 16K, 8.5x11)

Hey! I ordered a cheeseburger!

2008-11-12T10:04:00.008-05:00

My favorite comic illustration is from Gary Larson’s The Far Side. The premise is the Four Basic Personality Types. Larson’s panel shows four people staring at a glass half-filled with water. The first, a bespectacled woman with a typically bizarre hairdo, happily exclaims, “The glass is half full!” The second, a man, sullenly confirms that the glass is half empty. The third waffles: “Half full. No! Wait! Half empty! … No, half … What was the question?” The fourth – he looks like a pissed-off truck driver – barks, “Hey! I ordered a cheeseburger!”

I often think of this panel as I go about my business every day. In brick-and-mortar retail, you greet many types of individuals on a more-or-less constant basis. They’re all, for the most part, fairly nice folks. In online retail, however, you only ever hear from your customers when something goes wrong – and that tends to queer the relationship before it even begins.

Without the pretense of civil conduct – that is, shrouded in anonymity, courtesy the Internet – people tend to say whatever they feel like saying. This makes them appallingly quick studies, and therefore easy to categorize into four basic customer personality types.

I present them here, for your amusement and instruction.

Gentleman
I’m happy to report that the bulk of our customers behave like civilized human beings when they approach us with their service problems.

The Gentleman communicates with courtesy and respect. He provides his full name and contact information, as well as his order number and a thorough description of his problem. The Gentleman often acknowledges that mistakes happen, compliments us on our otherwise spotless service record, and tells us precisely (and without expectation of undeserved reward) how he would like us to resolve the issue. He then thanks us very much for our time and wishes us well.

Retailer’s perspective: This guy goes immediately to the top of my To Do list. I’ll even throw in a little something extra, if I can, because he didn’t aggravate my acid-reflux problem.

Opportunist
A Gentleman, to be sure, the Opportunist is also a student of the reward-your-customer-for-every-misstep school of retail psychology. He lucidly explains his problem but rarely describes a solution that would satisfy. Uses the word “disappointed” throughout his text, no matter how slight the offense:

I read on such-and-such forum that your service was second-to-none, but I am disappointed to experience otherwise. My shave brush arrived with a disappointing scratch on the finish. I’m very disappointed that I have to take time out of my busy day to write to you about this issue, when a simple inspection during fulfillment would have prevented such a thing from happening at all. Yours sincerely, a disappointed customer.

This is code for “I want something.” Hence, the missing resolution request and the implied promise of negative public testimonial if a freebie isn’t immediately forthcoming.

Retailer’s perspective: If the error is ours, and it’s a whopper, I’ll hand over something of value without a moment’s hesitation. If we packed the wrong item or shipped a defective product (it happens), and we make a no-quibble proposal to replace it, that’s a completely acceptable customer-service solution and no other offer will be made.

Idiot
Provides a wildly inaccurate delivery address, or makes some other forehead-slapping gaffe that results in the irretrievable loss of his parcel, and blames us for his mistake. The Idiot uses strategies from the Opportunist (above) and Suicide Bomber (below), but fails to achieve a concession from the retailer because he has no bargaining position. And he’s a jerk.

Sensing a lucky break, this individual will first accuse us of deliberately changing the address on his order – because that’s how we endear ourselves to new customers. He will then attempt to extort a valuable freebie as compensation for our trickery. Failing to do so (i.e. when we ask him to inspect his email sales receipt, which clearly proves that we filled and shipped his order exactly as it was submitted to us), he flies into a rage, becomes rude and abusive and/or threatens legal action, then cancels his order and demands a full refund.

Retailer’s perspective: This is not the wisest strategy. We’ll do our best to help customers, even if the error isn’t ours. Once the bullying starts, it’s game over.

Suicide Bomber
Bursts onto the scene and immediately self-detonates. Rarely complains by telephone. When emailing, types ALL CAPS WITH PLENTY OF EMPHASIS!!!!!!!!! lest we miss his otherwise subtle message. Typically opens the customer-service dialogue with profanity and name-calling; closes with threats of legal action. The Suicide Bomber is all pyrotechnics and no agenda: offers plenty of choice words but never once provides a name, order number, astrological sign, ESP wavelength, or some other identifier that might help us to locate his issue and propose a resolution.

Example (actual email):

You idiots SENT ME THE WRONG PRODUCT!!! My card has ALREADY BEEN CHARGED!! I demand IMMEDIATE RESOLUTION or you’ll hear FROM MY LAWYER!!! Jerks.

Retailer’s perspective: We usually delete these messages without fanfare. Or reply.

Holy backlash, Batman!

2008-11-10T10:27:00.008-05:00

Chalk this one up to a failed experiment.

Last Saturday – if you’re on the MenEssentials customer newsletter mailing list, you would have found it in your Inbox – we sent out an offer that appears to the left. The thought behind it was innocent enough: let’s celebrate the historic occasion of the first African American president-elect by reducing for one weekend the price of our only branded product line, African Male by MenEssentials – which also happens to be the first luxury skin care and grooming range that targets Black men. We’ve been selling African Male since 2006 and it has a solid following among men of all cultural origins. Nice tie-in. Or so we naively thought.

Our newsletter wasn’t even finished cycling through its mail-out sequence when the first of many venomous messages appeared in response. Here’s one:

Regarding your Ad [sic] about the first "African Male President," remember he is half European [sic] male. I refuse to continue doing business with your company since you support that empty suit, Barack Obama, ol' "B.O." Remember who use [sic] your company – people with money, Conservatives. The bums and criminals who turned out to vote for that Bastard [sic] don't have any money. See ya later, I'm going somewhere else.

And another:

Talk about discrimination/racism. Come on, you have to be kidding.

One more, from Australia:

I feel that your Afro [sic] promotion is tasteless and a form of reverse prejudice. We are all one so why segregate Blacks from Whites? I find it patronising.

Let’s ignore for a moment the bizarre yet apparently pervasive belief that White men are somehow forbidden to purchase glycerin citrus soap or aloe shave gel marketed under a brand called African Male. Also dispense with the fact that our products are made on the African continent, by Africans (hence, the name), as part of an international antipoverty program. Consider instead the backlash our promotion sparked, and what it really means.

We measure any society, in part, by the way in which it treats its minorities. It’s a singular event that the USA has a Black president-elect. This is the most powerful and unique job on the planet. For the first time, it has been entrusted to a man of color. We wanted to honor that occasion.

No one can deny the historic nature of the election’s outcome. Had we honored Hillary Clinton instead as the first female president, or Sarah Palin as the first female vice president, and offered a free women’s fragrance (which we have in considerable volume at our warehouse: long story), would that have been sexist? Had we celebrated John McCain’s victory with a tongue-in-cheek discount on anti-aging products, would that have been ageist? Does a promotion involving hair care products exclude the bald? Or shave products, a deliberate snub of the bearded? Seriously?

The sale itself was for our African Male by MenEssentials product line, which has been available for two years and which has always targeted African American men. Targeted, but in fact enjoyed by any man with skin. If you read our customer reviews, you’ll see that African Male products have a substantial following among men of all skin types and colors. The sale didn’t exclude anyone – we didn’t say it was for Blacks only, just as our annual Thanksgiving sale isn’t for Whites only, even though that holiday was introduced by White European settlers and institutionalized by Puritan Christians.

There is no harm, whatsoever, in highlighting the achievement of any cultural community, particularly one of this significance – which is, in truth, an achievement all Americans can claim with pride. Canada has never elected a Black prime minister. Neither has Britain, or Australia, or any other Western democracy. In spite of our (often boastful) love of multiculturalism, it took the United States of America to show the rest of us how it’s done.

So my question to you is this: was it the fact that we offered a discount on our product line, or was it that we noted the significance of the first African-American president-elect, that upset and offended? If it’s the former, hey, we’ll have other sales for a broader range of products – US Thanksgiving is two weeks away. If it’s the latter, then the deeper question is: why?

Thank you

2008-11-05T11:38:00.001-05:00

What Tuesday promises

2008-11-03T12:33:00.005-05:00

If pollsters are correct, tomorrow the people of the United States of America will elect as president a racially questionable, socialist/Islamist/communist anti-Christian God-rejecting Arab Muslim with ties to terror organizations and a penchant for cigarettes and gay marriage. In other words, French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

For intelligent life on this planet, however, tomorrow may very well be the first day of the rest of our lives.

It’s no secret that the freedom-loving world – I mean, those of us who can’t vote for American presidents, but who set about our lives within the realm of their imperial influence – think of Barack Obama as the States’ formal apology for eight years of George W. Bush. I won’t belabor any points about the relative merits of either contender for the throne – both Obama and McCain are able men – or the naked emperor they compete to replace. Too much has already been written on that subject, and more will come as Americans wake from their Night of the Swaggering Buffoon.

What Obama’s ascension represents is much greater than a tally of who dined at which pot luck suppers or bought the prescribed number of Girl Guide cookies. Whether or not it’s justified, we have conferred upon this man our hope for salvation from a long and frightful dream.

In reality, either candidate might handily deliver us from the precipice at which we find ourselves. Keep your powder dry and your pecker hard, the saying goes, and the world will turn. Yet only one of these men symbolizes hope, by the very fact of who he is and what he has the potential to accomplish.

Barack Obama is a Black American on the eve of assuming the presidency. To say such a thing is at once obvious and astonishing, and it forces us to hold him to a higher standard. We don’t expect Mr. Obama to part the seas and raise up the dead. But we do demand inspiration.

A Black American president embodies the long-awaited conquest of character over color, of right over race. He must necessarily inspire. He must arouse our passions, reawaken our curiosity, and hand us back our faith – not in what his government can do for us but in what he’ll encourage us to do for ourselves. Anything less would be a cheat, and so we’ll hold him to his promise.

As a Canadian, it’s too easy to sit to one side and mock Americans their folly – and the Bush years were indeed folly on a hubristic scale. But no more! You’ve made your accord with the rest of us. Tomorrow, deliver that light in the window, and guide the hopeful home.

Love and personal hygiene

2008-10-31T10:27:00.002-04:00

Three out of four dentists agree,
My love for you reduces plaque above the gumline.
In a side-by-side comparison with the leading brand,
It washes dirt clean away
And never leaves a soapy film.

When we love, it is like new Q-tips
With fifty percent more cotton softness;
Or no-tears baby shampoo —
Gentle enough to use every day.

Fear not, my sweet, the unavailing arrows
Decay slings at my affection for thee.
I repel them, as antiperspirant repels body odor,
As antibacterial spray repels household germs!

I will remain, forever and always,
Your fresh-as-a-spring-day douche;
Your extra-absorbent pantyliner;
Your ultimate feminine protection.

Eight (other) things you can do with shave cream

2008-10-29T08:52:00.007-04:00

Lemon meringue pie, hold the meringue. Then add shave cream. It’s a healthy portion of country goodness, with a soupçon of stomach pump.
On Halloween, leave a tube of shave cream on your neighbor’s porch and ring the bell. First, substitute the shave cream with dog crap … and the tube with a flaming paper bag. Take that, you heretic bastard!
Shave your girlfriend’s cat. Or her kootchie. Whichever one doesn’t end in a trip to the hospital.
While your roommate is sleeping, fill his right hand with shave cream and gently slip his left hand into a bowl of warm water. Then drop a charged electrical appliance into the bowl. Just be sure to hide his body where the shave-cream-sniffing police dogs won’t find it.
For a time-honored knee-slapper, it’s the old shave-cream-in-the-Blu-ray-player gag. Imagine your friend’s face when he slips in his favorite film. Imagine yours, when he beats you to death with a flashlight.
Squeeze a dollop of shave cream on your forehead and visit a restaurant. “There’s what on my face? No, miss, I picked that up in Southeast Asia. The doctor says it’s probably not contagious.”
One jumbo cookie spatula + one catapult-sized blob of shave cream + one unsuspecting grandmother = hours of hilarious nursing home mayhem.
Two words: nipple frosting!

Please allow me to introduce myself

2008-10-28T11:33:00.008-04:00

It’s not enough to say the Internet has changed our lives. That’s an understatement, like describing my mother’s gas-passing as a localized atmospheric disturbance. The Internet defines a generation. My sons, 20 and 16, would be adrift without it. Lost, in the same way I’m lost when one of them hands me an Xbox game controller and then proceeds to kick my ass while he chats with four hundred of his closest technopeers. Lost, in the Borg-disconnected-from-the-hive meaning of the word. Without center, without community, without sense of self. No purpose. Gone.

That’s a tough nugget for anyone over the age of 40 to swallow. As a kid, whenever I was bored with the three network-television channels piped into our living room via my father’s spindly aerial antenna – more to the point: if my mom had locked me outside for the afternoon – I’d network the old-fashioned way: bike to some other punk’s house, knock on the screen door, and timidly ask his unsmiling, hair-roller-festooned hausfrau of a mother if he could come out to play. I’d get halfway through the first syllables (“Hello, Mrs. Grubb, can B—”) and she’d toss him onto the driveway like a Glad Kitchen Catcher stuffed with moldy stew and used tampons.

These days, our lives are interior. There’s too much good stuff happening – too much of that extreme, adrenaline-in-the-pit-of-the-stomach, teeth-gnashing, migraine-inducing virtual adventure – to ever do anything so foolhardy as to set foot out-of-doors. My boys shrink under direct sunlight. Their preference is to hole up in their bedrooms, blinds drawn and lights off, cowled Unabomber-style in hoodies, hunkered over keyboards with the ghastly reflections of YouTube videos, scrolling chat interfaces, and RPG warfare flitting across their pallid faces. They consume information, as if it were needled into their veins. You want to talk about a generation gap? Its new name is multitasking. They can do it; I can’t.

And yet, even we Baby Boomers aren’t able to hold our breath against the vacuum suck of cyberspace. The Internet is everywhere. We don’t telephone; we video conference. We don’t mail letters; we remit digital one-liners, pass along saccharine motivational tomes that challenge the gag reflex, exchange cell phone images of gummy-faced newborns, SMS needy Where R U MYSM missives while simultaneously fumbling a coffee mug and steering wheel. The Internet transforms corporate trademarks into verbs: we Google information, MSN acquaintances, PhotoShop our images. Behind a nearly impenetrable veil of anonymity (through which only the CIA peers), we fire off vitriol to Bangladeshi customer-service reps whenever our Amazon.com parcels arrive a day late and inconvenience us so immeasurably that we’re without words to describe our torment.

We live in interesting times. Ironic, given that the purported Chinese curse from which that first sentence derives also bears two other curses of escalating severity:

May you live in interesting times;
May you come to the attention of those in authority; and
May you find what you are looking for.

The Internet promises all three, so perhaps we are indeed cursed. Perhaps the real curse is that the Internet is us: the collective consciousness of our species; the unmapped space where kings and queens consort with minor devils, where the best hire publicists and the worst self-promote their atrocities. Pomp and porn. Valor and voyeurism. Dignity and defilement. The fervor and funk of human thought.

In other words: the blog. That’s where the Internet inevitably leads: the attention-grabbing public wank that is our lives and minds on display. The hand-job of diary. The cerebral circle-jerk. Reality programming, with us as the stars of our own lives.

Welcome to sockjockey. Call me Gimp. I’ll be your host.