Some Blog Site

By now, all the Christmas decorations should be long gone. Everything’s packed away in attics or basements. Nativity scenes are in storage, and the Elf on the Shelf cannot cause any more mischief.

Which means there is room to expand the market.

The Elf on the Shelf started as an innocent game of hide-and-seek. It seems to have morphed into a game of blame-the-incident-on-the-elf, where parents create minor (or major) catastrophes, place the Elf in a position so that it is obvious he caused the damage, and let the children find him and blame him for his actions. It can be a way to reinforce rules and behavioral expectations to one’s children.

Now with that background information out of the way, let me proceed to my main point:

The Elf on the Shelf people should start marketing him to occasions other than Christmas. My first suggestion to them: politicians.

Just think, politics goes on year-round.
There will always be politicians.
The number of politicians never shrinks, meaning the market for Political Elf on the Shelf will always be strong.
And, politicians are always getting in trouble, meaning demand for the Political Elf on the Shelf will always be strong.

Here is how it would work:

• Step 1: Politician does something bad/wrong/illegal.
• Step 2: Politician holds a press conference.
• Step 3: Politician blames the Elf on the Shelf.

Step 3 isn’t new, what’s new is that now the politicians know whom to blame. They don’t have to spend time thinking about a plausible culprit.

Here is how it would look:

If that proves successful, the Elf on the Shelf could branch into helping celebrities and athletes on Twitter.

• Step 1: Celebrity/athlete says something offensive/ignorant/bad on Twitter/Facebook/social-media-outlet-of-the-day
• Step 2: Public uproar causes PR firm to run damage control
• Step 3: Instead of holding a press conference, the celebrity’s friends will post a photo of the Elf on the Shelf typing on the celebrity’s phone or using the celebrity’s laptop, strongly implying that the offending tweet/post came not from the celebrity but from the trouble-making Elf.

Who else could use an Elf on the Shelf?

I was tempted to buy this because it was such as great deal. My wife talked me out of it, and she’s right – we didn’t really need it.

But if I see it drop to $17.95, I’m buying.

As I was setting up a new appliance this weekend, I noticed the marketing hype on the packaging: “Only uses as much electricity as four 100-watt light bulbs!”

Four 100-watt light bulbs is a fair amount of electricity. Four of those appliances could trip a circuit breaker.

I realized, shortly after reading that phrase, that most electrical products can be made to sound insignificant if you compare them to light bulbs.

For example, my water heater uses only as much electricity as 45 light bulbs!

And my electric fireplace uses the same amount of electricity as 15 light bulbs!

You know what? I’m heating my house with electricity and it is costing me mere pennies per day!

Never mind that it is hundreds of pennies per day, maybe even a thousand pennies per day in really cold weather. The fact is that I do heat my house with electricity and it does cost me pennies per day.

You can’t argue with that, can you?

A Letter to the Manufacturers of the Caps of Liquid Detergents

Note: detergent companies, it is a very important letter, so please read all the lines.

Hint: if you are not a manufacturer of detergent caps and you want to know what I wrote, highlight the text with your mouse (or finger if you’re using a smartphone/tablet – you may need to copy/paste it into an email in order to read it). Those manufacturers don’t need this hint because they obviously have no problem reading things with no contrast between the background and foreground colors.

[happy music]
Hello again everyone! Welcome to another episode of Hyphen-Man!

[suspenseful music]
Today’s case involves a box. A cereal box. See for yourselves:

Transcript – the box says:
Sweetened Whole Grain Oat Cereal
with a Naturally Yogurt Flavored Coating

Only Hyphen-Man can clear this mess!

Little does he suspect that the evil masterminds are trying to distract him by adding “ly” to words that don’t need it.

[faster suspenseful music]
“Naturally Yogurt?” he questions. “Yogurt is a noun – it shouldn’t be modified by an adverb!”

“Adjective-Man!” he calls. “I need your help!”

Hyphen-Man rushes to add a hyphen between Yogurt and Flavored while Adjective-Man arrives and starts removing the “ly”.

The trap worked! They continue their tasks, not realizing the words should have been rearranged first…

[commercial break]
Should it be “Natural Yogurt-Flavored Coating” or “Natural-Yogurt Flavored Coating” or “Naturally-Flavored Yogurt Coating”? Oh, the choices, the ambiguity, the tension!

Tune in next week, when Hyphen-Man fixes the phrase “Sweetened Whole Grain Oat Cereal”!

There is an ad running on the radio stations around here. I don’t know if it’s national or not, but it is for La Quinta Inns.

The ad sounds something like this:

Normal Announcer:When salesman Rob Taylor stays at La Quinta Inn, he is well-rested. And when he’s well-rested, you know what he does?
Baseball Announcer:And here’s the sales pitch…
Sound of bat hitting a ball: Thwack!
Normal Announcer:He knocks it out of the park!

It’s good they kept the cliches consistent in that the ad is all baseball, but now I have questions about the purpose of the sales pitch.

Logic of the Analogy:
If a sales pitch is analogous to a baseball pitch, then the salesman is the pitcher.
If Rob Taylor is the pitcher, then he is not batting.
Thus, he cannot hit it out of the park.
Ergo, his customer must have hit the sale out of the park.

Questions:

• Is it good or bad that the customer hit it out of the park?
• What does it mean if the customer gets a good hit on your sales pitch?
• Is a sales pitcher’s job to throw strikes? And get the customer to swing and miss?

Normally, a pitcher is trying for strikes, meaning that the batter does not hit the ball. Certainly, you don’t want your customer to strike out. Then he goes away and you have to find a new customer.

Maybe a sales pitcher’s job more like coach-pitch youth baseball, where the pitcher is supposed to gently toss the ball to give the batter the best chance for a hit.

But then the salesman isn’t being fair to his own company; he needs his employer to make money off the deal too.

Conclusion:
I don’t know what to make of this. You don’t want the customer striking out and you don’t want the batter hitting home runs. There is no good result of a sales pitch.