Almostgotit.com

[Guest post by My Brilliant Brother]

Here’s a brief topic: I went to Target the other day to pick up a waffle iron. I went in thinking a waffle iron costs somewhere in the $30-$50 range.

So, I saw the $70 stainless version and I saw the $20 version and a few in between. I picked up the $20 version feeling very happy with my purchase.

On the way out, I saw at the end of the isle a bunch of rejects and there I saw a similar waffle iron for $5.98. The box was crushed but the iron itself appeared to be in good condition. So, I returned the $20 iron to the shelf, selected the reject and made my way to the cashier. To my surprise they had discounted it further to $2.98.

I got out of there keeping $30-$2.98=$27.02 in my pocket. This is the additional portion of the price that I was willing to pay but ended up keeping for myself rather than adding to Target’s coffers.

What did Target do wrong, if anything? And, what do I do with the money I saved?

I’m so glad I’m not the only one who gets things wrong sometimes. A colleague of my husband’s passed this photo on from a colleague of HIS who lives in Kurdistan.  The stuff is made by an Iranian company, apparently, with “Barf” being an approximation of the Farsi word for “Snow.” But Russians wash with Barf, too. 

Judging by the expensive orthodontia on those skinny white people on the box, however, I wonder if it isn’t really just a plain old Amuricun emetic?

An advertisement for a bank specializing in wealth management and private banking, appearing in last Sunday’s New York Times (11/16/08)

“First Republic maintains our relationship over the phone and over the Internet — it’s a beautiful thing.”

LEE BRATHWAITE, TELECOM EXECUTIVE
LAURA BRATHWAITE, ATTORNEY AT LAW, WIFE AND MOTHER

Successful, working couple, and hey –they’re even black. 

Thank you, I get it: First Republic Bank is More PC-Than-Thou.

But am I the only one who notices something missing here?

Three Cheers for Three Wednesday Women:

Wednesday Woman #1:

Michelle Allen, of Middletown, Ohio was arrested last Saturday for allegedly chasing children and blocking traffic while wearing a cow suit. 

The Middletown Journal did not speculate on the reason for the cow suit, besides the obvious fact that it made for the best mug shot ever.

Ms. Allen reportedly wore the cow suit again on Tuesday morning for her court appearance.

Why? you might ask.

Well, I might ask in return, Why the hell not?

***

Wednesday Woman #2:

I do not know the difference between a functional saxaphone and good martini, but University of Tennessee music professor Connie Frigo sure does. 

And this week, Dr. Frigo went to bat for my 12-year-old daughter, who  is taking lessons from one of her graduate students.   The student teacher reported to Dr. Frigo that my daughter, a first-time sax player, had been provided with a seriously defective saxaphone by a local music store. 

Dr. Frigo fired off an email to me: This hits a nerve with me for many reasons!  and asked us to allow her to communicate with the music store on our behalf. 

She called the manager, and spoke with the repair man, whom she knows, and insisted they make things right for us. 

I will come down there, she told them, and look at the instrument myself, if I have to.

She called me back.  Take the sax in and ask for the manager by name.  Here’s his name.

And tell him Dr. Frigo sent you… 

(Wow, marvelled my daughter when we went to the store. He sure got NICE all of a sudden when we said her name, Mom…)

Ah, how much a woman after my own heart is the  Professor Connie Frigo.

Frigo is featured in this month’s issue of The Saxaphone Journal. 

She is also featured in this month’s Almostgotit Family Gallery of Heroes.

***

Wednesday Woman #3

Superfunny supergenius Sarah Haskins, for her video, Feeding your F—ing Family.

Hat tip to Beyond Help for this video on my favorite (not!) topic, which more politely might be subtitled “How the Media are Messing with Our Mommy Minds.”

HEMA is a Dutch department store. With 150 stores in the Netherlands, HEMA also has stores in Belgium, Luxemburg, and Germany. In June of this year, HEMA was sold to British investment company Lion Capital.

Take a look at HEMA’s awesome product page .

Okay, so you can’t order anything, and it’s in Dutch, but just wait a couple of seconds and watch what happens. This company has an amazing web master.  Even better, though, is its sense of humor. 

We live in a seriously humor-deprived world.  I wonder if that’s one reason we have so many wars?

Creative Commons image by bookgrl

We have a new cupcake shop in our neighborhood. 

I am no cave-dweller:  I understand that shops selling cupcakes are the new thing, very trendy and urban-chic, which seems to have started in New York at least six years ago.  But why CUPCAKES?  I liked them at birthday parties as  a kid, sure, but the things have basically three ingredients:  white sugar, white flour, and white shortening.  Have you ever seen a recipe for professional buttercream frosting?  Crisco and sugar, I kid you not.  Plus lots and lots of air.

Many years ago, when my husband was in graduate school in Toronto, we discovered that Canadians love donuts.  There was a donut and coffee shop on every corner, and on the corners where there wasn’t a donut shop, there was one that sold over-sized muffins.  For poor kids like us, muffins were a terrific and fairly cheap treat, and if we bought them “take out” we avoided the 15% sales tax, too.  We could make a whole dinner out of a muffin. 

My husband and decided to investigate the new shop today.  Mostly it seemed to be candles and cards and other cutesies, but eventually we saw a small assortment of cupcakes to choose from, too.  They all looked like… cupcakes.  There were no prices, so I bought four, one for each of us, and it cost me over thirteen dollars.  We brought them home and ate them.  They tasted like cupcakes too,  pretty much just as Betty Crocker invented them.

I don’t get it.

Muffins are infinitely variable, and they’re so good they don’t need sugar and shortening glopped on top of them to make them edible.  They can be light and fluffy or spicy and dense.  You can feel them in your mouth as you eat them.  They linger on your tongue and on your tastebuds.  Muffins have a personality. For that matter, so do cinnamon rolls, croissants, and danish.  Scones slay me.  Cheesecake is amazing.  I also like pie, crullers, and cookies.  Bakeries that sell these things, especially if they also have good bread and maybe serve lunch on the side, these are among my favorite of things. 

But cupcakes?  Someone, please explain this to me. 

Hat tip to that fabulous Canadian worthy, Duckworth Peslar, who notified me today that Taser International is marketing a personal taser with a built in MP3 player — one that doesn’t skip a beat when you taser someone or something.

Amazing.

Also making international news over the weekend: FLOGOS are here! The latest in crazy advertising gimmicks, Flogos look — and float in the air — like clouds, but are literally floating logos made of soap bubbles filled with helium.  Re-purposed snow blowers pump the shapes through a computer-shaped stencil to form any 2-D logo one wishes, e.g the Nike swish or the Apple Computer apple. 

While this particular model that I own, by BonJour, seems no longer to be available,  there are dozens of other insulated French press pots now on the market.  And no wonder!   They are easy to use, easy to clean, and make to-die-for-coffee.  As a comes-from-Seattle-girl, I know.

Many coffee connoisseurs recommend press pots for the best coffee flavor, but the glass ones don’t keep coffee hot for more than a few minutes.  Problem solved with this insulated version,  which I can set right next to my computer, where it provides me with hours of refills! 

I’d buy this pot over and over again, too, except that the one we have will never wear out. We’ve used it daily for years now. 

I would like to add that not a single company or person is paying me to write about insulated French-Press Coffee Pots,  though I certainly think it is an excellent idea to send nice things to bloggers and ask them for endorsements (money is always a nice thing to send to bloggers, too.) 

After all.  If the Johnson & Johnson marketing people  learned anything from their recent Camp Baby experience, they may now realize they’d have been much better off showering their target mom bloggers with products (to keep and to use as blog give-aways) instead of paying their way to a conference where all the neuroscientists, nurses and marketing professionals who dominate the momosphere  were treated to scintillating sessions about hair-braiding.

I’m just saying.  And for the record, my contact information is right up there, at the top of this screen.

The story, in brief:  Johnson & Johnson co. marketers decide to be hip, and so they invite 50 of the biggest names in mom-blogging to an all-expenses-paid “Camp Baby” event   in early April.   They handle the invitations very badly.  Then they start disinviting people.   J&J has received lots of blog time in the aftermath, all right!  Don’t miss Susan Getgood’s hilarious “Camp Baby” post mortem!

Written especially for the web, the (very) short-form comedy series, “In the Motherhood,” is just begining its second season. Scripted by Hollywood professionals and with an all star cast featuring Leah Remini (”The King of Queens”), Jenny McCarthy and Chelsea Handler, the hilarious and edgy story ideas for each episode are submitted by real-life mothers from across the country. It’s a terrific concept.

And the episodes are FUNNY.

In the Motherhood hopes to become a major destination site, and so far it seems to be succeeding. I love the boldness of pairing the collaborative nature of the web with the professional production values already used by the television and movie industry. And all of this effort is aimed not at the still-highly-male-IT-industry, but at mothers. Hurray!

Oh sure — it’s still a marketing ploy. Nevertheless, it is also truly entertaining while managing to avoid the condescension and banality that still plagues so many “mommy” websites.

So hats off to ‘em, is what I say.