Keith's Rants

It was none other than the great Alexander J. Rock who first gave me the idea of carrying around a little pad of paper at work to write down the ideas I have while I’m there. Rock started doing this himself while he was working at the horse track last summer, in a job that consisted in large part of standing around looking official. Now, my job requires a little more than that — specifically, it requires me to have my hands full all the time — so I can’t just stand around scribbling. I do, however, have one advantage over Rock in terms of workplace ideas: I am constantly exposed to the full gamut of food packaging, and the elaborate advertising and branding associated therewith. Last night, therefore, I spent a ten-minute break walking around the store writing down all the fun brand names I could see. Thus was born Great Moments in Marketing.

First on my list, and by far the most outrageous, was a certain brand of paper plate. These are in Aisle 14, in case you were wondering. I can think of nothing better than to repeat the labeling verbatim. No embellishment is necessary.

“Nature’s Own Green Label” brand paper plates. “Made from paper — a renewable natural resource.”

Read that a couple times until it sinks in. Now, these plates aren’t made from recycled paper — as far as I know they’re 100% virgin giant Sequoyah. Given that, it takes some serious chutzpah to try to sell them as environmentally friendly, but this is just what they are trying to do.

This is not to say that it’s a case of false advertising. Paper is indeed renewable — trees grow back, after all. Now that I think of it, they may be on to something. It makes me wonder why car companies haven’t caught on to this idea. I can see it now. The Ford Sequoyah: Fueled by wood — a renewable natural resource. Not only could we stick it to the Arabs, who have nary a tree to their name, but we could catch hippies between a rock and a hard place. The AlTech Blue Ribbon for Audacity in Marketing goes to the AJM Packaging Corporation, which has been the target of several lawsuits.

http://www.ajmpack.com/

There are too many instances of great marketing in even an average grocery store to be able to award a runner-up. To pick just two other products would do a disservice to many others. I would, however, like to point out a few good ones.

One product that makes no sense is Oxygen Water.

http://www.avaniwater.com/home.htm

This is marketed as an X-treme sports drink, for people who need extra energy for ice-climbing or hard lemonade drinking, or whatever it is that bored yuppies do. The Avani website describes their product thus: “The AVANI process allows large amounts of oxygen to be dissolved and stabilized in water. . . AVANI does not contain ANY chemicals.”

Leaving aside the fact that both oxygen and water are chemicals, the premise here is that “Without oxygen, we all die. Generally, some of the direct benefits of increased oxygen intake by our body are increased energy level, alertness, strengthened immune system, and the removal of toxins and poisons from the body. “

Additionally, I find the following on the website:

“Q: Does AVANI water look any difference?
A: Yes. Unlike tap water and other premium bottled waters in which you may see floating dissolved solids AVANI water will appear strikingly crystal clear by comparison.”

The fact that the proprietors of this company are illiterate simply reinforces what we already know: that they are idiots. I don’t know how they missed the fact that oxygen, as undoubted as its health benefits may be, is absorbed into the body through the LUNGS. They sell this stuff, too, which means that there must be thousands of people out there who haven’t yet picked up on this fact. So, if any of them are reading this, let me give you the straight dope on oxygen water. Unless you are breathing it into your lungs or gills, all that it will give you is gas.

Speaking of idiots, a good place to look for fun product names in the grocery store is the “natural foods” section. Now, it is a well-known fact that most of the people who buy into this all-natural whole grain wholesome panda bear koala crap are so dumb that they even voted for John Kerry. This fact is further proven by some of the brands of cereal I found in their section of the store.

First off, a company called Nature’s Path inc. makes a couple types of cereal under the Envirokidz brand. The two that I saw were called Gorilla Munch and Koala Crisp. Koala Crisp is essentially Cocoa Puffs, while Gorilla Munch is more like Kix, or maybe Corn Pops, depending on how sweet it actually is. On a side note, among the ingredients of both cereals is “organic evaporated cane juice.” Good thing they didn’t use sugar. I hear that sugar kills owls.

Now, I don’t know about you people, but when I see cereal, one of the last things to cross my mind is gorillas, and vice versa. The front of the box depicts a gorilla smiling next to an enormous bowl of this cereal, with strawberries and milk, but I’m not so sure that cereal is part of the gorilla’s natural diet. So far as I know, gorillas do not brush their teeth, and I don’t think I’d be the first to try to brush them, so it’s likely that a gorilla who ate this stuff would get cavities, become extremely agitated, go on a rampage, and kidnap Fay Wray, who only recently died and might still be dug up by an angry gorilla.

None of this matters to the organic people who buy this crap, of course. They see a gorilla on the box, feel warm and fuzzy and in tune with their spirit animal, and go scurrying off to the checkout counter, box in hand.

http://www.envirokidz.com/cereals.htm

This is the same principle at work in another brand of cereal, “Puffins.” For those of you who don’t know, a puffin is apparently some kind of bird. Going by the nutrition facts, the cereal is not itself made of puffins, but rather of “crunchy, lightly sweetened corn pillows.” Puffins are cute, though, unlike gorillas.

http://www.barbarasbakery.com/products/cerealproddisplay.asp?product=60&category=20

“Spelt Flakes” is another one, tending more towards the health nut target market than the nature freak one. I had to look up the meaning of “spelt,” so for all of you who are as ignorant as I was, the definition of spelt, according to Word Search 2.1 beta, is, “(n) spelt, Triticum spelta, Triticum aestivum spelta (hardy wheat grown mostly in Europe for livestock feed).” Why cattle feed is better for you than ordinary wheat, I do not know. I don’t see many cattle living to be 95.

The special prize for Most Bizarre Cereal Name goes to a cereal called (to quote Dave Barry, I am not making this up) “Ezekiel 4:9.” Now, while I consider myself a religious man, I don’t have every verse of the Bible on the tip of my tongue like my creepy roommate did freshman year, so I had to go look up Ezekiel 4:9. It states,

“Take thou also unto thee wheat, and barley, and beans, and lentiles, and millet, and fitches, and put them in one vessel, and make thee bread thereof, [according] to the number of the days that thou shalt lie upon thy side, three hundred and ninety days shalt thou eat thereof.”

Amen.

Given that, I would guess that those are the ingredients in the cereal, though the biblical recipe seems to be for some kind of bread or unleavened cracker. The cereal also seems to have blueberries, which would constitute a sin in some parts of Ohio.

Last on my list is something called Peace Cereal. Its selling point is that 10% of the proceeds from its sale are “donated to Peace.” Now, for Peace to get the money, it stands to reason that it has a bank account. However, what with the war and all, I think it’s safe to say that no one knows where to find Peace. It may be, then, that Peace’s bank account doesn’t have any personal information attached to it, like a secret Swiss bank account. When you consider that Switzerland has had more than its fair share of peace over the years, it becomes clear that Peace resides in Switzerland, and is milking the cereal companies for all they’re worth. The inescapable conclusion here is that in order to end the war, the United States must invade Switzerland, enslave the population, and bring them to the United States, which will then have Peace.

I’ll bring you back some chocolate.
{democracy:9}

So today I had to mail a letter. This happens from time to time, and it is usually not a problem. The hardest part is typically remembering to grab the envelope as I head out the door. Once this is taken care of, I simply drop it in the blue metal box that is bolted to the sidewalk, and voila — electricity for another month.

This letter was a bit more challenging, however, because I am no longer in Cleveland, but rather at my parents’ home in Schenectady. It is a much better place to be unemployed, because I can drink their coffee without paying for it. My parents have their very own mailbox, which seems like a real perk of home ownership until you have to dig it out from under ten feet of snow come January. I digress.

Anyhow, today about 2:00 pm, after breakfast and my third cup of free coffee, I was feeling ready to face the world. I grabbed my letter and set off down the driveway to the mailbox. Imagine my surprise when I got there and found that it was already full — not of mail, as one might think, but rather of wasps. I ran up the driveway, swatting at wasps with my letter.

I confess that it was not actually full of wasps. There were really more like three of them, though they did chase me for about thirty feet. I should have seen this coming, as seemingly every time I have to mail a letter from my parents’ mailbox, there is a wasp nest inside it. This happens every year, and I’m not sure why they keep coming back, or why it is always me who finds them.

Not to be thwarted by mere insects, I went into the garage and got out a can of everyone’s favorite nerve toxin, Ortho brand Bee and Wasp Killer. I marched right up to the mailbox and soaked it in foamy poison, being sure to chase down every fleeing wasp and give it a good hosing until it fell to earth, doubtless in unspeakable agony. Then I made sure to cover the nest, which was about the size of a golf ball, in poison, before sticking my letter in the box and heading up to wash my hands.

As I was scrubbing, I considered the fact that even though I hadn’t gotten any of the spray on my hands, or touched the mailbox, I was making sure to clean up before I did anything else. The mailman, on the other hand, would probably have no idea that the box had been gassed, and so would probably go right from handling my letter to eating his lunch, or whatever it is mailmen do. I doubt that there’s enough poison to do him serious harm, of course, as it does evaporate pretty quickly. If everyone did like I did, though, I’ll bet he could build up a significant dose over time. Perhaps suburban mailmen carry atropine for just such a contingency.

Another problem that I had with the mail, I am embarrassed to report, is that I wasn’t sure of what to do with the little red flag on the right hand side of the mailbox. This is doubly embarrassing, because I am a part-time mailman for my university’s internal mail service. I know that the flag serves some kind of signaling purpose, but, having not used such a thing in a long time, I wasn’t sure who was supposed to signal whom, and about what. If you think about t it, it could really go both ways.

“Hey, over-paid public servant in a white truck! I have mail for you to pick up today, unless it is one of several ridiculous union-mandated holidays, in which case I am screwed.”

“Hey, tax-paying citizen! I have left you a gift of local weekly newspapers, bills, and glossy paper offering low, low prices on things you will never buy.”

God’s honest truth — I went inside and looked up on the internet what to do with the little red flag. For those of you who are also unsure, the mailer puts it up in order to inform the mailman that he has left mail to be picked up.

Alexrock.com — fun and educational.
{democracy:8}