Stop Exploiting the Squick Factor

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/05/day_old_sushi.html

OK, this is the kind of quickie, one-off example I hate. He takes some concept that on the surface, sounds good, but when you look at it closely, falls apart. Why? The local sushi place has made TONS of money off me, because I LOVE their half-price, day old avocado rolls. Why? Because they taste BETTER the next day, AND because I like $6.00 better than I like $12.00. Believe it or not, I fill an important need for my local sushi business. They’re able to sell delicious, healthy food, and I’m able to buy it, at a price we both agree on. Does that make me someone who eats day old sushi? Yes, and I feel good about that, therefore I will be back. I like the transparency of it—back atcha with your 2.0ism, matey.

(Honestly, what’s wrong with him? I think because it’s been so many years since Seth Godin’s had to count his pennies, he’s actually come to believe that sushi that’s “more than 55 minutes old” is fit only for the homeless. )

Women and Baseball

Why doesn’t MLB.com go after more women? Women and baseball go together like whipped cream and strawberries, but for some reason broadcasters rarely play up the sexy. That’s a big financial mistake. Look around at any baseball game, my friends. How many women do you see? At Dodgers games it’s about a 50/50 split–or at least a hell of a lot closer to it than than at a football or hockey game. That’s because of love of the sport, and HOT MEN. Ask Alyssa Milano: girlfriend knows her baseball.

Are there any unsexy men who play baseball? Yes, unfortunately there are, but we don’t have time to dwell on those. We’ll let The Phoenix do it for us (best calls-though not baseball related—#85 and #47 with #5 taking honorable mention.) There are just too many baseball hotties to worry about to bring out the few that don’t make the cut.

Fellow female fans, I need your help. As a loyal Dodger watcher, I really only know my boys in blue. Of course, a random cutie on the opposing team will always catch my eye, but I can’t pretend to be an expert outside my own bailiwick. Let’s expand our knowledge of this sport. Send me in a roster rundown of your favorite team (photos are a plus) and I’ll put it up in all its leering glory.

And now, gratuitous sexy eye candy of the day, Dodgers catcher Russell Martin:




I wish I could have found a picture of him snapped in mid-lunge, taking the box seat railing like it was a playground monkeybar yesterday afternoon, but the only good shot I’ve found is locked up tighter than Grady’s ass on the Dodgers site and nobody’s even posted a clip on YouTube. Check out the clip on www.dodgers.com or just wait for the end of year “greatest moments” shows.

One good thing.

I love to sell stuff I make. I've been peddling things since I've been crafting things, which is basically for as long as I can remember. One of the things I currently make and sell is perfume...hand-blended, artisan scents (website is here.) I’ve been blending scents for three or four years now, and selling for two or three. Most of my perfumes are sold in person, at shows; that way buyers have a chance to sniff first and fall in love, which they do with some regularity. Those sales don’t worry me; after all, everyone’s got the chance to try before they buy, and if they don’t like it, well, no harm no foul. But I’m just starting to sell online, and it's exciting, but unnerving, to receive orders from strangers who have found me on Google, or through a link somewhere. I'm always worrying that the recipient will hate it, ask for a refund, tell me it’s the worst thing they’ve ever smelled. It’s never happened yet, but I know eventually the day will come.

Last week’s buyer was one such surprise: she was a total stranger who stumbled across my perfumes after reading something I’d posted. She had never sniffed my scents before–-just bought based on my copy and the beauty of my pictures (to use her words.) I sent out her perfume with a sick feeling in my stomach, sure that she’d be disappointed. She emailed me yesterday to tell me she was thrilled with the scent. She took time out from whatever else she was doing to write me an enthusiastic and grateful email about how much she loves it, and added that her husband loves it too. I was speechless with relief and pride.

In other news, I do believe that this is the funniest picture ever posted on the internet:

Mother's Day

I love my mother, but I'm an only child. I am her whole world, and that's scary at times. She worries constantly, which makes her nag me, which makes me crazy, which means we have our prickly moments. But on Mother's day I make a special effort to overlook the little bumps between us. I take her out, I buy her breakfast at her favorite restaurant (which is a little hole in the wall diner that reminds her of happier days when we used to take my grandfather there) and I take her somewhere like the zoo or the aquarium. Usually there’s also a stop at Big Lots or some other discount emporium. Like me, Mom is a tightwad and seizes the opportunity to spend $100 in order to save $10 whenever she can. So, I take her to CheapieMart, turn her loose with a shopping cart and suddenly a hole in the space-time continuum opens up and two hours and $200 later, we’re hauling bags of bargains out to the car.

As I get older, I realize that it's better for both of our psyches to keep some things to myself. Mom doesn't need to know about my love life, my credit-damaging monetary decisions, or any other things that might cause her head to explode with worry. Anything that hints at change is better left unmentioned. I'm done trying to argue her into believing that change can be a good thing. She’s had this mindset for as long as I can remember. When I was a teenager and expressed a desire to go to a college out of state, I remember her saying “It’s better to be bored out of your mind here than wind up dead in a ditch somewhere God knows where.” I’m not sure why she would equate going to college in Massachusetts as a sure-fire way to wind up dead in a ditch, but there you go.

I guess she got this from my grandmother. Someone who tried to sell Grandma on the concept that “when one door closes, another opens". Her reply was ‘Sure, it opens….and then you fall down the cliff that’s on the other side of the door.”

It isn't personal.

I keep reminding myself of this. Some people are just rude by nature, or have a way of speaking that’s blunt and to the point to the point of rudeness. Sucks to be them, and I shouldn’t let it bother me.

Still, I find it bizarre that people feel the need to make off-the-cuff personal remarks. Really, the colleague I’m talking about is hardly a spring chicken and should know better than to make some of the comments she does.

The particular sin of mine that brought on her ire was the fact that I occasionally talk softly to myself as I’m completing tasks. For example, I might say quietly “Let’s see, I need to call so and so in the other office now.” Yesterday, out of nowhere, she said in an exasperated voice “Why do you always SAY OUT LOUD what you’re going to do? I don’t care what you’re doing!” I just looked at her in surprise. First, I don’t “always” do this–it’s not like I have Tourette’s or something. Second, how could anyone get wound up over something like this? There are real problems out there, after all. People who talk to themselves as they work aren’t one of them.

OK. Perhaps I AM annoying. I'm willing to accept that. She could, if the spirit moved her, have said politely “Hey, I apologize for butting in, but I find that habit a bit distracting.” Acknowledging that it’s her problem, not mine, would have gone a long way. But instead she chose to to treat me like a freak. I had enough of that in junior high school, thank you very much. And if you can’t ask politely, ask the boss to move your desk instead.

Junk Sound

Of all my senses, sound is the one that I could most easily do without. Unlike most of the world, I like, but don’t love, music (although practically speaking, it serves a purpose–to evoke a mood, etc.–and I do have a small iTunes collection I listen to when the spirit moves me.) I enjoy conversation and socializing–when I choose to participate. I listen to radio when I’m in the mood—usually at night when I’m in bed, because it relaxes me and drowns out the chatter in my head. I even participate in selective experiences of being noisy, such as when I used to play the doumbek with a pick-up group of musicians and would bang the hell out of my drum and thoroughly enjoy it. My main problem with sound is that there’s just too much of it all at the same time.

I think much of this is simply a matter of how we develop as children, and what we grow accustomed to. When I look at my life and try to think of my happiest moments, I think of being a child and spending summers with my grandparents in their house by the sea. The sun beat down fiercely outside, but inside we were cool, calm, quiet. There were no blaring radios, no arguing neighbors, no interruptions, just the tick of the grandfather clock as I turned the pages on my book, lying on my stomach on the couch. That peaceful, carefree quiet is something that I can never recapture, try as I may.

Senses are not democratic. For most of my life, I’ve been highly attuned to sight and smell, and can tolerate and revel in visual and olofactory riches no matter how fast or furious they zoom by me. I can watch and enjoy multiple images or texts at the same time. I have felt the pure intoxication that comes from a gluttonous surfeit of beauty or sensibility---like the visual feast of traveling in Europe and going to eleven museums in three days, or the rapture of standing inside a botanical garden and seeing and smelling the intensity of three hundred different flowers and trees at once--but such transports make their way inside my brain via my eyes, not my ears. An equivalent amount of sound input would drive me mad.

I do fully realize I’m unusual in this respect; paradoxically, many of my friends are music lovers and even musicians, who adore sound in all its many forms. I understand the joy of sound in the abstract and even in the here and now, when it’s not competing with sixteen other sounds. I love talking one-on-one or in small groups, I love hearing music when I want to hear it, I love attending a musical or theatrical performance even if it’s loud and dissonant.

So why can I deal with some kinds of sounds, but not others? Why can I cope well with one kind of sense overload, but not aural assaults? I have a few theories, but it’s probably a combination of things. ADD for one–I have enough voices inside my head, thank you very much; adding more to the mix is a situation that’s sure to tax my powers of patience. Tinnitus for another; having a constant pulsing sound in one ear for the last, oh, four or five years makes it hard for me to keep other sounds straight without considerable strain. But it’s a preference for quiet more than anything, and I’ve had it for as long as I can remember.

I dream someday of taking a vacation on the moon where all is still and quiet. All I’ll need there is a Thai restaurant that delivers, and a few good books.